Product Description

A complicated female cop from the creator of Prime Suspect

After 20 years with London’s Metropolitan Police, Clare Blake has reached the pinnacle of her profession. She’s New Scotland Yard’s highest-ranking woman officer, the Serious Crime Group Commander, and head of the Murder Review Team. The pressure is intense and so is the scrutiny.

Ambitious but reckless, Blake lets her personal life bleed into her career. She defies convention, risks her reputation, and always gets too close to her cases. Each misstep she makes pleases DCI Hedges, a shifty, self-interested colleague with a grudge to settle. And he’s not the only person who wants to bring her down. From award-winning writer Lynda La Plante (Prime Suspect), this compelling thriller delivers gritty stories, intricate plot twists, and a strong, complex female lead.

Starring Amanda Burton (Silent Witness), Matthew Marsh (MI-5), and Poppy Miller (Attachments), with guest stars Hugh Bonneville (Iris), Saskia Reeves (Dune), and David Patrick O’Hara (Braveheart).

DVD SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE interview with star Amanda Burton, character retrospective with creator Lynda La Plante, supporting cast featurette, and Amanda Burton and Lynda La Plante bios.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22751 in DVD
• Brand: Acorn
• Released on: 2008-11-11
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Box set, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 4
• Running time: 570 minutes

Amazon.com
As she demonstrated with Prime Suspect, Linda La Plante has a fantastic ear for the grit and swing of police talk. Her scripts for The Commander capture the slippery way that the bond of police work leads to helping each other escape punishment for illegal acts. Commander Clare Blake (Amanda Burton, Silent Witness) has risen to a high position in Scotland Yard, but when she makes some questionable choices, her career threatens to unravel completely, leading to compromises, panic attacks, morphine, infidelity, manipulation, and unscrupulous deals with corrupt officers she'd intended to put away. At first, her reckless behavior seems to require an excessive suspension of disbelief (it doesn't ruin anything to say that she gets sexually involved with a murder suspect), and only the sharp dialogue and committed performances keep you from giving up on the plot. But over the course of additional episodes, Blake's actions grow increasingly seedy--and increasingly entertaining. She never becomes cartoonishly lurid, yet her behavior grows more and more indefensible--it's due to Burton's intriguing combination of sensuality and ambition that the character remains compulsively watchable. Each two- to three-part episode tracks a stand-alone story (a hacker is killing hospital patients by changing their records; a relentless internal investigator--the excellent David Patrick O'Hara, The Departed--forces Blake to join forces with a loathed enemy; an escaped mental patient seems to have murdered Blake's goddaughter), while the investigation of an old cover-up recurs across several episodes. Only the British can come up with a police show that's this smart, gritty, and trashy. Extras include interviews with La Plante, Burton, and the great supporting cast. --Bret Fetzer

The Seattle Times
Intricately plotted, gripping and potently acted

Film.com
Better than anything on American primetime at the moment.

Customer Reviews

THE COMMANDER BASIC SEXUAL AFFAIR AVOIDANCE CLASS 101
Clare Blake, (high praise for Amanda Burton's acting) takes the leadership of the Murder Review Team, but immediately does something that assuredly was in the "Commander Manual" in red lettering, #1 under the "DO NOT DO" list. Blake has a sexual affair with a murder convict just released that she herself had help get convicted. This affair gets publicized and creates a situation interfering with each the the murder investigations for the rest of the four episode, 570 minutes of top-notch murder mystery.

The 4-star rating is due to this UNBELIEVABLE action by the newly appointed Commander Blake. The movie even had the nerve to make this main character a female "BLOND". Would anyone in their right mind, especially the traditional conservative British population, make such a terribly wrong judgment error after a 20-year career of making the right decisions that get you appointed to the top leadership position?

Okay, now, getting beyond that initial event, the rest of the series is on-the-edge-of-your-seat, bewildering intrigue, plots braided together holding thrilling mystery, and 5-stars. Each of the 4 episodes (About 2 1/2 hrs each) have a new primary murder to solve. The MRT actors/actresses remain the same in each, additional cast in introduced related to the complex plots, Blake's affair with Murder Lampton resurfaces, Blake's family situations get involved, and the outcome will not be guessed, until the DVD does the disclosing.

There was the police shooting of a suspect, Cripps, that went awry and covered up for 4 episodes. Blake's blunder with the Lampton affair was further aggravated by her entrapment attempt. Will she never learn? The commander's sister gets cancer at the same time someone hacks into a hospital records system and begins murder blackmail. A special deputy, "Blackdog", is assigned to look into both the Lampton affair and the Cripps shooting. Plenty of police cover-up to go all around. And finally, date rape murders begin appearing with the first London victim being, of course, Commander Blake's goddaughter.

The DVD box warns about graphic scenes and nudity. Plenty of nasty victim scenes, so beware. There is no captioning so "Blackdog's" words are sometimes a bit hard to catch, but the rest is not bad.

Summary: worth watching for murder mystery fans, once you accept the dumb-blond syndrome of the Commander's initial "misjudgment."

The Commander
This is a brilliant series. I couldn't be torn away from it -- I was in its thrall for about 4 days, when I watched all 10 hours of it and couldn't wait to get back to the TV to watch more. The casting, acting, directing, photography are all superb, and the plot is complicated and compelling. My only (slight) reservation is that the last disk is a disappointment. It has nothing to do with the three previous ones, and seems like an add-on. (My inspiration to buy this was an interview that I heard on NPR with its author/producer, Lynda LaPlante, which is available on the internet. I recommend it highly.)

'The Commander'
I highly recommend this boxed set, it is a terrific series. My only complaint is that this US release contains the episode 'Blacklight' & the earlier UK release didn't. so now all of us who bought the UK set have to buy this set also.....not happy Acorn Media