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Review Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Scrubs : Complete Season 1
Actors & Directors
  • Sarah Chalke
  • Zach Braff
  • Donald Faison
Release date: 2005-06-27
Run time: 520 min.
RRP: £34.99
Price: £12.00

Review Scrubs : Complete Season 1 / Buena Vista Home Entertainment:

The sitcom may be flatlining, but as long as there are fresh and original series like Scrubs, the prognosis isn't entirely negative. Created by Bill Lawrence, Scrubs is an interns'-eye view of hospital life and the torturous, tragic, and triumphant route to becoming a doctor. The eminently likeable Zach Braff heads the cast as "newbie" J. D. , whose years of medical school haven't quite prepared him for chaotic Sacred Heart Hospital. Family Guy has nothing on the live-action Scrubs when it comes to surreal asides and fantasy sequences (for example, J. D. literally becomes the proverbial deer in the headlights when he cannot answer a medical query), pop culture references, and TV Land casting (John Ritter guest stars as J. D. 's negligent father in "My Old Man," and St. [+]
Elsewhere veterans William Daniels, Ed Begley, Jr. , Stephen Furst, and Eric Laneuville appear as Legionnaire's-stricken doctors in "My Sacrifical Clam"). With surgical precision, this inaugural season charts J. D. 's growth as a doctor and a human being, and the close-knit bonds he forms with his equally overwhelmed peers and colleagues, including best friend and surgeon Chris Turk (Donald Faison), beautiful, but raw-nerved and by-the-book Elliot Reid (Sarah Chalke), and supportive nurse Carla Espinoza (Judy Reyes'), who affectionately nicknames J. D. "Bambi. " But at the heart of the series is J. D. 's relationship with his mentor, Dr. Cox (an Emmy-worthy John C. McGinley), a cross between Obi-Wan Kenobi and a pit bull. Giving Scrubs a further shot of adrenaline are recurring characters Jordan (Christa Miller Lawrence), Dr. Cox's satanic ex-wife, and Neil Flynn as the Janitor, who torments J. D. just as Larry Miller menaced Jerry in the Seinfeld episode "The Doorman. " Scrubs' animated sensibility allows for inexplicable cameos by Jimmie Walker or, at one point, an impromptu West Side Story-esque dance-off to convey the schism between the surgeons and other doctors. But while hilariously funny, Scrubs can break your heart too, as in the two-parter "My Occurrence"/"My Hero," with guest star Brendan Fraser as Jordan's spontaneously spirited brother, who is diagnosed with leukemia, and "My Old Lady," in which J. D. , Elliot, and Chris experience for the first time losing a patient. Whether you're a "newbie" or devoted viewer, this DVD release is just what the doctor ordered. -Donald Liebenson, Amazon. com.

Review 2 Entertain Video / The Complete League Of Gentlemen [1999]
Actors & Directors
  • Corrie Greenop
Release date: 2005-05-30
Run time: 595 min.
RRP: £39.99
Price: £15.93

Review The Complete League Of Gentlemen [1999] / 2 Entertain Video:

The bizarre yet critically acclaimed BBC television series The League of Gentlemen is to sitcoms like The Good Life or even Friends what David Lynch's films are to Frank Capra movies. Instead of the usual one-family-in-suburbia or group-of-pals set-up, Gentlemen centres on the whole town of Royston Vasey. A Northern village of, to say the least, eccentric characters, the weird people of Royston Vasey (actually, the real name of lewd northern comic Roy Chubby Brown) look like they've been intermarrying for too long and are suffering from a particularly demented variety of xenophobia that drives them to extremes of tetchiness and psychosis. There are the local shopkeepers Edward and Tubbs, who go to murderous lengths to ensure their shop remains for local people only; the Denton family, toad-breeders obsessed with maintaining their household rituals at all costs; inept veterinary surgeon Dr Chinnery, who's never yet saved a patient; Barbara, the local transsexual taxi driver (one of the show's more well adjusted characters); Pauline the demonic Restart Officer at the local Job Centre; and Lance, the sadistic owner of Lance's Joke Shop which sells poisonous sweets and the ever-popular finger in a matchbox (with a real finger), among many others. Most of the characters are performed by the three core members of the group, sporting a disturbing variety of prosthetic demi-masks and latex make-up, who started the concept off with a stage show and then transferred it to radio before taking it on TV, which may explain why The League of Gentlemen seems blithely oblivious to normal sitcom conventions and has a stately air of surrealism that feels like The Archers as written by playwright Eugene Ionesco. Brilliant stuff. -Leslie Felperin.

