For those of you who don't know, which I'm going to assume is most because I haven't seen a post made about it, Target has a special two pack of DVD sets--one is Dark Angel Season 1, and the other is our very own Dark Shadows Revival Series. All this for just $20. So, natch, I grabbed it up. That's much cheaper than I've been able to find the DSR by itself, anywhere online. And if I don't want Dark Angel, I can get rid of it and have DSR practically for free!
Anywho, I popped the first disc in to watch the first episode last night. Luckily for me, my DVD player has an option under the Setup menu for the player where I can select how the DVD's content is presented (full or widescreen) even if it's supposed to be in one or the other on the DVD. Since the DSR is on DVD as widescreen, people have complained that it cuts off some of the picture, but for me it doesn't.
I found the first episode to be enjoyable overall, despite being a rehash of HODS. I don't know some of the actors names, so I'm just going to refer to the characters. Roger was missing something for sure. I think Louis Edmonds accent was one of the things that made Roger's character so memorable, and without this Roger having that, he seems a little off to me. I think Liz is perfectly cast, and the actress is wonderful, despite some of the crappy lines that she's given. Vicki, Carolyn, and Daphne are fine by me. David gets on my nerves. This kid has nothing on our original David, period. Julia (Barbara Steele, yes?) is decent, but I didn't know the actress had a British-tinged accent, so that was a little off putting at first. Sometimes her delievery makes her sound more like Lara Parker's Angelique.
Willie (Jim Fyfe I believe) goes in and out of my good column pretty regularly, and with every scene he is in my opinion of him changes. Sometimes he's great, other times he's very whiny. Part of the appeal of John Karlen's Willie, compared to the updated one anyway, was that he seemed much more traveled, and although maybe somewhat naive, he could take care of himself. This Willie seems like nothing but a bumbling idiot, that he couldn't exist except for being a sidekick to someone, and that's just not cool.
We didn't really see much of Maggie, Sam, and Joe, but I can say that the lines that Sam had in this first episode either were really bad, or he just can't act, or probably both.
Ben Cross as Barnabas is odd. I like him but I don't. Some of his scenes are pitch perfect (when he's talking to Vicki in Josette's room, when he says that "Almost 200 years ago" line, he sound eerily like Jon Frid), while others are very flat, or off the mark. That hissing when he gets ready to bite people, or when he bears his fangs is just LUDICROUS, and I cannot take it seriously whatsoever.
Overall, with most of the characters, but especially in this episode in exchanges with Julia, Barnabas, Carolyn, and Elizabeth, I feel like the CHARACTERS, not the actors, have been here, done this, all before, and that they know that and are just going through the motions. And it's not because I'm familiar with the storyline. Several of Julia's lines, especially the one where she tells Barnabas that she almost made progress by hypnotizing Daphne to figure out who attacked her, are delivered with a "Hmph, I know it was you and I'm just saying this to make other people think I don't know," tone, when she couldn't possibly know it is him who is attacking people this early in the show.
Several things that I noticed in terms of production bloopers:
When Daphne is walking from the Blue Whale to pick up her car, we see her from a frontal long shot, with her shadow behind her. We see a hint of another shadow to her right (from out perspective), then we cut to a side long shot of her, where her shadow is now extending from her left side, and we can see the shadow of the camera crane and the camera operator on the crane. The camera crane is obviously a mess up, but Daphne's two shadows is a severe lighting error. You also see palm frons coming into the top of the screen from a palm tree, but this was really the only instance I noticed a palm tree during this episode.
Also, the last scene where Barnabas is outside of Vicki's window, is so obviously shot during the daytime that it's rediculous. The lighting on Cross' face doesn't even look right, because you can tell that they've painted him to be pale, and sunlight doesn't so it justice. It looks like they just said screw it and decided to shoot during the daytime, and put up large black sheets on the light deflectors to mute the sunlight. But in the background, through the trees you can see that the sky is definitely blue. And the fog along the ground does nothing to help.
Now, I'm sure that the final scene is meant to be taken in stride with the storyline, but I think that I'd prefer to assume that after Barnabas leaves Vicki at the front door of Collinwood, he returns to his coffin, and that everything after that, beginning with Vicki brushing her hair, is all part of a dream Barnabs is having.
Perhaps the best part of this initial episode is the cinematography. The thing looks like a movie. And television almost never looks like a movie. Ever. Especially these days. So I really think that's a big plus. The camera angles are numerous, and the dutch angles that are employed work very well to tell us so much about the characters that the characters aren't telling us themselves. The mise-en-scene is also great, within and around Collinwood for the most part. Big props to the DP for the series for pulling that one out, and having to work during the DAY to make a night scene. Even though it didn't come out right, at least they tried. And that had to be hard as heck.
