The Walking Dead Season Four
On the road again
Release Date: 29 September 2014 | 18 | 720 minutes | £ 44.99 ( Blu- ray)/£ 39.99 ( DVD) Distributor: Entertainment One Directors: Greg Nicotero, Ernest Dickerson, Michelle MacLaren Cast: Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan, Melissa McBride
They did it! After three years of being the show that’s never quite as good as you think it should be given the premise, The Walking Dead’s fourth year strikes just the right balance between horror, action and character drama.
There’s some housekeeping to take care of first, mind. There’s still the matter of that nasty Governor lurking outside the prison gates. The two- parter concentrating on telly’s favourite deposed tyrant is a fascinating departure from the source material. It brings out the character’s interesting contradictions, which have often been sidelined in favour of blunt psychosis. Of course, the show always snaps back to the comic’s basic roadmap, and it’s not long before we’re facing another confrontation with One- Eye Bri...
With that out of the way, the gang find themselves uprooted once more. It’s here, free of the baggage of the last few years, that the show finds its heart. For the first time each of the characters comes fully into focus. The drama is smaller in scale, but all the more intense. “Claimed” conjures great tension from Rick simply hiding from some thugs, while “The Grove” takes the show to the darkest of places. Ironically, its future has never looked brighter.
Extras: The deleted scenes ( on eight episodes) and commentaries ( on six) are the most valuable extras here. “Inside KNB Studios” ( 18 minutes) goes behind the doors of Greg Nicotero’s effects house. “Inside The Walking Dead” ( 86 minutes) analyses each of the 16 episodes, and “The Making Of The Walking Dead” ( 75 minutes) goes behind the scenes, but both lean too heavily on clips. There are also four short featurettes ( totalling 36 minutes). Will Salmon
The season’s final line is slightly different here compared to the TV version – it’s been tweaked to allow one character to deploy an f- bomb.