Upcoming Spy DVDs: Strike Back, American Style, This August

TV Shows On DVD reports that the first U.S. season of Strike Back will finally hit DVD and Blu-ray in North America on August 7. The excellent true first season of Strike Back (reviewed here), produced for the UK's Sky satellite network, never aired in America. But the show that ended up on Cinemax, that American viewers know as the first season of Strike Back, functioned as Season Two of the series in Britain. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray there last fall as Strike Back: Project Dawn. While the superior original series still has yet to be seen here, HBO Video has come up with a pretty good, not too confusing way of labeling their release: Strike Back: Cinemax Season One. I really hope that down the road they also give U.S. viewers a chance to see the "UK Season One" or however they decide to label it, but for now this isn't a bad consolation prize. (Spy fans with all-region players can get the Region 2 DVD of the original show fairly cheaply from Amazon.) I only saw the first two episodes of the Cinemax version (reviewed here) during the cable channel's free preview weekend, but they were packed with fun, exciting, over-the-top spy action of a sort rarely seen on American television, and I'm very much looking forward to following the rest of the adventures of Section 20 operatives Stonebridge and Scott (Philip Winchester and Sullivan Stapleton) on home video. The violent hunt for an elusive terrorist mastermind named Latif takes the two agents around the world to locations including New Delhi, Capetown and Darfur. There's a standard DVD version and a Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy combo pack to choose from, retailing for $49.98 and $59.96 respectively. Both versions include audio commentaries.