Sea Patrol - The Complete Second Season - DVD

Content: The HMS Hammersley and her 21 crew members set sail again to keep law and order on Australia's Gold Coast in thirteen new episodes. This time, Captain Mike Flynn (Ian Stenlake) and his crew face illegal arms dealers, dangerous poisonous snakes, shark hunters, bloody riots in the Samaru Islands, ruthless pirates and even bird flu. In addition, individual members of the crew repeatedly find themselves in grave danger, such as when Robert (Kristian Schmid) is framed for murder, Bomber (Kirsty Lee Allan) and Spider (Jay Ryan) go overboard, or when Kate (Lisa McCune) and Nikki (Saskia Burmeister) are captured during a salvage operation by illegal immigrants. And clandestine relationships, dicey rescues and mysterious deaths also keep the crew on their toes...

Sea Patrol kicks off its new season with a little more action than usual. Even the new opening credits make it clear that the new adventures will be even more explosive than those of the first season. And also the conflict on the Samaru Islands, which is taken up again and again in the course of the season, gives the new episodes many exciting moments. And yet, once again, the individual characters and the connections between the crew members are always at the center of the action. Thus, the series succeeds in making the viewer grow fond of the characters quite quickly, which in turn significantly increases the fun factor of the series.

The fact that a lot is done here with clichés, rather template-like drawn characters and not always particularly profound dialogues, is thus also less heavy weight. It is simply fun to follow the hustle and bustle on board the Australian patrol boat, to admire the beautiful scenery of Australia's Gold Coast and to be entertained by the simply knitted and with humor and suspense peppered stories.

Positively, it is noticeable that the series, although it follows a consistent line, not rigidly stuck in a certain framework, but that plot and characters quite develop in the course of the episodes. Although no real profundity should be expected here, the series clearly benefits from the fact that the creators try again and again to give their stories and characters corners and edges and not just let them tread water.

So if you already liked the first season of Sea Patrol and are generally interested in well-made TV suspense with beautiful images and sympathetic characters, you can also confidently access this second DVD box. Recommendable!

Picture + Sound: Nothing has changed in the quality of image and sound compared to the first season. Once again, the coherent color scheme is particularly noticeable, through which the sea and the picturesque strands are well accentuated. Otherwise, sharpness, matching of contrasts and cleanliness of the image are again at a good TV level. The stereo sound reproduces dialogue with good intelligibility, and ambient sounds and music are unspectacular but coherently mixed. Good!

Extras: Bonus material is unfortunately also not included on this set.

Conclusion: Sea Patrol remains true to its course taken in season 1. Although the creators focused a little more on action, the characters and interpersonal relationships are still the focus of the stories. However, this does not make the series less exciting than comparable US goods. Because the individual episodes as well as the overarching storyline always offer enough suspense, action, humor and drama to entertain the viewer. So if you already liked the first season, you can confidently access here again, even if this box again has no extras to offer. Recommendable

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp