BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Main Menu Animation & Audio  Trivia  Outtakes
Rating
Year Released	1995
Running Time	203:23
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (103:09)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	1,2,3,4,5,6	Director	Martin Dennis
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Neil Morrissey  Martin Clunes  Leslie Ash  Caroline Quentin
Case	Transparent Amaray
RPI	$39.95	Music	Alan Lisk

    WARNING: Plot spoilers ahead. If you have not seen any of these episodes, skip over to Transfer Quality now. The plot descriptions for each episode give away some surprises which you may not want to know. Unfortunately, because of the nature of the episodes, there is no way to omit these plot surprises and still give a meaningful synopsis of each episode.

    This particular compilation of episodes comprises the entire Series 4 of Men Behaving Badly. The episodes that make up this DVD are;

    1. Babies (29:00). Dorothy talks Gary into having a baby together, but then sours on the idea, confusing Gary. Deborah leaves the keys to her flat with Tony so he can let the gas repairman in, but Tony decides to take advantage of the situation and do a little unauthorized exploring, with hilarious consequences.

    2. Infidelity (29:09). Gary becomes convinced that Dorothy is having an affair. Dorothy challenges Gary to produce concrete proof of her infidelity, which he sets out to get in his own inimitable style. Meanwhile, Tony becomes convinced that Deborah will go out with him if he takes on a series of causes, thus demonstrating that he is a caring bloke after all.

    3. Pornography (29:06). Dorothy and Gary break up. Deborah throws a dinner party for Dorothy and her new boyfriend, much to the disgust of Gary who decides to throw his own dinner party. Needless to say, Gary's dinner party does not go anywhere near as well as Deborah's. Tony takes on busking, still intent on impressing Deborah, but ends up finding a new girlfriend as a result. The only problem is that she insists that Tony's collection of pornography must go.

    4. 3 Girlfriends (28:38). Tony's busking leads to him juggling three girlfriends, much to Gary's chagrin. Dorothy announces to Gary that she is getting engaged to her new boyfriend and invites him to the engagement party, causing Gary to frantically search for a partner for the evening.

    5. Drunk (29:09). Dorothy and Gary reunite, with Gary promising that he will change his ways. Dorothy goes to Gary and Tony's flat to cook a celebratory dinner, but Gary is tempted by some free samples of beer offered at the pub.

    6. In Bed With Dorothy (29:12). Dorothy has just had her appendix out, and Gary is required to play the very reluctant nursemaid. Meanwhile, Tony gets new glasses, which he is highly embarrassed about wearing.

    7. Playing Away (29:09). Gary goes on a weekend literary retreat which Deborah also attends, leaving Tony and Dorothy alone...

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer is generally very sharp for foreground objects, but falters a little when it comes to backgrounds, with backgrounds often being somewhat indistinct and grainy. The final two episodes are much better in quality than the rest, with far less background grain marring the image. Subsequently, these episodes are far more detailed than the first five. Some shots inside the Crown are quite hazy and have an elevated black level. This is only really a problem when other shots in the same scene are much clearer and have a better black level. Shadow detail is acceptable and there is no low level noise.

    The colours were nicely and evenly rendered throughout.

    There is a total of 203:23 worth of Full Frame video episodes, approximately 5 minutes of Outtakes and Main Menu Animation and Audio on this DVD. Unfortunately, this adds up to simply too much content on this DVD, compounded by the relative graininess of the earlier episodes. Subsequently, there is copious MPEG artefacting through the first five episodes. This takes two forms; background macro-blocking, particularly of the green walls in Gary and Tony's flat, and posterization of some facial images, where faces take on a slightly stepped colour gradation instead of being smoothly coloured. None of this MPEG artefacting was particularly bad, but because of its insidious and frequent nature, it became quite intrusive, annoying and distracting after a while. I suspect that this artefacting will only be a problem on larger display devices, as it will simply be too small and subtle to be noticeable on smaller displays.

    There was some mild aliasing occasionally in venetian blinds, but certainly not at a level to be at all concerned about, and there were a few scattered video dropouts.

    This disc is RSDL formatted, with the layer change occurring at 15:54 during Episode 4. Other than being a surprise (as previous discs did not have a detectable layer change), it is minimally intrusive.
 

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The dialogue is always easy to hear, and there are no audio sync problems.

    The only music in this series is the theme music at the start and end of each episode, credited to Alan Lisk, and occasional bits of filler music which leaves very little impression indeed.

    There was no activity in the surround channels, and the stereo presence of this soundtrack is limited to the music and the audience laughter. The subwoofer did almost nothing.
 

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    You are able to select each individual episode from the main menu, which then leads to a chapter submenu for each episode. This is a tad cumbersome, and an option to play all 6 episodes sequentially would have been appreciated.

Trivia/Outtakes

    The video quality is relatively poor, with significant MPEG artefacting marring the overall image.

    The audio quality is acceptable.

    The extras are limited in quantity but reasonable in quality and thematic appropriateness.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna (read my bio)
13th September 2000