Project Blue Book: Season One (Blu-ray) review

[David Vaughn]

Studio: Lions Gate
Release Date: April 9, 2019
Rating: PG-13
Film: 2.5/5

Plot
A brilliant college professor, Dr. J. Allen Hynek (Aidan Gillen) is recruited by the U.S. Air Force to spearhead a clandestine operation, code-named Project Blue Book, which investigates UFO sightings and alleged extraterrestrial encounters. Each episode draws from those actual case files, blending UFO theories with authentic historical events from one of the most mysterious eras in United States history. Throughout the season, documented occurrences will be explored, including the Gorman Dogfight of Fargo, North Dakota; the Flatwoods Monster incident of Flatwoods, West Virginia; and the Lubbock Lights of Lubbock, Texas, as well as many others. Project Blue Book ultimately investigated more than 12,000 UFO cases, over 700 of which remain unsolved to this day.

My Thoughts
The plot line intrigued me enough to request this to review, but it didn’t meet my expectations. I really like Gillen’s work on Game of Thrones and found his performance to be good, but not great, mostly due to the pedestrian writing. There’s a side plot of Soviet spies that comes into play and the investigations that Hynek goes on are a bit formulaic and the show becomes uninteresting. Maybe this is the type of show that doesn’t binge watch well and needs a break between episodes?

The A/V quality is a bit disappointing. First, ten episodes are crammed onto one disc, which is asking a lot. The result is some occasional banding that pops up in backgrounds and skies. Detail is decent enough but not anything to write home about. My bigger complaint is the Dolby 2.0 audio. Seriously? This is 2019 and at the least it should be 5.1! At times the dialog gets muffled by the surrounding environments, which isn’t good for a dramatic show.

Video 3.5/5

Audio 3/5 (Dolby Digital 2.0)

Special Features:

• 10 Full Length Episodes
• Digital Copy

Conclusion
I ultimately found this to be a disappointment. It’s not horrible, but there’s far better shows on TV to waste away the hours with. If you’re an X-Files fan, you may enjoy this type of story more than I did and it may be worth a look to you. 

[flyinion]

I watched this on History as it aired.  Yeah it definitely does better as a watch an episode a week thing.  Some were good and some were meh.  That's a big disappointment about the sound because it aired in 5.1 and sounded quite good considering it was Comcast vs a disc.