From The Morton Blog

Available Now on Blu-ray: Strike Back: The Complete Fifth Season

By , Contributor
Following what was billed as a "Final Season," the ten-episode Legacy (as it was called in the U.K.), British Sky One has kept Strike Back going with this all-new season. In keeping with the tradition of Strike Back having one of the more confusing roll-outs of any contemporary show, the ten-episodes serve as the sixth season in the U.K. under the title Retribution. For U.S. audiences, it's the fifth season.

At any rate, Cinemax aired the series as the episodes were wrapping up their U.K. broadcast near the beginning of 2018. This marked a nearly three-year break in the U.S. for fans of Strike Back. I'll let the official press materials do the mundane task of summarizing, but it's worth noting that the already barely-there ratings for the series fell further for this latest season.

HBO Home Entertainment's Blu-ray is technically a treat, as per usual with this cinematic-looking series. Though some of the special effects-oriented sequences betray the somewhat limited budget, this is one handsome—albeit gritty—set of visuals to take in. DTS-HD Master Audio surround mixes work like gangbusters on all episodes as well. Really a great presentation all around.

Each of the discs in the three-disc set contains a few modest supplements. The first disc has a pair of mini-featurettes, "Section 20: New Tactics" and "Section 20: New Characters," that include some basic, EPK-style behind-the-scenes material (only three minutes between the two!). Then a pattern of "Declassified" segments is established. Each of the ten episodes has one of this mini-featurettes, with three on disc one (six minutes total), three on disc two (six more minutes), and four on disc three (nine minutes in all).

From the press materials: "Meet the new members of Section 20 with the action-packed Cinemax® hit, Strike Back: The Complete Fifth Season, now available on Blu-ray™ and DVD and Digital Download. Built with the same high-intensity as past seasons, “…Strike Back makes its triumphant return…” (TV Guide), with a new, fierce group of male and female soldiers, including Sergeant Thomas ‘Mac’ McAllister (Warren Brown, The Dark Knight Rises), Sergeant Samuel Wyatt (Daniel MacPherson, Infini), Lance Corporal Gracie Novan (Alin Sumarwatta, Burning Man) and Captain Natalie Reynolds (Roxanne McKee, HBO’s Game of Thrones, Crossfire), to help track down a notorious terrorist after a brutal prison break.

When fanatical terrorist Omair Idrisi escapes from Syrian authorities with plans to launch an unprecedented attack that could change the face of modern warfare, the ensuing manhunt can only be entrusted to counterterrorism’s best and brightest. Enter Section 20 — the elite, multinational, covert special ops team tasked with tracking down Idrisi and his British co-conspirator wife, Jane Lowry.

Their action-packed manhunt will take the unit across North Africa, the Middle East and Europe, from glitterati soirees to underworld cage fights, as they uncover and attempt to dismantle a vast global web of interconnected criminal and terrorist activity.

MJ Bassett returns in Strike Back: The Complete Fifth Season as executive producer and director."
Strike Back S5 BD.jpg

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Chaz Lipp writes for The Morton Report.

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