Gangland: The Final Season lands on Blu-Ray March 29th ending The History Channels series about gangs in general leaving a lasting impression of gang violence, gang loyalty, and just how much of a problem they are in the United States. To add to the fear inducing episodes you get a Most Notorious episode hosted by Ice-T and Snoop Dogg (never mind that the packaging spells his stage name wrong). While the show manages to capture a surface image that we all know from films and television with the aid of gang bangers current and retired the show ultimately fails to offer us anything that might equal substance other then the usual precautionary tales. To make matters worse the narrator for the show, in some episodes, manages to make the whole thing seem a bit off. I think the show would have been better off had it been narrated by risen celebrities or former gangsters of whatever ethnicity the gangs were tied to. Having the same professional narrator for each episode made it seem less genuine. Still, the show managed a good seven season run and probably could have gone on much longer if History had decided it would so who am I to knock it.

QUALITY:
When I see releases from History Channel, Discovery Channel, or Travel Channel flying under the HD banner I tend to lower my expectations. If you watch shows on these channels, especially their respective HD channels, you’ve seen the extent of their quality and you’d know that these documented shows usually have a mish mash of video quality anyway. You’ve got your proper HD camera footage, your decent quality archives, your not so good quality stock footage, and your superior animated segments (none to be found here). Gangland sports some pretty fantastic looking HD shots that you can easily tell were shot for that purpose. Some street shots and interviews showcase the 1080i quality picture falling victim to slight grain and a few shots where black levels seem off a bit, but for the most part these are the best looking shots in the series and they work well. Archive shots degrade the quality of the picture using shots from news footage to CCTV camera’s in prison yards.  As poor as they look in contrast with the HD stuff you have to remember that they are there for aspect purposes to give you a first hand look at the violence. You get what you always get with documentary type television releases and as a complete package Gangland manages to use its good and not so good footage in a collage of facts to further envelope you into the violent and deadly world of gangs.

Audio comes at you with a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 which handles the mostly dialogue driven feature extremely well. It also manages to offer up some pretty good sound effects where bullets are concerned. The show has many scenes where guns are being fired, somebody is being stabbed or beaten with a bat or hammer. The sound effects really manage to make quite an impression. Overall for what it is the audio on this disc manages to provide you with a nice atmospheric element that will pull at your nerves.

BONUS FEATURES:
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