Review Acorn Media / To the Manor Born - Featuring All Three Series [1979]
Actors & Directors
  • Penelope Keith
  • Peter Bowles
  • Angela Thorne
Release date: 2005-01-10
Run time: 623 min.
RRP: £49.99
Price: £12.36

Review To the Manor Born - Featuring All Three Series [1979] / Acorn Media:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / My Name Is Earl: Complete Season 2 [2006]
Release date: 2008-01-28
Run time: 574 min.
RRP: £34.99
Price: £15.97

Review My Name Is Earl: Complete Season 2 [2006] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

After cooking up a winning formula for the first season, this karmic comedy could afford to shake things up. In Earl's equally successful second, there's an episode incorporating clay animation ("Robbed a Stoner Blind" with Christian Slater), an homage to Cops ("Our 'Cops' Is On!" with Kathy Kinney), a two-parter set in Latin America ("South of the Border" with John Leguizamo), and a Tarantino-style whodunnit with narration split between Earl, Randy, Joy, and Crab Man ("Buried Treasure"). As before, Earl (Jason Lee), in cahoots with brother Randy (Ethan Suplee), continues in his quest to become "a better person. " He starts by turning to Camden County strip club owner Richard Chubby (Burt Reynolds) to get ex-wife Joy out of a jam involving stolen merchandise ("Jump for Joy"). Joy's struggle to evade prison will last all year, during which Earl falls for her "hot professional" lawyer (Marlee Matlin). Other highlights include "Sticks & Stones," in which Earl gives a bearded lady (Judy Greer) back her confidence, and "Larceny of a Kitty Cat," in which the allergic Randy dates a feline fancier (Amy Sedaris). When that comes to an end, he finally works up the nerve to tell motel maid Catalina (Nadine Velazquez) how he really feels about her ("Foreign Exchange Student'). From the start, Earl attracted a colourful array of talent. That trend continues with Roseanne Barr as a nun ("Made a Lady Think I Was God") and John Waters as a funeral director ("Kept a Guy Locked in a Truck"). Emmy nominees Giovanni Ribisi and Beau Bridges also return for a few episodes, along with other first-season favourites, like Patty, the Daytime Hooker (Dale Dickey). [+]
As with the previous set, there's a bushel of extras, including deleted scenes, commentary, and a blooper reel. -Kathleen C. Fennessy, Amazon. com.

Review 4dvd / Fonejacker - Series 1 And 2 - Complete [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Kayvan Novak
  • Ed Tracy
  • Kayvan Novak
Release date: 2008-10-27
Run time: 270 min.
Creator: Tessa McHugh
RRP: £29.99
Price: £15.04

Review Fonejacker - Series 1 And 2 - Complete [2007] / 4dvd:


Review Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Monsters Inc. [2002]
Actors & Directors
  • Pete Docter
  • James Coburn
  • John Goodman
  • Steve Buscemi
  • Lee Unkrich
  • David Silverman
  • Billy Crystal
  • Mary Gibbs
Release date: 2002-09-07
Run time: 88 min.
Creator: Jonathan Roberts
RRP: £17.99
Price: £6.61

Review Monsters Inc. [2002] / Buena Vista Home Entertainment:

The monsters in Monsters, Inc. are just so incredibly cute-and they know it. Whereas Woody, Buzz and pals in the Toy Story saga were filled with self-doubt about just how much the children in their lives would continue to love them, here our heroic monsters and their impossibly lovable human ward Boo have no such worries, at least when it comes to the cinema audience. And that's why Monsters, Inc. , for all its wondrous computer-animated artistry, its smart humour and its family-friendly appeal, doesn't quite capture the naïve charm of its predecessors. Nevertheless, John Goodman and Billy Crystal, as scare-champions Sulley and Mike, are a great double-act whose comedy never goes over kids' heads but still reaches up to make their parents laugh. The film's central conceit-that monsters in the bedroom closet are just doing a night's work in order to generate power from screams for the city of Monstropolis-is funny and cleverly worked out; and kids will of course love the fact that the monsters are mortally afraid of the very children they are trying to frighten. The animation is extraordinarily detailed (Sulley's fur is a marvel in itself) and the set-piece action sequences top anything that has gone before for sheer audaciousness. But overall Pixar play things very safe, from the hissable villain to the end credit "outtakes". A bolder film might have taken inspiration from The Nightmare Before Christmas; instead, a little of that Disney disease of knowing cuteness seems to have crept into the formula. [+]
-Mark Walker.

