Lives were upended-and some co-opted-in the fifth and final season of Angel, as the denizens of Angel Investigations found themselves taking on one of their scariest endeavors ever: corporate life. After making a literal deal with the devil (or something distinctly devil-like), Angel (David Boreanaz) moved his team from their crumbling hotel to the high-rise digs of law-firm-from-hell Wolfram & Hart, his reasoning being they could better fight the forces of evil from the inside, and with more resources to boot. Clever maneuvering or easy rationalization? A few members of Angel's team accused him of selling out (as did a number of viewers), but as with most of the show's previous four seasons, Angel somehow took a dubious premise and mined it for gold. And with one core cast member gone (Charisma Carpenter, whose Cordelia was immersed in a deep coma), it seemed as if the show, from within and without, would suddenly fall apart-that is, until Angel's longtime nemesis Spike (James Marsters) showed up, fresh from his sacrificial roasting at the series finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Let the vampire games begin! With Buffy off the air, fans flocked to Angel's last season to get their fix of Joss Whedon's "Buffyverse" in any form they could, and the addition of Spike was a shrewd one, albeit not enough to keep the show from getting canceled. And for the first half of the season, the creative forces behind the show seemed to be toying ruthlessly with the audience. Spike was around, but not entirely corporeal; Angel himself became sullen and withdrawn; and most horrifically, sweetheart scientist Fred (Amy Acker) and former watcher Wesley (Alexis Denisof) underwent traumas that would test even the most devoted viewer. However, just when you'd be about to throw in the towel, things started changing for the better-Spike became a permanent fixture (both in the flesh and on the show), Angel's secret motives were revealed, and the introduction of demon warrior Illyria, who proved to be the show's answer to Buffy's sardonic demon-made-human Anya, was a welcome breath of fresh air. Creatively, Angel also came up with some of its best episodes, including "Smile Time" (where Angel is turned into a puppet - really!) and "You're Welcome" (the show's 100th episode, which marked the bittersweet return of Carpenter's Cordelia). The ending of the series was deliberately ambiguous, and not everyone made it through alive, but in going out kicking, it was a proper sendoff for a show that always fought the good fight. [+]

One of Buffy's strongest selling points was its large cast of supporting characters. The Slayer Collection: Spike gathers together four episodes involving perhaps the most popular of all of these: the cool punk rock vampire who, in the course of the show's run, moves from being one of Buffy's most terrible enemies to her lover and defender. He and his Goth vamp lover Drusilla arrived on the scene in "School Hard" and proceeded to disrupt a PTA meeting at Sunnydale High. Also from the second season we get "Lie to Me", in which a temporary alliance with one of Buffy's most treacherous friends demonstrates the essential fragility of the relationship between Spike and Dru even after a century. He returned briefly in Season 3 in "Lovers Walk", deserted by Dru and desperately flailing around, wrecking most of the show's relationships in a single bout of drunken violence, truth-telling and sharp wit. By the fifth season, Spike was a very different vampire-with a chip in his brain that stopped him hurting humans and he fell desperately in love with a Buffy, who had not yet learned to trust him; "Fool for Love" was the episode in which we learned Spike's back-story: he was a minor Victorian poet, turned by Drusilla when rejection in love led him down the wrong alley, his entire hyper-aggressive persona is based on a need to hide his sensitivity. Spike was always one of the main focuses of the show's combination of acute wit and passionate romanticism and these four episodes admirably sample what made him so appealing to fans. On the DVD: The Slayer Collection: Spike also includes a documentary about the history of Spike as a character in which James Marsters talks intelligently about his portrayal of his most famous role. -Roz Kaveney.

As the fourth series of Angel starts, everything is still as we left it: Angel has been sunk to the bottom of the sea in an iron box by his inexplicable and vindictive son Connor and Cordelia has been summoned to higher realms to await orders. Gunn and Fred are left in the Hyperion Hotel, unsure about what has happened to their friends, and Lilah is working hard to seduce Wesley to the dark side. In the first few episodes, some of this is resolved but it's almost immediately replaced by far worse crises: prophesies of doom accumulate more rapidly even than usual in this wonderfully gloomy show and a horned rock-like Beast rains fire on Los Angeles. This last year is Angel's most tightly dramatic season yet-with a story arc of surprising intensity punctuated by the show's usual wit and sexiness. On the DVD: Angel, Series 4 is presented on disc in Dolby 2. 0 Surround Sound with a visual aspect ratio of 16:9. It comes with insightful, and often hilarious, commentaries on seven of the 22 episodes as well as featurettes-a series overview, profiles of the characters of Jasmine and the Beast, a farewell to the Hyperion Hotel (the characters' base for three seasons) and a discussion of the apocalypse that Angel has to deal with from episode seven onwards). It has subtitles in English, French, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish and has the option of the soundtrack dubbed into French. -Roz Kaveney.