Customer Reviews

Wire in the Blood: The Complete Sixth Season

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Robson Green is back in the sixth and from what I found out final season of the amazing Wire in the Blood series. I have always preferred the UK crime/mystery programming over the bland U.S. shows. Season 6 is just as gripping and tension filled as the previous five seasons. The crimes are just as bizarre, violent and twisted as the previous seasons and I absolutely love it. Green is perfect as Dr. Tony Hill and Simone Lahbib is great as DI Alex Fielding. If you have see the previous five seasons of Wire in the Blood then season 6 will be exactly what you expect......one of the best crime series I have ever seen.

This series is based on the novels of Val McDermid. It is a very faithful recreation of the novels with perfect casting of Robson Green as psychologist Tony Hill. Carol is no longer his policewoman partner but she has been well replaced by Alex Fielding. Hill is especially a misfit in much of regular society and is only at his best when delving into the criminal mind. Green perfected all of Hill's tics so that he is seen in all of his odd duck glory. These are all murder cases and most of them are serial murders. I've enjoyed every season of this series and am sad to hear this one is evidently the last. The British do a marvelous job on tv mystery and crime series. One thing that especially distinguishes a British series is that it never takes the easy way out. If it is better for the show, the UK series will go the the extra mile by killing off characters and taking other unpopular plot twists which are anathema in an American series. An American series always has more of a Disney patina to it regardless of which studio made the series. We in America rarely can resist adding schmaltz, sentimentality and morals to our tv series. The British are made of sterner stuff, as they say. I've also read Val McDermid's novels of Tony & Carol. They are excellent and much more detailed and complex than the tv series. I've also listened to some of the audio versions which are also quite good. You can't go wrong with this one.

Excellent continuation of the series. Make sure you watch the episodes in order - there is a continution story in the episodes.

All good things must come to an end, and alas, after 6 seasons, the road has come to an end for Dr. Tony Hill, at least in his BBC incarnation. This final season displays a few of the strongest episodes we've seen in a good while. Robson Green dropped many of Dr. Hill's more endearing idiosyncracies during the past two seasons, but all his patented tics return in force in "Falls the Shadow", an episode lifted directly from a Val McDermid novel. Such is not usually the case; most of these episodes retain the characters created by McDermid, but are not her plots. The dynamic between Tony and DI Fielding has settled down from its earlier antagonistic vibe; Alex is softer, more feminine and not as biting as she used to be. It seemed like they were priming us for a romance to develop between Tony and Alex, and now we will not see that happen. As a staunch Carol Jordan supporter, I am just as glad about that! There was no apparent attempt made to tie off loose ends, with the final episode ending ambiguously, which makes me wonder whether another season had in fact been planned before the plug was pulled. All is not lost, however: Val McDermid has just come out with another Tony-Carol book, so our shy forensic lovers continue to have lives on the page. Here's hoping the success of this show will propel Robson Green to long-deserved movie stardom in America, now that he has the time.

I am a big fan of Val McDermid's characters, and Robson Green plays the dysfunctional psychologist Dr Tony Hill brilliantly - he will be missed.
The Brits certainly know how to make really good, slightly different TV drama series, and this has to be up there with the best. I always smile when I see him walking off with his blue plastic carry bags - can you imagine Dr Hill with a briefcase? It's little things like this that make this series one that rates with the very best of any drama show. I preferred Carol as his partner - there was always that simmering undertow of will they, won't they - not there now with his new partner Alex. The supporting cast is very strong and it is a great pity that the proposed Series 7 was cancelled. I'm sure it would have been as big a hit as the previous 6.
Do try and watch the whole series from the beginning - to me the ONLY let down was the one episode that was shot in USA - somehow didn't work with Tony out of his usual surroundings.

In closing, I was amazed to read someone who wrote that it needed subtitles!! We get so much US television in our homes, whether we live in UK, Australia or any other English speaking country - we don't require closed captions to understand American accents, no matter what part of the country they are from!! We manage well without needing CC or subtitles, which I thought were reserved for 'foreign' languages - English is the language of America, not American.

I was getting annoyed with the writers the first couple episodes because there were some crazy coincidences in the first one that could not ever happen and in the second I felt they were drawing our heroes the investigators way too much into the drama. I think Cracker made the same mistake dramatizing the principals instead of letting the cases be the framework they operate around. Anyway I just finished the 4th episode and I felt the season turned itself around even though the ending was not appropriate for a conclusion to the series. They didn't seem to realize it was the end and you can't blame them for that. All in all Green was tremendous, he seems to really take everything to heart. It's like you can see the wrinkles forming as he deals with all the murder and dysfunctional personalities. The portrayals on this show are VERY realistic compared to US television.

This turned out to be the final season in the Wire in the Blood series; I believe the decision was made to cancel the series after this season wrapped, so there are a couple of things left hanging (like the relationship between Tony Hill and Alex). However, the inclusion of a multi-episode character and story (Michael) was a different approach and came off very well. Another excellent season; too bad the show's over!

Robson Green is so easy to watch! The series is very good but very graphic so this I will not share with my family, but my best friend and I will continue to watch and continue to buy this series. We love almost all the British mysteries.

This series just keeps getting better and better, it was always fantastic. Each of the four episodes is equal to a feature movie...but better than most movies in a similar vein release in theaters every year. The last serial killer movie that I think came close was "Se7en," and that was a while back.

While the villains and the circumstances are often pitch black (you thought Hannibal Lecter was creepy? I smirk at your innocence), the thing that keeps the stories from growing unbearable is the main character, Tony Hill, who in the grand tradition of "defective detectives" like Monk and Columbo, has appealing character quirks that help humanize the entire show. The writing is top-notch, the acting excellent, and the production values better that what American viewers typically expect, apart from the best of the premium cable series.

If you enjoy "Criminal Minds," but wish it had more grit and stronger characters, this series is for you. It's tough to watch, but it's exhilarating, too. And for what amounts to four really good movies, this is packaging of season six is even a pretty good value.

I have had the same problem as another reviewer where the discs will not play after 20 seconds.Starts with the intro
and then just stops and sits. Wasted my money...I am afraid to order another for fear of the same problem.