Sons of Anarchy - Season 1-4 [DVD]

It is possible to watch SOA Season 1 and skip directly to Season 4 without any loss of continuity and with only a marginal loss of character development. Which is a shame. Which is a waste. As the premise offered by the writer is interesting. And the virtual cast of unknowns. As they are unknown, believable.With the exception of Ron Perlman. Not just because he is known. He has never really sold it to me as a character actor and he does not really sell it to me here as 'Clay' Morrow. He is miscast, unconvincing and simply cruising in 'bad ass' mode without any shift in gears. It's a part for which I think he was selected more for his looks and his vogue 'cool' than his ability to portray the complexities of a Machiavellian manipulator. It doesn't work. And I wanted it to work. Because the rest of the cast is excellent.There are several reasons for me selecting just Season 1 and 4 for this review. Firstly, there is a clear loss of focus on the part of the principal writer in the second and third seasons. In 1 and 4, Kurt Sutter keeps a distance from his subject. With the occasional slip, he seldom attempts to portray his characters as the 'good guys'. They are outlaws committing robbery and murder in order to maintain a code and make money in order to support their families and their lifestyles.In much the same way that the superb writing of David Chase's 'The Sopranos' kept it's distance from it's central characters. Despite the portrayal as relatively 'ordinary people' just trying to make a living by committing horrendous acts of betrayal and murder. Chase's writers never let the audience forget who these characters actually are despite making them appear more human if not humane. We as the audience see what each of Tony Soprano's 'extended family' are capable of in their moments of frustration and desperation. Horrifying and humorous, The Sopranos seldom patronises the audience by contriving situations that identify the story of each family member ultimately leading to redemption.SOA toys with the idea of 'family' embodied within the cultural norms and values of SAMCRO. But family here is skewed towards notions of 'brotherhood' amongst a disparate group of men attempting to find a way to work together to achieve a common goal. Where SOA goes wrong particularly in Seasons 2 and 3 is that writer attempts to make the audience sympathetic to the principal characters without building up a sufficient backstory to persuade our sympathies as the audienceCharacter development and backstory is dropped in favour of a default PROBLEM-RIDE SOMEWHERE-SOLVE PROBLEM cycle that becomes repetitive and requires a complete suspension of disbelief. In particular because all the main members of the gang seem to be able to act with impunity while local law enforcement appears powerless and comically misled by a corrupt police chief and the contrived actions of the gangs principal 'old lady'.The results are laughable in some cases. Simply because the writers abandon all restraint and embrace their characters as heroes. Objectivity and focus are lost And it even contains that de facto sequence of the SOA saying goodbye to their old lady's and saddling up to go and do what a man's gotta do.The whole Irish/Child Kidnap section is tedious and cringeworthy. Not helped by the fact that sequences shot on location in Eire are mixed with other sequences clearly shot on location in Northern California. This is idle, unchallenging, 'Mary Sue' or more to the point 'Mark Sue' writing at its most unsatisfying and a good example of how not to write a character to create audience investment.There are many examples to choose from but this is supposed to be a relatively short product review.So with only 3 stars, why should you buy. Well, I'll keep this 'short and sweet' as 'Paulie' Walnuts would say. It's 1 Star each for Seasons 1 and 4 and 1 extra star for coming up with a great premise in the first place. However, as I opened this review. If you can just find a away to buy 1 and 4 you will save yourself some money. And a great deal of time thinking about missed opportunities and what could have made this series truly great.

What a fantastic series this is. Never got round to watching the show while it was on tv, due to working nights at the time. A friend brought it up in conversation a few weeks back and i was hooked by the story he was telling. I bought the 1 - 4 blu ray box set off amazon and was glued to the screen. I couldn't believe how good it was and the acting was excellent. Charlie Hunnam's accent was really good and you wouldn't have known he's the guy in the movie 'Green Street'. I was told that he'd been living in the states for a couple of years before getting the part in this series so maybe that helped with the change of accent. If i have any reason to moan at all then it's the irish accents in series 4. Really false i thought. All in all a great show and can't wait to watch the rest when they drop through my letter-box.

I'm glad i didn't discover Sons of Anarchy until the whole seven seasons had been completed. This is a classic example of box-set marathon TV. The 1st series is the worst of the lot, but it's essential viewing to get you into the characters, if you can get past the poor season 1, you're in for a treat, as the story and characters just continually ramp up. Poorly acted at times, you can look past this, as the characters are so entertaining, you find yourself staying up way later than you should, for just one more episode. Kurt Sutter certainly knows how to create a cliffhanger, and the show is the TV equivalent of a page turner. Plus 4 seasons for 15 quid, complete bargain. got to love Zoverstocks.

Let me tell you that much: S.O.A. is no "Sopranos". SOA had all the ingredients necessary for a successful TV series and I try to enumerate here good actors like Ron Perlman, Katey Sagal, Kim Coates or Mark Boone Jr, a hunk (Charlie Hunnam) and a hottie (Maggie Siff), plenty of drama, love scenes, violence, humour, bullets and machine guns to fill a barn and of course, lots of Harleys but something went wrong in the process. In spite of all the effort made by leading characters, the story itself failed in convincing me, the viewer, that there's much to be seen after only two or maximum three seasons and the problem is only in the script which is flat like the tires of a car forgotten in a scrap yard. The characters refuse to evolve, the story is always repeating and the whole assembly is leaning only on extreme violence and motorcycles, and with such poor foundation a tragedy is imminent. All we have to do is to wait for that "building" to collapse at any given moment and that, my friends, is happening to my not so big surprise after only three seasons... and that's quite unusual to admit for a bike worshiper, builder and rider like myself. I've should've been more enthusiastic about S.O.A. but I'm not. Moses promised to part the Red Sea and to take us to The Promised Land but it failed and that land, my friends, remained far away and unreachable

I had been following the Sons series on television and decided to buy this composite pack of the first 4 seasons.I'm glad I did. The DVDs are neatly packaged inside the box in a sort of page format. As for the DVDs they are all labelled well so you know which one you are watching.You get all the episodes plus loads of deleted scenes, some gag reels, numerous interviews, fans questions answered by the cast plus other gems - Gemma [Katie Segal] singing with a backing band [she's got a great voice] and the guy who sings the title song sings it live too. Another great add on is a feature about the custom bike builds for each character as well as a special raffle to sell off a cool Harley in aid of War Heroes. If you enjoy the weekly TV series, this is definitely for you. Highly recommended.

Super