7.8 | / 10 |
Users | 3.5 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 3.8 |
Vice President Selina Meyers and her staff manage various crises.
Starring: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Anna Chlumsky, Tony Hale, Matt Walsh, Reid ScottComedy | 100% |
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
French: DTS 5.1
Spanish: DTS 2.0
English SDH, French, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Three-disc set (2 BDs, 1 DVD)
UV digital copy
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Political farce is all the rage these days, and for good reason. With partisan bickering at a comical high and the 24-hour news cycle a three-ring circus, there's plenty of easy shots to take and plenty of targets who deserve every tomato, cabbage and stone hurled their way. And then there's the vice presidency. Long a consolation prize and the butt of many a late-night talk show host joke, the second highest seat in the land amounted to very little for centuries, suddenly and aggressively ascended to House of Cards-esque heights of power during the Bush/Cheney administration and, over the course of the last five years, crashed to Earth again as the likes of Joe Biden, Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan have left both sides of the aisle laughing and shaking their heads.
It's this glaring insignificance that Veep exploits with cruel but deserved indifference, often to hilarious ends. Showrunners Armando Iannucci, Simon Blackwell and Christopher Godsick aren't interested in playing Democrat or Republican Red Rover, going so far as to redact a crucial piece of information: the political party of their VP, Selina Meyers (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). In fact, familiar office politics take precedence over anything resembling more pointed national politics as Meyers and her staff are left to contend with the mundane concerns of public office: an unseen, absentee Commander in Chief, finicky bloggers and journalists, unfortunate slips of the tongue, image crises, department leaks, dismissive Congressmen and stubborn colleagues. There's even less in the way of genre gerrymandering; Veep is pure comedy of errors, and doesn't hold any loftier ambitions. It's all a bit too lightweight, mind you -- the pregnancy scares, personality conflicts, parental misgivings, snarky office wranglings and shaky romances -- but the freedom HBO affords Iannucci and company makes Veep a sharper satire than it might have otherwise been.
"We have two catch-22 situations simultaneously. Is there even a name for that?"
With Veep, what you see is what you get... no flash, no sizzle. HBO's 1080p/AVC-encoded video presentation falls in line with Iannucci and DP Jay Feather's ordinary, humdrum, day-in-the-life intentions, with both the VP's office and affairs favoring a rather drab workplace palette. Colors are largely restrained (even though patriotic reds and blues occasionally flood the frame), skintones are natural and lifelike, and black levels are satisfying (albeit a touch muted here and there). Contrast is nice and consistent, if not a tad dull, and delineation is decidedly decent. Detail is quite good too, with well-resolved textures, revealing closeups and clean edges. Better still, ringing, aliasing and macroblocking aren't at play, and only a hint of banding and intermittent noise undermine the proficiency of the encode. All told, Veep pulls off a solid Blu-ray debut.
Likewise, Veep's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track presents the series' flat, conservative sonics faithfully. Dialogue is clean and clear, and voices only become muffled or unintelligible when it serves whatever comedy of errors happens to be unfolding in any given episode. The LFE channel is reserved, with little in the way of low-end oomph, and the rear speakers aren't tasked with any strenuous activity, handling subtle ambient effects, restrained acoustics and not much more. Not that any of it spoils the experience. HBO's lossless track is underwhelming because Veep's sound design is underwhelming, and Veep's sound design is only underwhelming because it helps sell the ho-hum trivialities and minutia of Meyers and her staff's day-to-day grind. Ironically, anything more would be disappointing. Long story short, Veep's lossless track delivers exactly what it should. Nothing more, nothing less.
Veep gets a lot of mileage out of its ensemble; enough that I'm looking forward to the series' second season. I'm not sure the show can thrive for another eight episodes on its actors' talents alone, but for a first run at the vice presidency, Season One drums up enough laughs to warrant a second term in office. HBO's Blu-ray release is even better, with a faithful AV presentation and a hefty supplemental package that includes twelve audio commentaries, a half-hour of deleted scenes and more.
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