Review: Person Of Interest – Season 1 on DVD & Blu-ray
Person of Interest Season 1 on DVD Now!
Person of Interest stars Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ. The Prisoner) as John Reese. An ex-CIA officer and Green Beret, he’s current living in a rundown apartment in NYC after an ‘incident’ left him presumed dead. But a ‘less than chance’ meeting with billionaire computer genius Harold Finch (played by Lost’s Michael Emerson) is about to change his life.
Finch explains he’s built a computer that uses information gathered in today’s surveillance culture to create a prediction engine that will predict terrorist attacks and crimes. When the government ignores Finch, he decides to take matters into his own hands, persuades Reese to join him, using his CIA & ex-military training to track down the crimes, and stop them before they happen. It’s less a whodunit and more a whosgonnadoit.
I think of Person of Interest as being part Batman, part Minority Report, part cop show. The Batman element is not surprising given the show’s writer and creator is Jonathan Nolan, the scribe behind his brother Christopher Nolan‘s brilliant Batman Trilogy. And when you add in J. J. Abrams as exec producer, you know you’re going to be in for something good.
Caviezel and Emerson have a great on screen rapport, both serious when they need to be, but with a darkly dry humour bubbling up to the surface. Whilst the show-to-show format is of a procedural cop drama, there is a deeper over-arching story of how the 2 characters got to where they are, with occasional flashbacks giving glimpses into the 2 main protagonist’s pasts. Much like the machine in the show, you’re never given all the information, only parts of steps along their journey.
The 2 main leads are supported by 2 members of the NYPD. First is Detective Lionel Fusco (Kevin Chapman – Rescue Me, Brotherhood) is a corrupt cop who’s caught out by Reese, but rather than turn Fusco in, Reese leverages him into helping them out. The other is Detective Jocelyn Carter (Taraji P. Henson – Boston Legal, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), who is sent to catch the mysterious suited vigilante who’s been showing up a crime scenes. However, once she realises that Reese is actually helping people, she backs off, and even starts to lend a hand.
The procedural elements of the show intertwine nicely with the bigger over-arching story of how the machine became into being, and the hints of government conspiracy along the way. If you’ve not managed to catch Person Of Interest on Channel 5 yet, I urge you to go out and pick up the [amazon_link id=”B005YYCMEO” target=”_blank” ]DVD of Person of Interest – Season 1[/amazon_link] or [amazon_link id=”B0090K6E06″ target=”_blank” ]on Blu-ray[/amazon_link] now. You really won’t regret it.
Extras include: Broadcast Pilot Episode with Producer Commentary, Extended Pilot Episode (with and without Commentary, Gag Reel and the rather disturbing ‘Living In An Age Of Surveillance’ Featurette.
9/10 – Brilliant inventive show from Jonathan Nolan & J. J. Abrams
Dave has over 20 years experience in the digital industry, and is founder and editor of Geektown. Obviously a huge geek himself, he can often be found in front of the latest tv show or movie, on various video games, or with his head in a comic book.
POI might be the most underrated show on TV right now – it does seem to start out as a “same old, same old” procedural, but about halfway through season 1, it shifts gears and the sub-plots start kicking in to terrific effect, continuing and building through season 2 (currently about halfway through in the US at time of writing), to the point where they can even have an entire episode that barely features any of the main characters, with no loss of momentum – definitely worth checking out…
I start to really enjoy a series, eg Grimm, Once Upon a Time to name but two, and then halfway through they go to a ‘season break’, sometimes for as much as six months, by which time I’ve forgotten what was happening. Why, why, why do they do this.!! If a series is 24 episodes, why can’t we have 24 episodes in one chunk, instead of two lots of 12 . It’s so frustrating.
Hi Jackie,
It’s to do with the US scheduling. If they air in 2 halves (as they did with Grimm), they so does they UK. There are also issues with the US having different events and holidays than the UK (Thanksgiving, Superbowl, etc…), which means their schedules tend to be a lot more erratic than the UK’s. So it’s a problem for UK channels no matter what they do. If they a air close to the US date, people complain as the show sometimes has to skip weeks (as happened with Glee last year). If they don’t, and leave space for it to air in a solid block, people complain about having to wait for it. They really can’t win either way.
With show’s like Grimm, that have a long hiatus in the middle, it’s can be funding issue, or they’ve only had the first half of the season ordered, or it could simply be so they have enough time to get the season finished.
I know it’s annoying, but unfortunately, it’s just how tv works these days.
Cheers,
Dave 🙂