The Show
Weir’s Way was written and presented by Tom Weir (1914–2006), a Scotsman with a passion for walking all over Scotland, exploring the countryside, its history, and meeting its people. He wrote several books on the subject matter, and his TV show, Weir’s Way, ran for some two decades. His dedication and interest in his own country is commendable, and it’s this genuine enthusiasm and interest that makes Weir’s Way as authentic of a documentary show as you will find.
In this first Set, viewers get the following episodes:
-Eriskay
-Lerwick and Noss Island
-North East Scotland
-The Rough Bounds
-The Seven Men
-Roman Village
-Inchcailloch
-Glen Affric
Combined, the episodes run for 204 minutes. In each episode, Tom Weir is filmed hiking into towns, up hills, and to the shores of islands. The camera also captures many of these impressive visuals — the rolling hills, shore side mountains with hundreds of birds, and humble villages. Weir does much of the talking, but he also spends a considerable amount of time meeting and talking with the locales, giving them plenty of time to voice their thoughts. The people he interviews are average age, young, and old, and he spends a significant amount of time with them usually, getting their take on Scottish lore and history in the area where the show is currently focusing on.
DVD Presentation Quality, Extras
In terms of presentation quality, this release is straight-forward and, to the best of my knowledge, makes no attempt to remaster or upscale the video or audio. As such, expect a full frame image with acceptable TV picture quality from the 70s/80s with stereo sound. The technical quality is what you’d expect, and it’s really quite sufficient. The beautiful views of Scotland may not get their due here, but in considering the entire package as a whole, the presentation quality is what it should be.
There are no extra features in this release, which is a bit of a letdown, but ultimately not very surprising. This is a niche release, no doubt about it, so the target audience isn’t likely to mind the lack of extra features; they’re going to be pleased with just having this great old Scot show on DVD. That said, some kind of biography of Weir, or maybe a still image gallery of Scotland’s countryside taken from the episodes, or something along those lines would have spruced this release right up. As it stands, given the lack of extras and untouched picture and sound, this is just a very straight-forward move to DVD.
To the summary…