Looking: The Complete Series and The Movie Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Looking: The Complete Series and The Movie Blu-ray Movie Review

Looking for a Blu-ray Release

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 23, 2016

HBO canceled Looking after its second season aired from January 11-March 22, 2015, due to declining ratings. While the pay-TV network has been known to be stingy with Blu-ray releases of canceled series (fans of Enlightened are still waiting for its impressive second season on Blu), Looking turned out to be a special case. In response to an online petition, HBO decided to give the show's creators a chance to wrap up the series with a full-length TV movie, which aired on July 23, 2016. Both the movie and Season Two have now been issued on Blu-ray, but there's a catch: You have to re-buy Season One. The continuation and conclusion of Looking are available only as part of a Complete Series package.

For a review of Season One, please go here.

For a review of Season Two, please go here.

For a review of Looking: The Movie, please go here.

Looking: The Complete Series and The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Season One (go here for screenshots):

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.


Season Two (go here for screenshots):

Looking got a new cinematographer for Season Two, Xavier Pérez Grobet (Focus), who has maintained consistency with Season One's desaturated visuals, but Grobet has subtly brightened the image and varied the pallette to provide relief from the unrelenting cyan grunge of the previous season. The digitally acquired image remains sharp and detailed, and HBO has spread the ten episodes over two BD-50s, allowing for a higher average bitrate than the Season One set, approximately 27 Mbps.


The Movie (go here for screenshots) :

Season Two's cinematographer, Xavier Pérez Grobet, returned for Looking: The Movie, and his digital cinematography continues the style he established in previous episodes. HBO has placed the 85-minute feature on a 1080p, AVC-encoded BD-25, which displays good sharpness and detail, an absence of noise, distortion or interference, and the desaturated palette that is a hallmark of the series. The average bitrate of 21 Mbps is consistent with the Season One Blu-rays.

Looking: The Complete Series and The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Season One:

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.


Season Two:

The lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack for Looking's continues the style established in Season One, supplying effective environmental ambiance that is particularly noticeable whenever the action leaves the familiar urban environs of San Francisco (e.g., in episode 1, where forest sounds form an intriguing blend with outdoor partying). Club scenes remain vibrantly loud, with deep bass extension. Dialogue is always clear, centered and correctly prioritized. The musical selections, which range from Sister Sledge to Pet Shop Boys to generic club music, remain inventive and effective. (There is no independent underscoring.)


The Movie:

The lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack for Looking: The Movie continues the style established in Seasons One and Two, supplying effective environmental ambiance for locations that will be familiar to series fans from earlier episodes. Club scenes remain vibrantly loud, with deep bass extension, and dialogue is always clear, centered and correctly prioritized. The musical selections are more sparse than previously, because the movie has to cover so much dramatic ground that it can't afford to waste time idling at party scenes.

Looking: The Complete Series and The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras for Seasons One and Two consist of commentaries, which are listed in the individual reviews. Looking: The Movie has no extras.

Looking: The Complete Series and The Movie Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

For fans of the series who don't already own the first season, Looking: The Complete Series is an attractive package. For those who bought Season One when it was separately released, the choice is tougher, but HBO is unlikely to release Season Two and Looking: The Movie separately.