Angel - Season Four
As the fourth season ofAngelstarts, everything is still as we left it: Angel has been sunk to the bottom of the sea in an iron box by his inexplicable and vindictive son Connor and Cordelia has been summoned to higher realms to await orders. Gunn and Fred are left in the Hyperion Hotel, unsure about what has happened to their friends, and Lilah is working hard to seduce Wesley to the dark side. In the first few episodes, some of this is resolved but it's almost immediately replaced by far worse crises: prophesies of doom accumulate more rapidly even than usual in this wonderfully gloomy show and a horned rock-like beast rains fire on Los Angeles. This last year isAngel's most tightly dramatic season yet--with a story arc of surprising intensity punctuated by the show's usual wit and sexiness.Season 4 is presented on DVD in Dolby 2.0 Surround Sound and anamorphic widescreen. It comes with insightful, and often hilarious, commentaries on seven of the 22 episodes as well as featurettes--a series overview, profiles of the characters of Jasmine and the Beast, a farewell to the Hyperion Hotel (the characters' base for three seasons), and a discussion of the apocalypse that Angel has to deal with from episode 7 onwards).--Roz Kaveney