VIKINGS: SEASON 1 – 5 / CERT: 18 / SHOWRUNNER: MICHAEL HIRST / STARRING: KATHRYN WINNICK, GUSTAF SKARSGARD, ALEXANDER LUDWIG, TRAVIS FIMMEL, GEORGIA HIRST / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Special Features: Audio commentaries / Extended episodes / Featurettes / Interactive exploration / Deleted scenes

If we’re being perfectly honest, this past decade or more has seen genre fans utterly and absolutely spoilt for choice when it comes to truly excellent television. Now while the likes of Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead may have received plentiful praise, one other show that’s been wowing many is Fox’s Vikings. Now, the series’ five seasons to date are collected in an impressive, all-encompassing box set ahead of the show’s sixth and final season commencing later this year.

Right, were does one really start with reviewing a box set that contains five seasons of television? For those who’ve yet to see any Vikings action, we’ll do our best to keep things spoiler-free and relatively vague in terms of particular plot specifics.

At its loosest description, Vikings is a show that was initially about Ragnar Lothbrok (Fimmel) and his ascension from farmer to ruler. Ragnar’s journey is not an easy one, of course, and there are plentiful twists along the way with loved ones and rivals for this King-in-waiting. And unlike other such shows highlighting days of centuries past, Vikings doesn’t fall back on the lazy tropes of sex and violence. Don’t get us wrong, sex and violence are most certainly present and accounted for in the series. It’s more that character development and storytelling are the central lynchpins propelling Vikings forward along its must-see journey.

While other heralded shows may get by on the odd good season here or there, Vikings has largely knocked it out of the park across all five seasons. Rarely has a show maintained such high quality in regards to performances (with special praise reserved for Katheryn Winnick as Lagertha), narrative, and some gloriously jaw-dropping cinematography, and the first five seasons of Vikings are exemplary in terms of atmospheric pacing. Then there’s the growth and development of the characters who maybe initially start as side dishes to Ragnar’s main course. Make no mistake about it, while this may start off as Ragnar Lothbrok’s story, Vikings is so, so much more.

Making this release even more pleasing is a frankly ludicrous amount of bonus material spread across all five seasons. With more featurettes that you can shake a stick at, chat tracks and extended editions of certain episodes only add further to giving fans far more to explore than simply the Vikings episodes themselves. To go through each piece of added content individually would have us here all day, but trust us when we say this is a release that is overflowing with some fantastic special features.

Now, can December and Vikings’ Season 6 premiere just get here already!