I had watched The Commander on Netflix before which contained all of Series 1 and I have to be honest and come straight out and say I didn’t like it that much. I didn’t even bother looking for the one and only episode arc that makes up Series 2, which is unavailable at Netflix. Amanda Burton’s Clare Blake was a completely fallible character that doesn’t seem to have any know how and is plagued with making mistake after mistake. Basically she’s over her head through the entirety of the shows existence. I had to muster up a lot of hope that this chapter in the shows existence was going to be a little bit better then the last.

Set 2 Contains all of Series 3 and 4 and when the show begins were introduced to DCI Doug James (Mark Lewis Jones). The case might feature Amanda Burton on the cover but make no doubts about it, the show belongs to Mark Lewis Jones, and honestly, that for me was an awesome plus. Jones is a freight train off it’s rails in the same way that Philip Glenister portrayed his Gene Hunt character on Life On Mars. DCI Doug James is a take no prisoners type of cop who often times has his blood way up and is portrayed as a loose cannon of sorts. I absolutely loved this character and wonder why he wasn’t given his own show seeing as how every episode was about him. So where was Commander Claire Blake? Oh she was around but hardly more then a background character at best. It kind of makes it a moot point to have even mentioned in the IMDB synopsis of the show that “She has risen to the top of her profession in a male-dominated police service.” The show is just horrible as every new episode finds Blake drowning in controversy and failing to get the job done on her own terms. I give the show credit for realizing that Burton’s character just wasn’t cutting it, a tad bit too late if you ask me, and putting the focus on DCI Doug James. I give the show credit for offering up some really great writing in this series. I do think whoever was running the show did the series a real disservice though by making Claire Banks so easy to dislike.

Bonus features include:
Text introduction by Lynda La Plante, Amanda Burton biography and flexography, and Lynda La Plante biography.