True Blood The Complete Fifth Season   Starring: Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer, Alexander Skarsgård, Rutina Wesley, Sam Trammell, Ryan Kwanten, Nelsan Ellis, Carrie Preston, Chris Bauer and Jim Parrack Distributor: HBO Home Entertainment RRP: £40.84 Certificate: 18 Release Date: 20 May 2013

Picking up where Season 4 left off, Sookie is dealing with Tara's shooting and her unpredictable faerie powers, while Bill and Eric find themselves called into action by the Vampire Authority. Meanwhile, Sam searches for shifter killers and Jason struggles with his attraction to Jessica...

The fifth season of True Blood contains another 12 episodes. The main story arc revolves around Bill and Eric being abducted by the Vampire Authority. The kidnapping sees the two held captive while the Authority try to extract information from them. But this soon changes as the Authority recruit Bill and Eric, and then flips again when it becomes clear who is behind the Authority and what their game plan is.

Other interesting storylines follow Tara, as she is turned into a vampire by Pam in order to save her "life"; and Terry being haunted by a heinous act he committed in his past.

Extras include Inside the Episodes (behind the scenes featurettes for every single episode. All last around 3 mins each); and a handful of audio commentaries. To be fair I was a little disappointed by the lack of any other extras. And while it was interesting to hear that when actors Alexander Skarsgård and Kristin Bauer van Straten (Eric and Pam) had to shoot their emotional scene together both of them were sad to do it, it was a little disappointing to not have anything on easily this season's most emotional scene between Jim Parrack and Deborah Ann Woll (Hoyt and Jessica).

This season seems to have lost its footing slightly. While the acting is as strong as ever sustaining storylines between such a large cast of characters seems to at the heart of why this season felt, for me, a little disjointed.

7

Darren Rea