- Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
- Video Codec: AVC/MPEG-4
- Resolution: 1080i/60 (29.970Hz)
- Audio Codec: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo (48kHz/24-bit)
- Subtitles: English SDH
- Region: ABC (Region-Free)
- Rating: N/R
- Discs: 2 (2 x Blu-ray)
- Run time: 338 Mins.
- Studio: BBC
- Blu-ray Release Date: February 21, 2012
- List Price: $39.98
[amazon-product]B006H37PFC[/amazon-product]
Purchase The Fades: Season One on Blu-ray at CD Universe
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
Overall
[Rating:4/5]
The Series
[Rating:4.5/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:4/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:4/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:2.5/5]
Click thumbnails for high-resolution 1920X1080p screen captures
(All TheaterByte screen captures are lightly compressed with lossy JPEG at 100% quality setting and are meant as a general representation of the content. They do not fully reveal the capabilities of the Blu-ray format)
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The Series
[Rating:4.5/5]
With The Fades the BBC continues their dominance in the world of television horror and sci-fi, crafting a witty, hip, and addictive new series that incorporates all the lessons of series that have gone before it like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, and The Walking Dead. But this is no mere rehash, The Fades is fresh, young, invigorating, exciting, and most of all, scary.
The series follows the 17-year-old Paul (Iain De Caestecker) who’s begun having nightmarish apocalyptic visions that he can’t escape. Paul, who up until now has lived a relatively quite social life on the fringes with his oddball best friend Mac (Daniel Kaluuya), a fellow geek who lives for obscure 80s sci-fi film reference, will soon be drawn into a dangerous battle he didn’t know existed – and he may play the biggest role.
For centuries, when people died, their souls have lingered until they found an ascension point and moved on. These souls are called “fades” and people who can see them, “angelics.” Now, however, the ascension has been shutdown and the fades are trapped. The angelics, all of whom also have been granted with specific powers – some the power to heal, some with visions, others still with great strength – have to keep the peace between the fades and humans, who can hurt the fades simply by touching them. The fades are now finding a way to be reborn into corporeal form by drinking blood of the living and eating their flesh while waging war on the angelics. Most dangerous of all –these reborns cannot be killed. It may be up to Paul, a newly formed angelic himself and possibly the most powerful one of all, to help stop this menace. Paul is, however, a reluctant hero; he doesn’t yet know how to harness his powers and he doesn’t want to be a killer. What Paul wants is a normal life with his friend Mac and his new beautiful girlfriend Jay (Sophie Wu).
Funny, sexy, smart, and scary, The Fades is horror television as it is meant to be. The series has quietly shifted the playing field for horror by quite slily, effortlessly, and without pause redefining some of the genres’ most iconic symbols like ghosts, vampires, slayers, and zombies. Everyone else is going to have to catch up to this or eat the BBC’s dust.
Video Quality
[Rating:4/5]
Like all BBC productions these days, The Fades was originally done in high definition, most likely at an original frame rate of 50Hz, and brought to Blu-ray stateside in a 1080i/60 AVC/MPEG-4 encodement. While the production looks rather strong and sleek – I’m always amazed at how the BBC manages this on relatively small budgets – there is quite a bit of video noise that becomes apparent in the image in the low-lit scenes. Detail is strong, but it does soften quite often, again, in darker scenes. Shadow details are prone somewhat to crush, but the brighter scenes are vivid, clear, and lifelike without much to complain about.
Audio Quality
[Rating:4/5]
Finally the BBC seems to be getting with the program (or is that programme?) so to speak, and releasing a series on Blu-ray with a lossless soundtrack rather than Dolby Digital or even the better, but still lossy DTS-HD High Resolution. While The Fades still only has a 2.0 stereo mix, it is provided in DTS-HD Master Audio (48kHz/24-bit). While a series such as this one could certainly benefit from the extra spaciousness and atmosphere that a surround mix would bring, this stereo mix is pretty good, with a decent amount of dynamics and stereo separation of the musical score plus clean dialogue in the center.
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:2.5/5]
While there are is a good bit of extra footage included on here as well as some well received exposition on the various characters and background by the series’ character “Mac,” everything is in standard definition, which is a definite minus this day and age.
The supplements:
- Extra Scenes (1.78:1; SD):
- Episode One
- Episode Two
- Episode Three
- Episode Four
- Episode Five
- Episode Six
- Deleted Scenes and Outtakes (1.78:1; SD):
- Episode One
- Episode Two
- Episode Three
- Episode Four
- Episode Five
- Outtakes
- Behind the Scenes (1.78:1; SD):
- Interview with Johnny Harris
- Interview with Natalie Dormer
- Apocalypse
- Polus Revealed
- The Chosen One
- The Fades are Here
- The Real Neil
- Writing the Fades
- Mac Explains (1.78:1; SD):
- What is a Fade?
- What is Ascension?
- What is and Angelic?
- How is Everyone Connected?
- Why is Paul Special?
- What is Reborn?
The Definitive Word
Overall:
[Rating:4/5]
I often wonder just what it is in the water over in the UK that allows them to make such intelligently crafted sci-fi and horror programming so consistently and why it is that, here in the US they can’t seem to do the same. Horror and sci-fi series come and go so quickly in the US it’s enough to give you vertigo. Heck, even some of the horror series currently running over here, like Being Human, were originally BBC series reworked for US television. The Fades jumps immediately to the top of the list, or somewhere near it, meaning perhaps in a year or two we’ll end up seeing an inferior US version running on a US network near you. Recommended.
Additional Screen Captures
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[amazon-product]B006H37PFC[/amazon-product]
Purchase The Fades: Season One on Blu-ray at CD Universe
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
Overall
[Rating:4/5]
The Series
[Rating:4.5/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:4/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:4/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:2.5/5]
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