Review of Van Der Valk: Series 1 Part 3 Of 4

Introduction

Allegedly part 3 of series 1, sources can reveal that these are actually the first three episodes of Van Der Valk, series 2.

Based on a series of novels by Nicholas Freeling, Van Der Valk featured a large number of English actors in Amsterdam, pretending to be Dutch :)

This Disc features the episodes "", "" and "".

Video

The quality of this cult classic has suffered somewhat over the years. The outdoor, location footage is extremely flat and lifeless and the studio, video footage looks extremely false. The two formats are noticeably different and both suffer from different problems.

The studio footage has survived best (oddly) and is fairly clean but has that 70`s TV series look to it which, together with some wooden acting makes for odd viewing.

The outdoor scenes are, in some cases quite dirty and soft. There was also some evidence of compression artefacting in fast-moving scenes.

Audio

The sound is mono and is acceptable. Dialogue is recognizable and clear, if a little muddy at times.

Oddly, the Dutch people seem to gesture a lot and not say much. For example in the first episode when two policeman come across a bloke in a car and wave at each other a lot without saying a word!

The theme tune is probably the best bit :)

Features

As for features, we get a "photo gallery" containing 6 stills and some brief information about each episode (title, when it was aired, a brief description and a cast list)

Conclusion

If you are one of the cult followers of Van Der Valk then this would interest you. Quality is about on par with what you`d expect for the era (1973) and it`s nice to see that, other than the types of cars, Amsterdam has hardly changed.

I must admit to finding these quite watchable, more so that I expected......