Keeping Faith Blu-ray Review

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Smartly Written British Mystery Television

A sleepy Welsh town is the setting for Keeping Faith, an involving British thriller with a touch of humanity. The BBC mystery has a simple but engaging premise: A mild-mannered husband disappears one day on his way to work, leaving his wife and young children. When no body turns up, the police turn their eyes on his wife as a possible suspect. The ensuing mystery will ripple through their family and small town with harrowing consequences.

Keeping Faith stars Eve Myles (Torchwood, Broadchurch) as Faith. She’s happily married to Evan and has three young children. Taking a break from the small law firm they own together for maternity leave, Faith is blindsided when Evan disappears. Was their “happy” marriage a facade, or did something happen to Evan out of his control? A seemingly good husband and father, no one knows if Evan is dead or has walked away from his life. It is as if Evan has vanished from the face of the Earth.

Once Faith gets a grip on her situation, she discovers a few things she didn’t know about her husband and his secrets. Like all mysteries, several clues point in different directions to the cause behind Evan’s disappearance. When the lawyer tangles with a detective that has a vendetta against Faith, things go from bad to worse. The more Faith digs for the reasons behind the mysterious disappearance, a greater web of deceit and corruption in the small town comes to light. We learn Evan kept troubling secrets of his own from Faith.

… the mystery unfolds in neatly unpredictable ways that adds an air of intrigue

Keeping Faith has a stellar cast, led by Eve Myles. The town has a whole host of vividly sketched characters, from sleazy ex-cons to the hard-as-nails lawyer that works for Faith’s firm. Running eight episodes, the storytelling builds the mystery around Faith’s investigation into Evan’s disappearance as she balances work and children. Coming out of maternity leave, she has to keep their struggling law firm afloat while fending off detectives that think she may have been involved in the disappearance.

Creator Matthew Hall has crafted a taut mystery that goes far beyond its simple premise. The Welsh setting is perfect, adding a touch of mystique to the proper British mystery formula. Keeping Faith is an excellent female-driven BBC series. It’s light on real action and suspense if you are looking for a dark thriller. However, the mystery unfolds in neatly unpredictable ways that adds an air of intrigue. These aren’t problems considering its striking cinematography, engaging score and outstanding production values.

Video

RLJ Entertainment distributes Keeping Faith for Acorn Media. The 2017 BBC co-production arrives on Blu-ray with all eight episodes spread over three BD-50s. Each episodes runs about an hour, transparently encoded in strong AVC averaging around 25 Mbps.

There is a lot of eye candy here for a British mystery. The fantastic production values and scenic Welsh cinematography produce pristine 1080P video. It is presented at the usual 1.78:1 aspect ratio so common to modern television.

Keeping Faith has impeccably clean picture quality with excellent black levels and contrast. The consistent dimensionality and depth are theatrical in scope. Close-ups reveal the razor-sharp clarity expected of top-notch Blu-rays.

This is a perfect digital transfer with a fairly neutral color palette. Flesh-tones haven’t been pushed towards a specific color. Most remarkable is how consistent and even Keeping Faith’s video remains under different lighting conditions.

Audio

Keeping Faith’s 5.1 English DTS-HD MA soundtrack offers an engaging score in clean, crisp fidelity. The surround mix is largely used for ambient support. It lacks the dramatic immersion and discrete sound cues of theatrical films.

The mix has nice dynamic range without overwhelming the fairly intelligible dialogue. Keeping Faith is a television production and its limited surround mix sounds like other British productions on home video.

Optional English SDH subtitles play in a white font.

Extras

Acorn Media is usually pretty good about including supplemental content for their British shows. Creator and head writer Matthew Hall goes behind the scenes in a series of featurettes that delve into the Welsh production. Most of the cast are featured in the interview clips. The featurettes reveal the interesting production background for Keeping Faith. The cast performed each scene twice, once in English and once in Welsh.

The three-disc set comes with a slipcover.

Character Introductions (04:35 in HD) – Eve Myles, Mark Lewis Jones, Matthew Gravelle, Hannah Daniel and Aneirin Hughes briefly discuss the characters they play. Each actor recaps what their character is going through in the story.

Behind The Scenes Featurettes (44:37 in HD) – A series of featurettes strung together that all focus on different aspects of the production. This is padded with footage from the set and interview clips from most everyone in the show. Creator Matthew Hall and a producer provide the best insight into Keeping Faith’s bi-lingual production, as it was made in both English and Welsh. The cast was consciously picked that could speak both languages.

Trailers – Lochness (01:05 in HD), Acceptable Risk (01:05 in HD), and a promo for Acorn TV (00:31 in HD) play before the main menu of the first disc.

Full disclosure: This Blu-ray release was provided to us for review by the studio. For information on how we handle all review material, please visit our about us page to learn more about DoBlu’s editorial policies.

The 15 images below have been taken directly from the Blu-ray in unaltered form. For an additional 16 Keeping Faith screenshots, early access to all screens (plus the 15,000+ already in our library) in full resolution, dozens of exclusive 4K UHD reviews and more goodies, support us on Patreon.