Special Ops: Lioness – Season One [Blu-Ray]

Cast: Zoe Saldaña, Laysla De Oliveira, Nicole Kidman

Release Date: January 23, 2024

A Review By: Kevin Lovell

Disc Rating: 8/10

Synopsis:

SPECIAL OPS: LIONESS, inspired by an actual US Military program, follows the life of Joe (Saldaña) while she attempts to balance her personal and professional life as the tip of the CIA’s spear in the war on terror. The Lioness Program, overseen by Kaitlyn Meade (Kidman) and Donald Westfield (Kelly), enlists an aggressive Marine Raider named Cruz (De Oliveira) to operate undercover alongside Joe among the power brokers of State terrorism in the CIA’s efforts to thwart the next 9/11.

Please Note: Paramount Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this Post. The opinions I share are my own.

THE SERIES/ REVIEW:

Inspired by an actual US military program, ‘Special Ops: Lioness’ accompanies team leader Joe who is great at her career but repeatedly finds her home life with her surgeon husband and two daughters suffering as a result of her job’s demands. Leading women handpicked for infiltrating known terrorists and threats in an effort to stop the next 9/11 before it happens, when her current plant is discovered and the team is forced to bomb the area, Joe eventually selects a woman named Cruz, a massively talented Marine who has impressed everyone commanding her throughout her so-far short military career. After selecting the infiltration target and getting Cruz inside, the team and the new Lioness must both race against time and try to make judgement calls along the way if they hope to avoid the unfortunate results with the last plant.

‘Special Ops: Lioness’ is one of the latest new series from notable writer and creator Taylor Sheridan who also created and wrote (or at least co-wrote) all eight episodes from the debut season. It’s an engaging, tense and at times quite emotional look at the lives lead by the heroes that repeatedly risk everything in order to try and prevent any future terrorist attacks from occurring. Featuring a stellar cast that includes Zoe Saldaña, Laysla De Oliveira, Dave Annable, Michael Kelly, Morgan Freeman, Nicole Kidman and more who each help to make the show stand out as something at least slightly more than the generic military series. Admittedly it may not be extraordinarily original in many ways, but the series does a great job of accomplishing its intention of keeping us engaged and never bored throughout its eight episode debut season, while always making certain that every location, situation and sequence looks gorgeous, right up there with Sheridan’s many other noteworthy projects.

The debut season of ‘Special Ops: Lioness’ delivers an exciting, explosive and at times quite heartfelt new series from the talented Taylor Sheridan who continues to prove himself as one of the biggest and more talented individual’s to impact the world of television in recent years, and for good reason. Fans of Sheridan’s other series will almost surely want to give this one a shot if you haven’t already had the pleasure, as well as those who simply tend to enjoy a solid dramatic thriller of a series that’s capably constructed and filled with plenty of explosive and exciting moments balanced by some character depth. It may not be anything groundbreaking and it plays much of its story out in a largely by the book manner, yet it does so in a way that should also keep viewers glued to the screen and anxiously anticipating what comes next as the season progresses.

OVERALL:

Paramount Home Entertainment brings home Taylor Sheridan’s ‘Special Ops: Lioness – Season One’ in a 3-disc Blu-ray release that features all eight episodes from the show’s debut season with generally solid high definition video and audio presentations on each, spread between three discs which helps allow a sufficient bitrate for each episode to work with. In addition to every episode in the season, the release also features a nice collection of bonus material that includes episodic Featurettes breaking down every episode, along with some other enjoyable Featurettes. If you’re a fan of the series that would like to physically own it in your collection and are already considering a purchase, then you probably won’t have many regrets in purchasing a copy and the Blu-ray release of ‘Special Ops: Lioness – Season One’ is recommended.

VIDEO:

The Blu-ray release of ‘Special Ops: Lioness – Season One’ features a full 1080p High Definition presentation with the show’s original 2.00:1 Aspect Ratio on all of the debut season’s episodes. The video presentations look quite good as a whole and provide generally sharp, clean and well-detailed presentations from start to finish on every included episode. They show good detail and clarity overall with character faces, clothing and the expansive landscapes and interiors looking generally clean and smooth with no notable issues arising throughout. Even though the presentations don’t exactly stand out at all times, they hold up capably and never disappoint. Overall, these are solid high definition video presentations that should largely satisfy the series fans who would like to physically own this one.

AUDIO:

The Blu-ray release features a 5.1 channel Dolby TrueHD soundtrack on all 8 Season One episodes. These multichannel soundtracks deliver clean, crisp and often hard hitting audio presentations throughout that nicely complement the action and intensity onscreen. They consistently utilize all five available channels in order to send gunfire, other action effects and debris, along with some music, crowd chatter and nature elements throughout the various speakers quite regularly, while never resulting in any dialogue or other audio elements that might be occurring simultaneously becoming distorted or rendered problematic in the process. Overall, these are very nice 5.1 Dolby TrueHD soundtracks that hold up well throughout and shouldn’t disappoint.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The Blu-ray release of ‘Special Ops: Lioness – Season One’ features a nice offering of bonus content in the way of various behind the scenes Featurettes that explore bringing the series to life, featuring interviews/comments with the cast and crew, plus behind the scenes footage and more. Included on the release are ‘Special Ops: Lioness – Behind the Story’ episodic Featurettes for each episode (running approximately 52 minutes in length altogether). Also included is ‘Embedded with Special Ops: Lioness’ (running approximately 23 minutes), ‘Battle Forged Calm: Tactics and Training’ (approximately 9 minutes) and ‘Special Ops: Lioness – Inside the Series’ (19 minutes).

*Please note that the above images are taken from the Blu-Ray and resized. They will additionally suffer quality loss as a result of .jpg compression. Larger versions of each image can be viewed by clicking on the image. All images and content included on this Blu-Ray release are the property of their respective owners.

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Disc Rating: 8/10

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‘Special Ops: Lioness – Season One’ is Now Available to Own on Blu-ray & DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment

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