Review Warner Home Video / Fred Claus [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Paul Giamatti
  • David Dobkin
  • Kevin Spacey
  • Michael Higgins
  • Vince Vaughn
  • Rachel Weisz
Release date: 2008-11-24
Run time: 112 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £5.99

Review Fred Claus [2007] / Warner Home Video:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Marion And Geoff - Series 1 [2000]
Actors & Directors
  • Rob Brydon
  • Hugo Blick
Release date: 2003-02-17
Run time: 100 min.
Creator: Kerry Waddell
RRP: £15.99
Price: £4.97

Review Marion And Geoff - Series 1 [2000] / 2 Entertain Video:

Originally broadcast in 10-minute segments on BBC2, Marion & Geoff is a very funny if at times unrelentingly bleak comedy in which Rob Brydon plays Keith, a hapless cuckold who addresses us via a camcorder set up in his mini-cab. The Marion and Geoff of the title are his estranged wife and her new lover, though as Keith-who never fails to perceive a bright side to his utterly dismal existence-says, "I don't feel I've lost a wife, I've gained a friend. " Through his monologues, we learn that Keith has a room in a student house where banging techno is played day and night; that in order to make the journey to see his two boys, he must make an overnight journey from London to Cardiff by car; that his only friend is a tollbooth operator (though the operator doesn't seem to know it) and that, although he's been driving a minicab for a while, he's yet to pick up a fare. Keith's attempts to buy presents for his children generally backfire ("I've kept the receipts. I learned that from my old dad. He always used to say keep the receipts"), no more heartrendingly so than in an evidently disastrous attempt to pay a surprise visit to the newly attached Marion and the kids in Disneyland. As he hugs the tiny Winnie the Pooh puppets he's tried to give to his children, his uniformly chipper tone wavers momentarily and the comedy threatens to darken into something like tragedy. However, Keith's indomitable if inappropriate optimism eventually enables him to bumble through. Masterly in its veracity and Pooteresque banality, Marion & Geoff is as near-flawless as The Office. On the DVD: Marion & Geoff on disc comes with an informative if somewhat giggly commentary, featuring Brydon and director and cowriter Hugo Blick. [+]
There's the Comic Relief special, in which Keith's cheque to the charity bounces with typically pitiful consequences and outtakes from the series, all of which would have merited inclusion in the final edit. -David Stubbs.

Review Optimum Home Entertainment / On The Buses/Mutiny On The Buses/Holiday On The Buses [1971]
Actors & Directors
  • Stephen Lewis
  • Bryan Izzard
  • Bob Grant
  • Anna Karen
  • Doris Hare
  • Reg Varney
  • Harry Booth
Release date: 2006-09-25
Run time: 251 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £6.07

Review On The Buses/Mutiny On The Buses/Holiday On The Buses [1971] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review Warner Home Video / Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory (1971)
Actors & Directors
  • Jack Albertson
  • Peter Ostrum
  • Julie Dawn Cole
  • Roy Kinnear
  • Mel Stuart
  • Gene Wilder
Release date: 2005-07-04
Run time: 76 min.
Creator: Roald Dahl
RRP: £12.99
Price: £1.71

Review Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory (1971) / Warner Home Video:

Having proven itself as a favourite film of children around the world, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is every bit as entertaining now as it was when originally released in 1971. There's a timeless appeal to Roald Dahl's classic children's novel, which was playfully preserved in this charming musical, from the colourful carnival-like splendour of its production design to the infectious melody of the "Oompah-Loompah" songs that punctuate the story. Who can forget those diminutive Oompah-loompah workers who recite rhyming parental warnings ("Oompah-loompah, doopity do. ") whenever some mischievous child has disobeyed Willy Wonka's orders to remain orderly? Oh, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. it's really the story of the impoverished Charlie Bucket, who, along with four other kids and their parental guests, wins a coveted golden ticket to enter the fantastic realm of Wonka's mysterious confectionery. After the other kids have proven themselves to be irresponsible brats, it's Charlie who impresses Wonka and wins a reward beyond his wildest dreams. [+]
But before that, the tour of Wonka's factory provides a dazzling parade of delights, and with Gene Wilder giving a brilliant performance as the eccentric candyman, Wonka gains an edge of menace and madness that nicely counterbalances the movie's sentimental sweetness. It's that willingness to risk a darker tone-to show that even a wonderland like Wonka's can be a weird and dangerous place if you're a bad kid-that makes this an enduring family classic. -Jeff Shannon.

