The Season 1 DVD set for ABC’s recently departed TV series Red Widow hits stores on Tuesday, May 28. The set contains all eight episodes of the series, which starred Radha Mitchell as Marta Walraven, a woman born into the world of the Russian mob who thought she had left that world behind until her husband is killed in the series pilot… making her the titular “Red Widow.”
Like almost all on this past season’s new midseason launches not called The Following, Red Widow was largely overlooked in a crowded TV landscape. The show’s scheduling — which included a nearly month long break between Episodes 6 and 7 — couldn’t have done the show any favors. It seemed like Red Widow was gone as fast as it came.
Fortunately, a DVD set can put it all together… or, at least, what we were able to get. The ABC Studios DVD set, in addition to the 8 episodes, includes a featurette with show creator Melissa Rosenberg and the series’ writing team behind the scenes of the season finale, deleted scenes, and bloopers. It’s a treat to see Rosenberg, who is one of the most interesting executive producers in the business, talking about the show, and I’m pretty sure of any executive producers I’ve ever had the opportunity to meet or interview myself, she’s one of those that I think would be the most fun to work with. Among other things, she talks about the challenges with different characters and stories, and I think it’s rare to see writers who can examine the characters in a public setting like that, right there on a DVD set.
The Behind The Scenes featurette also takes a look at the show’s communication with the Vancouver crew of the show, which includes Rosenberg seeing the “other half of the creative process,” including the actors and the directors, up north. This is very well produced, and adds to the enjoyment value of the set.
The disc art and packaging have a classy look and the DVD menus evoke the show’s San Francisco-adjacent settings by showing off the Golden Gate Bridge. The sound and picture are fantastic considering this is a DVD release and not Blu-ray.
In addition to Radha Mitchell as Marta, the series features several other familiar faces in the cast, including Lee Tergesen as Mike Tomlin, Rade Serbedzija as Andrei Petrov, Goran Visnjic as Nicholae Schiller, Clifton Collins Jr. as Agent Ramos, Sterling Beaumon and Erin Moriarty as Marta’s kids, and even Anson Mount as Marta’s ill-fated husband. Some good stuff.
Fans of this short-lived series will, of course, like this set. The episodes look good, and if you’re looking for something new that you might not have gotten to see the first time around, you can find an intriguing show with some beautiful locations and some nice casting choices. A show like Red Widow might have ultimately worked out better on cable, and the show may have had trouble grabbing people to begin with, but, we got what we got. Me? I’m just thankful, at least, that we got a DVD set at all, so that the series can be archived and kept for new people to discover. It’s not a perfect series by any means, but, it is something that might be good for a long afternoon of marathon viewing… and, as I pointed out, the extras showing off the production process make the set even better. I will warn: The show does end on a little bit of a cliffhanger, but it is not distracting enough that it would take from the overall experience of enjoying the 8 episodes as a complete piece.
