Saving Grace

Rating NR Formats DVD Genre television series Starring Holly Hunter, Leon Rippy, Laura San Giacomo, Lorraine Toussaint, Bailey Chase, Kenny Johnson, Bokeem Woodbine, Gregory Norman Cruz, Dylan Minette Directed by Artie Mandelberg, Guy Ferland, Sergio Mimica-Gezzan Publisher Twentieth-Century Fox

TNT’s immensely popular television series Saving Grace, created by Nancy Miller premiered in 2007. The series is about an Oklahoma City cop named Grace who is given a second chance at life from a very unusual angel sent by God. Grace lives her life freely, doing whatever she wants, from driving drunk to sleeping with married men, and her unique “last chance angel,” a tobacco-chewing redneck named Earl, seems to be the one brought to save her. Grace’s best friend, pathology lab tech Rhetta, has more faith in the existence of this angel and his ability to save her than Grace herself has at first.

This series is a combination of humor, action and emotion, brought together to create a very unique and intriguing show. Star, Academy Award winning actress Holly Hunter, is the perfect woman to portray the snappy, hardcore chick that has fans so excited about Grace. Nancy Miller’s original vision for the series was to portray “a reluctant saint,” but she later revised that to accommodate “an unconvinced sinner,” and that makes all the difference for the show.

The DVD box set of season one hits stores on July 15. The set advertises a plethora of extra footage and bonus features, but the results are less than thrilling. The graphics of the episode choice menus are unique and well-made, but the features are not all that they could be. There is a recap of the first season and an overview of the series both nestled in with the behind-the-scenes featurettes. Five featurettes, including interview footage from Holly Hunter, Leon Rippy, Laura San Giacomo and Executive Producer Gary Randall, are interwoven with each other. The first track, including an “on the set” feature, contains clips from the following interviews, and subsequently each behind-the-scenes featurette contains more clips of the same interviews. For fans who are interested in seeing some unique special features, they may need to look elsewhere. Once the first feature has been watched, there is almost no need to watch the rest. As a bonus, the disk contains a copy of the theme song music video, “Saving Grace” by Everlast. 

New viewers of the series will probably not be disappointed by the unique subject matter of the show and the clever layout of the disks, but an avid viewer and fan of the show might be expecting a little bit more from the special features portion of the disk. In spite of the potential for disappointments with the over-advertised behind-the-scenes features, viewers can expect to see into the lives of the actors a little bit, see what it’s like on the set of the show, and hear first-hand accounts of what it’s like to work together on the show. If nothing else, the interview footage reiterates what regular viewers must already sense: the cast has fantastic chemistry together and gets along great. Since the television series is a must see, the box set’s shortcomings are not worth complaining about.