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Alison Dubois seems on the surface to be an ordinary housewife.
She has three children, a loving husband and is training to
be a lawyer. Unfortunately, Alison also talks to the dead,
especially those that have been murdered. After using her
gifts to solve a murder Alison decides it's time to stop hiding
from what she can do and quits her studies to work undercover
for Manuel Devalos at the district attorneys office...
This
four disc set contains the whole of the sixteen episodes of
the first season of Medium. Running at a prodigious
657 minutes it was created by Glen Gordon Caron, an eminent
Emmy award winner, who had previously created the most excellent
Moonlighting.
The show is most easily one of the more intelligent looks
at the paranormal. It's part police show, part family drama
and part spooksville. It would be easy to say, following the
pilot show, that the stories settle down into crime of the
week, but this would be far from the truth. The writers have
sensibly decided to make sure that the audience is kept on
their toes and not all the shows end up working out as you
would expect. Alison's gift is not infallible and the use
of her dreams are often used to unnerve the audience as there
is no visual tag to indicate that it's a dream sequence.
The
show is a multi award winning affair having won an Emmy (2005)
for Patricia Arquette's
acting, A BMI Film and TV Award (2005) for the music. In 2006
it won the Motion Pictures Sound Editors Award for Best sound
Editing, the same year in which Sofia Vassileva (Aerial Dubois)
won the Young Artist's Award for her acting. In those two
years it was also nominated for a further six awards, so we're
talking quality product here. The show is supposedly inspired
by the real life exploits of the psychic Alison Dubois who
also works as a consultant on the show.
I have to say that the set sparked off a bit of an argument
in the old household with the other half feeling strongly
that whilst this is a good show, the similar Ghost Whisperer,
with Jennifer Love Hewitt, had the edge. I can't say that
I agree, I thought that Medium had more wit and slightly
better writing. I would agree that it is not without its problems.
I thought that the husband's acceptance of her powers was
a tad too easy, if my wife suddenly started telling me that
she was seeing dead people talking to her and that they crowd
round the bed at night I might think that her drinking was
getting the better of her.
He's
not alone in this respect, maybe the American judicial system
is more used to using mediums, but everyone's attitude seems,
at best, only a little sceptical over her claims. That said,
I understand that for dramatic purposes much of this has to
be taken as read, otherwise the show would be less about her
helping to solve crimes and more about her surviving the side
effects of strong anti-psychotic drugs. This though is nicely
balanced with the level of scepticism levelled at her by police
professionals especially her pseudo partner Detective Lee
Scanlon played by David Cubitt.
Unless
I'm missing a disc the four disc box set came with not a single
extra. This is a grave disappointment as the States release
came on a five disc set with commentaries and features. Audio
is set at 5.1 with the option of either English or French
track and a choice of seven European language subtitles. As
you would expect from a show that is still running the print
transfer is very good.
If you missed the show on its TV run, then here's an opportunity
to catch up with a well written, always interesting show.
Charles
Packer
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