Breaking Bad: The Complete Series [DVD]

Product Information

Sound for each episode is present in English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. The series’s surround mixes are surprisingly dynamic and lively, with excellent bass, good precision, and lovely ambience in the surrounds. Dialogue is clean and clear at all times. Music is full sounding and well staged in the mix. Optional subtitles are included in English SDH and French. Selected items are only available for delivery via the Royal Mail 48® service and other items are available for delivery using this service for a charge. Here’s more good news: Random Space Media’s box set includes essentially the same special features as the previous Sony Blu-rays. Here’s a look at what you get, broken down disc by disc… SEASON ONE – DISC ONE

Random Space Media’s box set includes all 62 episodes of the series (and the feature film) in 1080p HD in their original aspect ratio of 1.78:1. Image quality is generally very solid, with accurate color and solid contrast overall. Breaking Bad was shot on 35 mm film from start to finish (in Super 35 format), so the source is of fine quality. The first season has a slight digitally-processed look to it though, with a bit of unevenness to the color and detail, possibly due to limitations in HD scanning technology when the show was first finished in 2008. It’s not bad in any way, just perhaps a little dated looking. Subsequent seasons get much better, however, and by the end the production values are excellent. It's a portrait of one man's simultaneous ascent (to drug lord) and descent (into moral depravity). In an extraordinary performance, Bryan Cranston, playing Walter White, takes us with him every step of the way. To get a sense of the scale of his achievement, just compare the first and final season covers: in the former, a mildly quizzical-looking man in white Y-fronts holds a gun in a way that suggests he doesn't know how to use it. In the latter, a monster looks out, a barely discernible snarling shadow. It's a different man and the same man. It's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. This complete box set, meanwhile, has the usual making-of featurettes and commentaries, which largely focus on the dull mechanics of making the key episodes, rather than providing any insight, as well as the slightly irritating and widely leaked "alternative ending", suggesting it was all a bad dream by Cranston's Malcolm in the Middle character, Hal.