Zen Region-1 DVD

[kissmekate]

Have loads of fun, Meg!

[kygal]

No comments KMK. Just that its a new release, and the pic of the dvd.

Bet I know what Meg will be doing over the next day or so. Have fun!

[kissmekate]

Nice little mention of the DVD:

I haven't caught up with this new mystery series. But friends who gobble up those shows on PBS and the like say this adaptation of the best-selling novels about Italian detective Aurelio Zen are top-notch and a great fit for actor Rufus Sewell. They know what they're talking about so I'm looking forward to watching these three tv movie-length episodes.
www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-giltz/dvds-cults-in-the-making_b_925097.html

And this one obviously needs his eyes examined:

and Rufus Sewell never had enough charm to convince me that he was Italian or had even engaged in the Italian lifestyle the way someone like George Clooney could.


veryaware.com/2011/08/blu-ray-review-zen-vendetta-cabal-ratking/

[rueful]

The first review was very nice; the reviews have been so routinely good here in the US, and I hope something comes of it. Thanks for posting it, Kate! And I guess it's always good to have a little balance, so thanks for posting the other one too, even though it was clearly written by a male with an envy problem.

[kissmekate]

Another nice review here. No special attention for Rufus, but lots of praise for the whole series. Loved the headline!

It's a pity there are only three episodes of Zen

Setting an English-language show in a non-English country raises an inevitable question: Should the actors speak in the accents of that country? The producers of the BBC series Zen (2011) decided against it.

Rufus Sewell plays Aurelio Zen, a Venetian police detective working out of Rome. Sewell is British; so are most of the other main actors. A few are not British, including Zen’s budding love interest, Tania Moretti (Caterina Murino), and Zen’s mother (an ageless Catherine Spaak), with whom the policeman has lived since the breakup of his marriage.

So Zen’s accent is radically different from those of his mother, his lover-to-be and all the Italians chattering in the background. (The series is shot on location in Rome, which, as one crewmember says with a wry smile, “is not constructed for film crews.”)

Never mind. It’s less distancing than hearing fake accents bounce off real ones, and the series is so gripping that it becomes a non-issue. If you want to hear further rationalizations for the choice, the producers discuss it in a 30-minute making-of segment on this week’s DVD, Zen, which contains the first three 90-minute Zen mysteries: Vendetta, Cabal and Ratking.

Based on Michael Dibdin’s novels and fresh from their airing on the PBS series Masterpiece Mystery!, these TV movies take place in a world of grinding bureaucracy and institutionalized corruption –nobody’s motives are pure, including the hero’s. Still, judged against the competition, Zen is a saint. He believes in jailing the guilty rather than the innocent, a notion that causes him particular grief in Vendetta when two sets of superiors give him totally incompatible marching orders.

The other characters talk about his bull-headedness all the time. An official who meets him in a parking garage refers to Zen’s “hard-earned and unfortunate reputation for honesty.” His immediate superior tells him to learn to get along: “Compromise isn’t always dishonesty. Flexibility isn’t always corruption.” A colleague says, “It’s all a game, Zen. You just don’t know how to play it.”

One of the delights of the series is that, for all his “unfortunate” honesty, Zen is capable of playing the game in ways the others don’t suspect. There is a lightness of tone to the episodes, even when the dangers are real and violence is imminent. The producers say they had Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest and the 1960s TV series The Saint in mind. With its ingenious plotting and sophisticated dialogue, Zen stands in that class.

[Petruchio - Good God]

got this US-DVD today....

[kissmekate]

Nice cover!

[kissmekate]

Just found yet another beautiful review:

In the past few years, I have fallen in love with BBC programming. Doctor Who and Being Human have remained consistently good, and new shows like Sherlock and Jekyll have continued that tradition of excellence. Now, BBC has taken on Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen series, adapting Ratking, Vendetta, and Cabal into a 3-episode mini-series. Did the series live up to the impossibly high standard set by the BBC? BBC's Zen might have gotten off to a slow start, but ultimately the show succeeds thanks to Rufus Sewell's outstanding performance, his sizzling chemistry with Caterina Murino, and some very clever plot twists.

Aurelio Zen (Rufus Sewell, Pillars of the Earth) is an honest detective who is trying to stay an honest detective in the corrupt Italian police force. His colleagues are more interested in the office betting pool over who will nail the new secretary Tania (Caterina Murino) first than they are about actually solving crimes. He is separated from his wife, and it is implied that she slept around with several of Zen's friends. To make matters worse, the prime minister has noticed Zen's inscrutable record and wants to use it to his advantage. The prime minister's trusted adviser Amedeo Colonna (Ben Miles) tracks down Zen and asks him to cover up any embarrassing links between a recent crime and the prime minister. While Zen doesn't like the idea of burying evidence or framing an innocent person, he discovers that he can be a good detective, solve the case, and keep the Italian government off his back. His secret is simple: he pays attention to the case, not the office or government politics.

Partway into the first episode, titled Vendetta, I really didn't know if I would like Zen. I had loved Rufus Sewell's performance in Pillars of the Earth and hoped that this show could be a good vehicle for him as a leading man. Still, the pacing was a bit too slow for my tastes, and I didn't think they had developed Sewell any more than any of the detectives on Law and Order or the CSI spin-offs. He was an honest cop who did the right thing, and I figured that the show would continue to be a crime-of-the-week show instead of one with an overarching plot.

Even with my complaints about the first episode, though, there was a lot working in Zen's favor that made me want to keep watching. First, I thought Rufus Sewell's performance elevated the material given to him, so when the plot struggled to keep my interest, I had fun watching Sewell. This leads me to the other big draw of Zen which is the chemistry between Sewell and his co-star Caterino Murino. Murino plays Tania as confident in her work life as she deals with being one of the few women in a male-dominated workplace, but at the same time she is incredibly vulnerable in her personal life. She is looking for the right moment to leave her controlling and abusive husband, and she is learning how to be single again. One minute, she will smile at Zen and whisper, “Are we going to have an affair?” The next minute, she is doubting herself, Zen, and the relationship. She is lovely and so smart but also damaged, and it is easy to see why Zen would fall in love with her. Again, Murino's performance is a bright spot in the first episode.

After the first episode, however, I think the writers and producers behind Zen realized what worked and did not work and made the second episode Cabal better. The story was still a slow-burn mystery, but the pacing was tightened up and the writers introduced a plot-line that could easily continue into a second or third season. I also have to give credit to the writers and Rufus Sewell for making Zen into such a great character. One of the recent trends in TV is to write leading characters that are extremely flawed, and while I do not dislike this trend (Dexter, Nurse Jackie), I admire the show's creators for making a character that sticks to his principles and still remains fascinating and unpredictable.

BBC's Zen did not get off to a perfect start by any means, but I have no qualms about recommending the series. Fans of BBC programming will enjoy the show's performances and intriguing through-line between the second and third episode. I'm sure fans of the book series will also be excited to see a beloved character come to life, and for those who just love a good mystery, there are few shows on TV that will deliver the goods quite like Zen.

www.justpressplay.net/reviews/8371-zen-vendetta-cabal-ratking.html