Boxed Sets

I’ve been browsing through my LoveFilm rental list over the last few days. I’m rather behind the times in that respect as I still prefer to rent DVDs (or more commonly BluRay discs) rather than stream content. Partly this is to do with the picture quality (many of the streamed services are in lower definition) but it is also because I rather like seeing the extras on the discs. For the most part I tend to rent feature films this way but I have started looking to see what boxed sets are available.

I don’t subscribe to pay TV services other than the Amazon streaming service that comes as part of LoveFilm so I tend to miss out on some of the major (usually American) series that are shown on the likes of Sky and Virgin. I’ve had a bit of a mixed reaction to this kind of box-set TV. Some series were highly rated but never really gelled with me: The Wire is a good example of a highly rated series that I just gave up on after a couple of disks as I felt it was going nowhere. Other series started off well but I gave up on after a few series – Lost was OK for a while but then seemed to turn into a repetitive soap opera and True Blood became both convoluted and samey after a while.

There have been some series that I took a decided dislike to for other reasons. I enjoyed Kiefer Sutherland’s 24 for a couple of series and even enjoyed one of the later ones but was aghast at the lack of moral comment in its portrayal of torture and I eventually gave up on it as I felt it was just consistent racist propaganda – still entertaining propaganda but morally repugnant in the same way that I find the Leni Riefenstahl movies of the mid-1930s.

There are a few series that I’m planning on trying out. One of the top ones is Game Of Thrones which sounds like the sort of thing I would like and seems to have rave reviews from all who have seen it. What puts me off slightly is the odd reviews that have criticised it for the amount of sex and violence (and violent sex) in the series. If it is integral to the plot I don’t really have a problem with this but I’ve seen far too many series where nudity and gore are thrown in to appeal to a certain demographic – mainly because the plot is too poor to hold the viewers’ attention. I suppose the one advantage of renting the DVDs is that it’s easy enough to click on “Cancel” if I want to give up on a boxed set.