7.6 | / 10 |
Users | 4.5 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
At the dawn of the 20th century, Detective William Murdoch solves Toronto's trickiest cases with scientific insight and ingenuity in this award-winning mystery series. From flying early aircraft to infiltrating nudist communities, consulting with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to helping a young Winston Churchill, Murdoch has always been a man ahead of his time. In Season 6, he also confronts legal and social challenges to be with his love, pathologist-turned-psychiatrist Dr. Julia Ogden. Meanwhile, Constable Crabtree gains confidence as a policeman and a suitor to fetching coroner Emily Grace.
Starring: Yannick Bisson, Hélène Joy, Thomas Craig, Jonny Harris, Mouna TraoréMystery | 100% |
Period | 52% |
Crime | Insignificant |
Action | 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 2.0
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Three-disc set (3 BDs)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
As Canada's signature drama cum police procedural boldly strides into the brave new world of the second millennium's final century, the show remains as popular as ever. Now comfortably ensconced in its new home at CBC, the Canadian public broadcast station, Murdoch's success is such that the seventh season is already airing in Canada, in two parts and with its span increased from thirteen to eighteen episodes. Acorn Media has had a prolific year with Murdoch. Its release of Season 6 marks the third set it has issued in 2013, following its release of Season 5 and a "catchup" release of Season 2. Acorn also issued a box set of Seasons 1 through 4. Long-time fans need no background on the series, its premise or its characters. Newcomers would be well advised to skip this review and consult the Season 1 review for a spoiler-free introduction. Murdoch's episodes are generally self-contained, but the series offers larger plot arcs that evolve from season to season. The discussion of Season 6 below assumes that the reader has seen the previous seasons and contains spoilers for those who haven't. Proceed past the first screenshot at your own risk.
According to IMDb, Season 6 of Murdoch Mysteries was shot with the Arri Alexa, which is fast becoming the preferred camera for television production in England and Canada. The cinematographer for most episodes was Murdoch regular Jim Jeffrey. The image on Acorn Media's set of three 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-rays is easily a match, and in some respects superior, to the excellent quality of Season 5. Detail is abundant, blacks are solid, colors are rich and saturated (check out the greens of the forests just outside Toronto, the rich red of a soldier's uniform or the delicate hues of Dr. Ogden's wardrobe), and contrast levels have been appropriately set so that action in darkness or shadow remains visible but detail isn't blown out in fully illuminated settings. Production company Shaftesbury has prepared new digital renderings of Toronto street scenes and skylines at the turn of the century, and they are a vast improvement over what they replaced. Although not yet up to big-budget feature film standards, they more effectively convey a sense of life and activity in a city that still retained vestiges of a frontier town as it strove to modernize itself. These enhancements are a welcome addition to the visual texture of Murdoch Mysteries.
Having stuck with lossy audio for all but Season 3 of Murdoch (which was its first release on Blu-ray), Acorn Media has included Season 6 in what now appears to be its Blu-ray standard of lossless DTS-HD MA, offered here in 2.0. As in previous seasons, Murdoch's sound design emphasizes dialogue, although there are a few "big" scenes (e.g., those involving Pendrick's "Arrow" in episode 1) and occasional gunfire (more often for Murdoch's test-firing of a weapon in one experiment or another). Scene transitions still use the sound of a light bulb (or is it a popping flash?). Robert Carli's theme and underscoring have lost none of their charm.
This is the first set of Murdoch Mysteries from Acorn Media to contain no extras of any kind. At startup, disc 1 plays the usual trailer for Acorn Media, plus trailers for Jack Taylor and Line of Duty, all of which can be skipped with the chapter forward button. But that's it.
It is disappointing not to have the the web series called Murdoch Mysteries: The Curse of the Lost Pharaohs as an extra on Season 6. This mixture of live action and animation dramatized the sci-fi novel that Constable Crabtree wrote and published during the course of Season 5. Shaftesbury is supposed to be creating a web series documenting the making of Season 7. Let us hope that it is included when Season 7 appears on Blu-ray, hopefully sometime next year. In the meantime, Murdoch Mysteries remains one of the wittiest, most inventive and stylish shows being broadcast today. Even without extras, the Blu-rays of Season 6 are highly recommended.
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