7.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
All eight episodes from the first season of the HBO series following the trials and tribulations of three close friends living and loving in modern-day San Francisco.
Starring: Jonathan Groff (II), Russell Tovey, Scott Bakula, Ann Magnuson, Frankie J. AlvarezRomance | 100% |
Drama | 45% |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: DTS 5.1
Spanish: DTS 2.0
English SDH, French, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (2 BDs)
UV digital copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
HBO routinely refers to its series Looking as a "dramedy", and the show has been compared to two of the premium channel's other hits, Sex and the City and Girls, but none of these descriptions is apt, at least based on the eight-episode first season that aired from January 19 through March 9, 2014. Looking creator and chief writer Michael Lannan (whose 2011 short Lorimer inspired the series) and show runner Andrew Haigh (Weekend) emphasize drama much more than comedy. The latter appears just enough to prevent bitter truth from sinking their storylines into despair. And while Looking is a sexually frank series about a group of friends living in a major American city, it differs from Sex and the City and Girls not only because the friends in Looking happen to be gay men, but also in another respect that is even more important. None of the characters in Looking is a writer (failed or otherwise) supplying would-be intellectual perspective on the group's experiences, constantly stepping outside the story to provide commentary, as Carrie Bradshaw's columns did for Sex and the City and Hannah Horvath's whining does for Girls. One of the subversively original elements of Looking is how little its lead characters conform to stereotypes about urban gay men. They're not especially witty or articulate, they don't dress fashionably and not one of them has an exquisitely decorated apartment (which they couldn't afford anyway). Like most people of their 20- and 30-something age groups, they have average skills and jobs, are trying to get ahead in life, trying to enjoy their spare time, and always on the lookout for that elusive someone to love, who will also love them back.
Although Looking's director of photography, Reed Morano (The Skeleton Twins) participates in one of the episode commentaries, she supplies no information about the shooting format or photographic style. Whatever form the original photography may have taken, the results have been extensively manipulated in post-production to cast a bluish tone (with a slightly green cast) over almost every scene, which has the odd effect of establishing a sense of continuity between indoors and out, between work and home, and between straight locations and gay. It's all one vast emotional wilderness for the show's protagonists. HBO has released the eight episodes of Season One on two 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray discs, with an image that is reasonably detailed thought not always supersharp. The post-processing has given the image a kind of rough texture that sometimes resembles film grain (although I suspect that the photography was digital). As noted in the feature discussion, colors have been desaturated throughout, so that many scenes are almost monochromatic, and even those colors that do survive are undersaturated and mild by comparison to most TV or film images. Many scenes, especially indoors, are quite dark, and blacks often overwhelm shadow detail, but this too appears to be a deliberate effect of the image's retinting. Whether or not one likes Morano's choices is a matter of taste, but there is nothing to suggest that the Blu-ray's reproduction is anything other than accurate. The average bitrate of each episode hovers around 20.71 Mbps, which is on the low side, especially for a show with so much handheld camerawork. Still, I did not observe any noticeable compression issues, and it may be that the absence of strong colors proved to be an aid to compression.
Looking's 5.1 sound mix, encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA, supplies appropriate ambiance in crowded surroundings like Dom's birthday party or the street scene during the annual Folsom Street Fair, but it does its best with the rhythmic and often thematically relevant musical selections that play either as source music during the episodes or over the closing titles. (There is no original scoring.) These include "Spring Breeze", "Party in the Hague" and "Start Me Up" by DJ Roc; "A Little Respect" by Vince Clarke, Andy Bell and Erasure; "The Stars Are for You" by Life of Bianca; and "Everyday Is Like Sunday" by Morrissey. Dialogue is generally clear, although it often overlaps, so that one must pay close attention.
The sole extra is commentaries on six of the eight episodes, which adds up to nearly three hours of commentary. That may sound like a lot, but unfortunately every commentary involves a group of 4-6 participants, and the effect is to leave the listener in the position of a stranger being ignored by friends having a reunion. Executive producers Haigh and Lannan and a revolving roster of actors, writers and crew laugh, joke, compliment each other (and absent colleagues) and point out their favorite moments, but they avoid any discussion of the show's history, development, themes or even its aesthetic choices. Tracks like these are Exhibit A for the case that just because a disc has commentary doesn't mean the extras are worthwhile.
The second season of Looking begins on January 11 and will reportedly introduce several new characters. Whatever Lannan and Haigh have planned, they have already made it apparent that even preconceptions and stereotypes about gay characters that survived previous TV portrayals will not make it through Looking. Their characters aren't wittier, flashier, more fashionable or more in touch with their feelings than the straight world. They're people trying to figure it all out, just like everyone else. If you're prepared for Haigh's and Lannan's downbeat approach to storytelling, Looking may be worth a look, but I certainly wouldn't recommend a blind buy.
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