Hunt was a successful neurosurgeon until a car accident resulted in an injury to her hands. Now, she gets uncontrolled spasms and one such event resulted in a dead patient. A year after closing down her practice, Hunt is a medical examiner for the city of Chicago and has changed her point of view from performing operations on nameless patients to using the clues left by dead bodies to not only discover exactly how the person died, but who killed them.
She is paired with former police officer turned medical investigator, Peter Dunlop (Nicholas Bishop) as well as Detectives Bud Morris (John Carroll Lynch, The Drew Carey Show) and Samantha Baker (Sonja Sohn). In the coroner's office, Hunt has young forensic pathology fellow Dr. Ethan Gross (Geoffrey Arend), Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Curtis Drumfield (Windell Middlebrooks) and her boss, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kate Murphy (Jeri Ryan, Star Trek: Voyager).
With the cops on one side of her helping with the criminal investigation and the examiners on the other side sleuthing out what the body has to say, Hunt finds her position as the perfect place to find out the history of the bodies that come across her path, and solve the murders that got them there.
Body of Proof isn't all about Hunt's professional life. As a neurosurgeon, she put her husband and daughter after her career. Now, five years after her divorce, she is struggling to win back the confidence of her family and spend time with her daughter. Unfortunately, this portion of the show always felt a bit stiff and forced in, almost like it was there because a formula dictated it should be. Where the characters in her professional life started off rough, but eventually fall in place, the ex-husband and estranged daughter relationship never quite feels right. Hopefully these issues will smooth out in the second season.
While Body of Proof: The Complete First Season only has nine episodes, there are a couple of special features that add to the DVD's value. Besides the gag reel, there are also two featurettes, one about the outfits and costuming that goes into the show and one that was a general behind-the-scenes piece that not only interviews the cast and crew, but even goes into the make-up and prosthetics that go into the show's dead bodies.
There is a lot of potential in Body of Proof. While the setup for the series feels a bit contrived, it isn't long before it starts to stand on its own legs. There are still plenty of rough edges to be smoothed out by the time this season wraps up, but the second season of the show should help work out many of those aspects. If you want to get in on the ground floor of a new medical mystery that could go on for several years, now is the time, but unless you've already seen it and already love the show, this DVD set is more for renting than purchasing.
