Quarry

Long before HBO owned prime time TV with their visceral and addictive reworking of George RR Martin’s Game Of Thrones books, they had a reputation for groundbreaking drama. Whether Sex In The City, The Wire, or Bored To Death pushed your buttons, the result was the same. Gripping TV and boxset binging.

This month Season 1 of the HBO series Quarry, loosely based on the novels by Max Allan Collins, comes to DVD and Blu-ray and the talk is already about the show being The Next Big Thing.

Set in and around Memphis during the early 1970s, Quarry centres on the character of Mac Conway (Logan Marshall-Green), a Marine recent returned home from a second tour of duty in Vietnam. With his relationship with his wife Joni growing tenuous, Mac finds himself tempted by a lucrative offer from The Broker, a shady criminal involved in a network of killing and corruption that spans the length of the Mississippi River. After a series of events Mac – whom The Broker codenames Quarry – finds himself conscripted into The Broker’s crew with dire consequences for both himself and Joni.

Other cast members include Nikki Amuka-Bird (Luther) as Ruth, a hardworking mother who is Joni’s close friend; Damon Herriman (Justified) as Buddy; Edoardo Ballerini as Karl, and Mustafa Shakir as Moses.

Quarry: The Complete First Season will be available to own on Blu-ray^TM (£29.99) and DVD (£34.99) this week, packed with bonus content including more than two dozen deleted scenes and new footage of interviews in which Mac and his comrades testify to the events that led up to their discharge from the Marines.

With compelling characters, a hard-hitting social message, and a to-die-for soundtrack, Quarry is classy and watchable as hell.