DVD
Medium
The Complete First Season

Starring: Patricia Arquette, Jake Weber and Miguel Sandoval
Paramount Home Entertainment
RRP: £34.99
PHE9064
Certificate: 15
Available 14 August 2006


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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£26.99 (Amazon.co.uk)
   
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£25.25 (Foxy.co.uk)
   
£26.89 (Thehut.com)

All prices correct at time of going to press.