The Dead Zone The Complete Season Three (Region 4 DVD Review)

Johnny Smith has been leading an idyllic small-town life. Employed as a science teacher, Johnny takes great pleasure in showing his young students the wonders of the natural world. He is also newly-engaged to a loving fiancée named Sarah, a fellow teacher he's known since childhood, and is a good son to his widowed mother, who lives nearby. Johnny's life is nearly perfect - until the day his life is interrupted by a near-fatal car crash that leaves him in a deep coma.

Six years later, Johnny finally regains consciousness and discovers that life as he once knew it has completely changed. His mother has passed away, and Sarah has gone on to marry someone else - and now has a son. But Johnny himself is also not the same person he once was: he now finds himself in possession of amazing psychic powers which allow him to see into the lives of anyone he touches.

Now, as Johnny attempts to reacquaint himself with a life he has been away from for six long years, he must also begin a quest to come to terms with his new abilities - abilities that may turn out to be both a blessing and a curse.

Helping Johnny make a fresh start are his physical trainer Bruce, who also becomes a close friend; his mother's priest, Gene Purdy, who sets up a trust fund for Johnny but may not be looking out for Johnny's best interests; and Sarah, who must find a way to make Johnny a part of her life again without risking her relationship with her husband and son.

Something of a pet project for star Anthony Michael Hall (the former 1980's Brat Pack actor) who co-produced and sometimes directed episodes. By this third season The Dead Zone has left behind the original Stephen King source novel and watching it again now you can see how it has influenced later shows such as Medium. Despite occasionally over reaching itself with it own cleverness (in some of the many visions Johnny experiences he interacts with his own past self and you sometimes end up wondering what on earth is going on).

Each episode has a good mix of the fantastical (with a vision of the week type scenario) and the personal with Johnny trying to put the pieces of his life back together. On top of all that is the scary central theme of the series with Johnny discovering that Armageddon is on its way and he holds the key to preventing it.

I'd never seen the series before but was easily pulled into its intriguing storylines and atmospheric performances which perfectly suit the style of the show. Worth checking out.

No extras unfortunately.