Blunt Talk series – Season 1, (2016)

by | Sep 19, 2016 | DVD & Blu-ray Video Reviews

A most interesting TV series and a quite different role for Patrick Stewart.

Blunt Talk series – Season 1, (2016)

Cast: Patrick Stewart, Jacki Weaver, Adrian Sarboroght, Richard Lewis
Studio: Starz cable TV/ Anchor Bay ST63694 (8/30/16) (2 discs)
Video: 1.78:1 for 16:9 screens, color
Audio: English DD 5.1
Subtitles: Spanish, English SDH
Extras: Inside the World of Blunt Talk, First Look, Meet the Newsroom, Walter & Harry
Length: TT: 312 min.
Rating: ****

Quite a different sort of role for Stewart. He is a British talking-head/interviewer who wants to be a success on cable news with his guidance on how Americans should love, think and behave. He has a dysfunctional news staff, a recent black ex-wife, children of various ages, and a heavy-drinking devoted butler whose life he saved during the brief Falklands War. And more progressive ideas than most TV personalities. Blunt has plenty of problems with his network boss, his motherly producer-manager and her husband, his crazy staff, and his porn-making neighbor.

I did like the air mattress he kept in his office and when things got really tough he would get his producer-manager (with whom he had an affair 20 years earlier) to spoon with him, and he encouraged his staff members to do the same when things got bad for them. The manservant, Harry, is different from any butler you have seen before, and quite an important part of the whole thing.

The ten episodes are under about 25 minutes each, each disc has five of them, so this must have been a half-hour show. It interested me enough that if I had access to the Starz channel I would look forward to seeing Season Two.

—John Sunier

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