Supernatural Season Six - Volume One   Starring: Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles Warner Home Video RRP: £29.99 1000201012 Certificate: 15 Available 29 August 2011

The journey of Sam and Dean Winchester reaches thrilling heights, following a truly apocalyptic climax in Season Five, with Sam imprisoned in Lucifer’s very own cage in Hell. One year later and Dean is still wandering the back roads of middle America, trying to piece his life together when his brother makes a surprise return. With the brothers reunited, and rejoined by longtime friends Bobby and fallen angel Castiel, the team must establish what happened to Sam in Hell and prepare for yet another confrontation as a brand new threat rises...

Supernatural: Season Six - Volume One features the first 11 episodes of the show's sixth season.

Because the show's creator, Eric Kripke, had always planned to wind down the show by the fifth season he seems to have done just that. The conclusion to season five pretty much wrapped everything up, so it was interesting to see how they would resolve writing the show into a corner. To be honest they don't really come up with an interesting plot twist, instead they just reintroduce Sam and don't really give a satisfactory explanation as to how he managed to get out of the pit. Of course there is a slight twist (which I won't spoil) which results in Sam being a little different, but again that's all cleaned up by the last episode in this collection.

There's the usual "monster of the week" episodes which this time around include something killing couples and stealing their babies; something which causes people to tell the whole truth, no matter how hurtful, to one person; Dean and Sam hunting werewolves; and the Winchester brothers looking into a string of apparent alien abductions which turn out to be close encounters of the fairy kind. This episode is tongue-in-cheek and has a wonderful opening sequence that spoofs The X-Files.

Weekend at Bobby's is an interesting episode in which the plot revolves almost solely around Bobby.

Guest stars of note include Mitch Pileggi, Corin Nemec, Robert Picardo and Robert Englund.

Extras include Jensen Ackles: A Director's Journey (26 min, 46 sec feature which looks at Ackles, who plays Dean on the show, tackling his first episode as a director); and an audio commentary on one episode.

So, another cracking collection of episodes which have a neat balance of comedy, serious horror and progress the Supernatural story arch sufficiently enough for you to want to keep coming back for more.

9

Darren Rea