Review: 'The Police: Around the World' Restored and Expanded Blu-ray

On the precipice of world domination, The Police embarked on a tour of all six populated continents with camera in hand in 1979/'80. When not blazing through numbers from their first three albums on stage, they were filming touristy skits involving Andy Summers sumo wrestling in Japan, Stewart Copeland arguing with a camel rider near the pyramids in Egypt, and Sting taking a fast-motion rickshaw ride in Hong Kong. The Police are often labeled as a new wave or punk-lite trio, but they clearly were a Monkees for the eighties. 

That's actually not entirely a joke and hardly an insult (faithful Psychobabble readers know I love The Monkees). The Police were heart-throb cute, had a bunch of exhilarating hits, made audiences crazy, liked to be on screen, and were incorrigibly silly and corny. All of these qualities are captured in the tremendously fun travelogue The Police: Around the World, which really does seem to use Bob Rafelson's "Monkees On Tour" episode as a template... though with a lot less sobriety. The doc's only moments of genuine off-stage sincerity seem to be when the guys lose themselves in a groovy raga jam (Andy plays sitar, Sting plucks tamboura, Stu taps the tabla) and when Sting expresses genuine horror at the sight a snake charmer feeding a live cobra to a mongoose. Around the World also captures The Police at a moment when they seem to actually enjoy each other's company, and that joy spills over to the stage where the band's musicianship admittedly outclasses The Monkees' by several kilometers. 

Originally released on VHS in 1983 and laser disc in 1989, The Police: Around the World is now making its DVD and Blu-ray debut. The picture and sound have been restored. There's lots of edge enhancement, although that isn't much of an issue when sitting at a normal distance from the screen. Bass can be overpowering when using the LPCM stereo audio option, but it's much mellower on the DTS-HD Master Audio track. A sequence in which Sting gets irate at a fan causing some off-screen trouble during a performance of "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" from the original VHS release has been cut from this "Restored and Expanded" version (it's on YouTube if you want to have a look), but four complete performances from the tour have been included as supplements.

The blu-ray also comes with a CD of twelve songs recorded live in Kyoto, Hammersmith, and Hong Kong. Sound is a bit muddy, but I certainly prefer that to overly bright audio, and the band sounds great (although Sting sounds a lot less fierce on a rendition of "Visions of the Night" caught in Hammersmith than he did on the studio version). Andy Summers also provides some must-read liner notes that explain how fraught the tour could get behind all the documentary's mugging and rocking.