Official Synopsis:
Did you ever have a day so bad you couldn’t wait to get past it? The kind of day where nothing goes your way, and everything turns out wrong. What would happen if you couldn’t put this day behind you … literally? Today Detective Brett Hopper will be accused of shooting Assistant District Attorney Alberto Garza. He will offer his rock solid alibi. He will realize he’s been framed. And he will run. Then he will wake up and start the day over again. This time he’ll do it differently – and will continue to – until he finds out who’s framing him, gets his gang witness to court to testify, and until he saves the lives of his loved ones. Hopper has only one advantage in his favor – he remembers everything he did the “day prior” that didn’t work. It’s a painful way to learn because he also carries the bruises and battle scars from every mistake –filled day.

  
Our Take:
Looking back now, I suppose that a weekly action/adventure/suspense series based on the same premise as Groundhog Day is kind of a tough sell. That’s the only reason I can imagine that Day Break didn’t fare better in the ratings, even though it debuted right after then red-hot Lost, because I’ve got to tell you, this show is amazing. If I had even watched a single episode of it when it first aired, I would have been completely hooked. I guess that I (like so many other people, apparently) just thought that the same-day-over-and-over-again gimmick would wear thin in a weekly series. I mean, how many seasons could you run a show like that? It seems as if the plan was to kind of take a 24-like approach, where each season would be resolved at the end, and then a new day would start to repeat for Hopper. Would it have worked over multiple seasons? I don’t know, but it sure as heck works here. It’s unclear what the producers had planned for later seasons, but I can tell you that the first season of Day Break is one hell of a ride.

The premise is simple: detective Brett Hopper wakes up one morning to find that he’s been framed for the murder of a district attorney and his girlfriend has been killed as part of a conspiracy to keep him fingered for the crime. His day gets progressively worse and worse until he awakens the next morning and it’s the same day all over again. What works well here is that while, yes, a few details are the same each day, Hopper takes things in vastly different directions each day in his attempt to solve the mystery of who’s framing him and save his girlfriend’s life. It’s a lot less repetitive than you might think from the set-up, and it’s completely engrossing and captivating.

What else works for the show is that it is filled with great action scenes and slick editing. I can’t help but think that movie director Rob Bowman, who helms some of the episodes, might have had a hand in that. One of the biggest surprises, though, is Taye Diggs, who not only can totally carry a show on his own, but is quite a bad ass as Hopper. He’s got a terrific supporting cast, too, which includes Adam Baldwin, Jonathan Banks, Moon Bloodgood, and Victoria Pratt.

Day Break: The Complete Series includes every episode of the show that was produced, meaning that those fans who did watch the show will finally get to see the seven episodes that were never aired. In addition, there are some decent extra features.

* Commentaries - On all 13 episodes with cast and crew, including Taye Diggs, who was a producer on the show as well as starring in it.
* Cast and Crew Interviews.
* Photo Gallery.

It’s too bad that Day Break didn’t fare better on television. Like other high concept shows such as Prison Break, it might have worn thin very quickly, but I certainly would have liked the chance to see what would have happened with it. As it is, Day Break: The Complete Series is a perfect little slice of suspenseful, action-packed genre television.

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Overall Picture:
Show: A
DVD: B-

- Mike Spring
Editor