Review 2 Entertain Video / Blackadder 2 - The Entire Second Series [1986]
Actors & Directors
  • Stephen Fry
  • Miranda Richardson
  • Rowan Atkinson
  • Tony Robinson
  • Tim McInnerny
Release date: 2000-11-06
Run time: 175 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £6.95

Review Blackadder 2 - The Entire Second Series [1986] / 2 Entertain Video:

Although now regarded as the opening salvo of a classic series, the original Blackadder series was not considered a great success, either among critics or many viewers, so a major rethink took place when it was recommissioned. On the writing front, future-Four Weddings And A Funeral scribe Richard Curtis was joined by Ben Elton, while the expensive War of the Roses-era sets were replaced by cosier Elizabethan ones. The most important change, however, was with Rowan Atkinson's eponymous character who, in the first series, had been a fairly weak-willed idiot but now emerged as the familiar Machiavellian fiend which would cement Atkinson's place in the pantheon of great British sitcom actors. Moreover, even if so many of the script's lines have been subsequently ripped off by lesser hands that it can't help but occasionally sound dated, the central performances of Atkinson, Tony Robinson (Baldrick), Tim McInnery (Lord Percy), Stephen Fry (Lord Melchett) and, of course, Miranda Richardson as the childishly psychotic Queen Elizabeth ("I love it when you get cross. Sometimes I think about having you executed just to see the expression on your face") remain note perfect. Yet the real pleasure for viewers may be in rediscovering the raft of excellent guest star performances-not least Tom "Doctor Who" Baker's berserk turn as a literally legless old sea dog given to guzzling his own urine long before the drinking water has run out. -Clark Collis.

Review Warner Home Video / Two And A Half Men - Season 1
Actors & Directors
  • Jon Cryer
  • Charlie Sheen
Release date: 2005-09-12
Run time: 481 min.
RRP: £50.99
Price: £9.95

Review Two And A Half Men - Season 1 / Warner Home Video:


Review 4dvd / Garth Marenghi's Darkplace [2004]
Actors & Directors
  • Richard Ayoade
  • Matt Holness
  • Matt Berry
Release date: 2006-10-16
Run time: 144 min.
Creator: Stephen Abrahams
RRP: £19.99
Price: £9.58

Review Garth Marenghi's Darkplace [2004] / 4dvd:


Review Cinema Club / Dave Allen - The Best Of
Actors & Directors
  • Dave Allen
Release date: 2005-06-20
Run time: 93 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £5.96

Review Dave Allen - The Best Of / Cinema Club:

When Dave Allen passed away in March 2005, we lost a true comedy great. Sitting cross-legged on a high stool, whiskey in one hand, cigarette in the other, Dave Allen's exasperated commentaries on the absurdities of modern life struck a chord with millions of fans in Britain, Ireland and Australia for over four decades. He was a compelling storyteller - able to spin shaggy dog stories out of the almost any subject, including the missing tip of his fourth finger of his left hand, for which he provided various unlikely explanations. But his gentle, laconic wit could also give way to ferocious attacks on the media, the state and, most famously, the Catholic Church. He was a unique talent - a comic who could make his audiences laugh, cry, and be shocked, all in one. Here he is with his personal choice of sketches, gags and monologues.

Review Channel 4 DVD / Shameless Series 5 [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Catherine Morshead
  • David Threlfall
  • Gerard Kearns
  • Joseph Furnace
Release date: 2008-04-21
Run time: 750 min.
RRP: £34.99
Price: £11.47

Review Shameless Series 5 [2007] / Channel 4 DVD:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Edward Scissorhands [1991]
Actors & Directors
  • Dianne Wiest
  • Kathy Baker
  • Johnny Depp
  • Anthony Michael Hall
  • Winona Ryder
  • Tim Burton
Release date: 2000-11-27
Run time: 103 min.
Creator: Richard Hashimoto
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.73

Review Edward Scissorhands [1991] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

Edward Scissorhands achieves the nearly impossible feat of capturing the delicate flavour of a fable or fairy tale in a live-action movie. The story follows a young man named Edward (Johnny Depp), who was created by an inventor (Vincent Price, in one of his last roles) who died before he could give the poor creature a pair of human hands. Edward lives alone in a ruined Gothic castle that just happens to be perched above a pastel-coloured suburb inhabited by breadwinning husbands and frustrated housewives straight out of the 1950s. One day, Peg (Dianne Wiest), the local Avon lady, comes calling. Finding Edward alone, she kindly invites him to come home with her, where she hopes to help him with his pasty complexion and those nasty nicks he's given himself with his razor-sharp fingers. Soon Edward's skill with topiary sculpture and hair design make him popular in the neighbourhood-but the mood turns just as swiftly against the outsider when he starts to feel his own desires, particularly for Peg's daughter Kim (Winona Ryder). Most of director Tim Burton's movies (such as Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice and Batman) are visual spectacles with elements of fantasy but Edward Scissorhands is more tender and personal than the others. Edward's wild black hair is much like Burton's, suggesting that the character represents the director's own feelings of estrangement and co-option. Johnny Depp, making his first successful leap from TV to film, captures Edward's child-like vulnerability even while his physical posture evokes horror icons like the vampire in Nosferatu and the sleepwalker in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. [+]
Classic horror films, at their heart, feel a deep sympathy for the monsters they portray; simply and affectingly, Edward Scissorhands lays that heart bare. -Bret Fetzer On the DVD: Tim Burton is famed for his visual style not his ability as a raconteur, so it's no surprise to find that his directorial commentary is a little sparse. When he does open up it is to confirm that Edward Scissorhands remains his most personal and deeply felt project. The second audio commentary is by composer and regular Burton collaborator Danny Elfman, whose enchanting, balletic score gets an isolated music track all to itself with his remarks in-between cues. Again, for Elfman this movie remains one of his most cherished works, and it is a real musical treat to hear the entire score uninterrupted by dialogue and sound effects but illuminated by Elfman's lucid interstitial remarks. Also on the disc are some brief interview clips, a "making of" featurette and a gallery of conceptual artwork. The anamorphic widescreen print looks simply gorgeous. -Mark Walker.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / My Name Is Earl - Series 3 - Complete [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Jason Lee
  • Jaime Pressly
  • Noah Crawford
  • Ethan Suplee
  • Louis T. Moyle
Release date: 2008-10-20
Run time: 557 min.
RRP: £34.99
Price: £22.99

Review My Name Is Earl - Series 3 - Complete [2007] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

So strong and simple was the original premise to My Name Is Earl that it’s a surprise to few it’s managed to fuel three straight seasons of the show and counting. Earl, played magnificently by Jason Lee, is on a continuing mission to make things up with every person he’s ever managed to upset or offend, and it’s to the credit of the writers that they continue to mind this in quite such inspired fashion. Which makes it puzzling as to why the third season of My Name Is Earl takes, for long periods, a different direction. Instead of working on his list of karma, Earl instead finds himself in more traditional sit-com scenarios. It’s a not entirely successful gamble, with particularly the coma segue missing the mark. That’s not to say, however, that My Name Is Earl doesn’t work, because some of the writing in this third series is as good as anything the show has delivered before, with a plethora of belly-laughs to look forward to. And you can’t help but admire the boldness in some of the thinking here. It may not be the strongest season of the show to date, but it is nonetheless arguably the most interesting. -Jon Foster.

Review Lions Gate Home Entertainment / The Princess Bride [1987]
Actors & Directors
  • Peter Falk
  • Mandy Patinkin
  • Rob Reiner
  • Peter Cook
  • Cary Elwes
  • Billy Crystal
Release date: 2008-11-03
Run time: 98 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £8.99

Review The Princess Bride [1987] / Lions Gate Home Entertainment:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan [2006]
Actors & Directors
  • Ken Davitian
  • Pamela Anderson
  • Sacha Baron Cohen
Release date: 2007-03-05
Run time: 80 min.
RRP: £22.99
Price: £2.91

Review Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan [2006] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

It takes a certain kind of comic genius to create a character who is, to quote the classic Sondheim lyric, appealing and appalling. But be forewarned: Borat is not "something for everyone. " It arrives as advertised as one of the most outrageous, most offensive, and funniest films in years. Kazakhstan journalist Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen reprising the popular character from his Da Ali G Show, leaves his humble village to come to "U. S. of A" to film a documentary. After catching an episode of Baywatch in his New York hotel room, he impulsively scuttles his plans and, accompanied by his fat, hirsute producer (Hardy to his Laurel), proceeds to California to pursue the object of his obsession, Pamela Anderson. Borat is not about how he finds America; it's about how America finds him in a series of increasingly cringe-worthy scenes. Borat, with his '70s mustache, well-worn grey suit, and outrageously backwards attitudes (especially where Jews are concerned) interacts with a cross-section of the populace, catching them, a la Alan Funt on Candid Camera, in the act of being themselves. Early on, an unwitting humour coach advises Borat about various types of jokes. [+]
Borat asks if his brother's retardation is a ripe subject for comedy. The coach patiently replies, "That would not be funny in America. " NOT! Borat is subversively, bracingly funny. When it comes to exploring uncharted territory of what is and is not appropriate or politically correct, Borat knows no boundaries, as when he brings a fancy dinner with the southern gentry to a halt after returning from the bathroom with a bag of his feces ("The cultural differences are vast," his hostess graciously/patronisingly offers), or turns cheers to boos at a rodeo when he calls for bloodlust against the Iraqis and mangles "The Star Spangled Banner. " Success, John F. Kennedy once said, has a thousand fathers. A paternity test on Borat might reveal traces of Bill Dana's Jose Jimenez, Andy Kaufman, Michael Moore, The Jamie Kennedy Xperiment, and Jackass. Some scenes seem to have been staged (a game Anderson, whom Borat confronts at a book signing, was reportedly in on the setup), but others, as the growing litany of lawsuits attests, were not. All too real is Borat's encounter with loutish Southern frat boys who reveal their sexism and racism, and the disturbing moment when he asks a gun store owner what gun he would recommend to "kill a Jew" (a Glock automatic is the matter-of-fact reply). Comedy is not pretty, and in Borat it can get downright ugly, as when Borat and his producer get jiggly with it during a nude fight that spills out from their hotel room into the hallway, elevator, lobby and finally, a mortgage brokers association banquet. High-five! -Donald Liebenson.

Review 2 Entertain Video / Abigail's Party (BBC) [1977]
Actors & Directors
  • Harriet Reynolds
  • John Salthouse
  • Mike Leigh
  • Tim Stern
  • Alison Steadman
  • Janine Duvitski
Release date: 2003-05-26
Run time: 102 min.
Creator: Margaret Matheson
RRP: £15.99
Price: £4.47

Review Abigail's Party (BBC) [1977] / 2 Entertain Video:

Originally screened as part of BBC's Play for Today series in 1977, Abigail's Party is among Mike Leigh's most celebrated pieces, with his then-wife Alison Steadman appallingly brilliant as what Alan Bennett described as the "brutal hostess" at a ghastly suburban soiree. The Abigail of the title never appears-rather, the dull thud of her lively teenage party forms a distant backdrop (and contrast) to an excruciating evening of chilled red wine, olives and the music of Demis Roussos. Steadman plays the overbearing Beverley, an Amazonian mass of frustrated sensuality in a low-cut party frock. Tim Stern is her small, stressed estate-agent husband. The guests are Janice Duvitski as Angela, a nurse whose quite spectacular gormlessness shields her from the stilted social awkwardness quietly raging around her, John Salthouse as Tony, her taciturn husband and Harriet Reynolds as Sue, the gangly and miserably nervous mother of Abigail. Rather than play for gags, Leigh and his actors mercilessly turn the screw of embarrassment through a series of too-true-to-life exchanges of dialogue, the stuff of all our collective worst memories of encounters with neighbours, aunts and office colleagues. Often misread as a satirical parade of suburban grotesques, Abigail's Party probes deeper than that, touching on nerves of anxiety and repression that throb behind the net curtains of modern England, culminating not in farce but tragedy. Decades on, Abigail's Party is as psychologically true and close to home as ever-hard to bear but utterly brilliant. On the DVD: Abigail's Party is perfectly reproduced here in all its 1970s garishness. The one extra is a short featurette, focussing on Alison Steadman's playing of Beverley, with comments from the original actors in the TV series and Peter York marvelling at her "paint-scraping" voice. [+]
-David Stubbs.

Models & Brands:
Scrubs : Complete Season 1, The Complete League Of Gentlemen [1999], To the Manor Born - Featuring All Three Series [1979], My Name Is Earl: Complete Season 2 [2006], Fonejacker - Series 1 And 2 - Complete [2007], Monsters Inc. [2002], Fred Claus [2007], Marion And Geoff - Series 1 [2000], On The Buses/Mutiny On The Buses/Holiday On The Buses [1971], Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory (1971), Blackadder 2 - The Entire Second Series [1986], Two And A Half Men - Season 1, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace [2004], Dave Allen - The Best Of, Shameless Series 5 [2007], Edward Scissorhands [1991], My Name Is Earl - Series 3 - Complete [2007], The Princess Bride [1987], Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan [2006], Abigail's Party (BBC) [1977]

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