The Dream in Athens with Roy and H.G. (2004)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Main Menu Audio & Animation Additional Footage-Introduction And Press Preference Protocol Additional Footage-Non Gold Medal Acceptance Behaviour Additional Footage-Interview With Nana Mouskouri, Drug Cheats Discussion Additional Footage-Children Competing At The Games Additional Footage-Closing Ceremony Discussion, The Greek Theatre Additional Footage-Weightlifting 85 kg Men - Commentary Additional Footage-Ask The Delphic Oracle Additional Footage-Interviews
Rating
Year Of Production	2004
Running Time	330:21 (Case: 347)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL Dual Disc Set	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Graeme Rowland
Studio Distributor	Seven Network Warner Vision	Starring	John Doyle Greig Pickhaver
Case	Amaray-Transparent-S/C-Dual
RPI	$49.95	Music	Burkhard Dallwitz

    I first became aware of Rampaging Roy Slaven and H.G. Nelson sometime in the second half of the 1980s, with their Saturday afternoon radio show This Sporting Life on 2JJJ. Roy is the former sporting legend from Lithgow, and H.G. the sports commentator par excellence. Their witty take on sports of all types became a cult show. Their skewering of the sporting realm was often hilarious, and I can recall much discussion of lesser sporting legends like Peter Oosterhuis. And then there were Roy's rants against the hierarchy of the NSW Rugby League, Ken "Arko" Arthurson in particular, and their lengthy discussions on the failings of the Shark (Great White). They would provide alternative commentaries on major sporting events like the various Festivals of the Boot: the Rugby League State of Origin and the NSWRL and AFL Grand Finals; as well as the Melbourne Cup and the Wimbledon finals.

    They first appeared on television on the ABC series Blah Blah Blah, backlit so that their features were obscured, as if giving faces to the familiar voices would destroy the illusion they had created. Soon though they had their own show, which showed up in the TV schedules as Roy and H.G. but was known as Club Buggery. It was followed by The Channel 9 Show (a reference to the rumour that they were heading to that station) and finally a short series Planet Norwich, shot in Norwich, England, which was not a success.

    As usual, once their talents and personas had been honed to a fine level on the ABC, a commercial network stepped in and attempted to slay the goose that laid the golden egg. For a time their show The Monday Dump was compulsory viewing, but soon disappeared from the TV schedules. During the 2000 Sydney Olympics, their nightly late show The Dream was a huge success. This was followed by The Ice Dream during the Winter Olympics, and again by the The Dream in Athens during the recent Olympics. In between these shows they have rarely been seen. Roy and H.G. can still be heard on 2JJJ on Sunday afternoons. Roy Slaven's alter ego John Doyle has written successful television series like Changi, and the other half of H.G., under the moniker Greig Pickhaver, does some acting work.

    So to the The Dream in Athens, filmed on location at The Sparta Club in the birthplace of the ancient Olympics. The format of the show is quite simple: a few interviews with athletes, some commentary on the more obscure sports like Graeco-Roman wrestling and synchronised swimming, and a few well chosen words on the performances of Olympics "go to man" Jacques Rogge and drugs el supremo Dick Pound, as well as Australia's own Kevan Gosper and John Coates. Each show featured a different take on the medal count, a brief selection of images of things not going quite right for athletes called As It Athens, and a lot of plate smashing, Greek-style.

    This two-DVD set contains almost six hours of material from The Dream. The first disc contains 118:35 of excerpts from the first week, plus 56:06 worth of extra material in the form of full interviews. The second disc has 127:25 from week two plus an additional 28:15 worth of longer excerpts.

    There is a lot of material here. It might have been possible with the addition of an extra disc to include the entire series. There would have been about 16 episodes, and I recall that some were cut short due to Olympic commitments. Taking commercial breaks and opening and closing credits out, it might come down to around ten hours of footage, which could easily be accommodated on three dual-layered discs. However, I suspect that we have the best of this excellent series on these two discs, and if you plan to purchase just one souvenir of the 2004 Olympics, this should be it.

Video

    This is a pretty good transfer, looking similar to the original digital broadcasts.

    Some readers would have been tempted by the advertisements to "see the Olympics in widescreen" that proliferated in the months before the event, only to be disappointed when the actual coverage turned out to be in standard format. The Dream was no exception, being broadcast in 1.33:1, and this is the format in which the material on this DVD is presented. It is of course not 16x9 enhanced.

    In effect there are two sources for the material shown on this DVD. One is the footage shot in the studio, the other the actual games footage. There are some differences between them in visual quality. All have the Channel Seven logo and Olympic Rings watermark in the upper right corner of the screen.

    The studio footage is quite sharp and very clear. It is not as razor sharp as it might have been, due to some slight reduction in clarity because of the compression applied to the video.

    Colours tend to be accurate in the area of flesh tones, but otherwise colours are a little muted. There are some vivid colours on display during the programme, but there seems to be some colour bleeding. You can see this clearly during the interview with Ian Thorpe in the extra material on disc one at 48:00, on H.G.'s green shirt. Blacks are solid without any noticeable low level noise, and whites are very bright and clean.

    The major problem with the transfer is the black halo visible around lighter coloured clothing, for example Roy's white shirt. This is probably caused by clipping of the digital signal during compression due to the brightness of the foreground objects, resulting in a loss of luminance information in the immediate area of the object. Darker objects do not show this problem, so it does not seem to be edge enhancement. You can see evidence of this on Ian Thorpe's right arm (to the left of screen) during the interview footage in the extra on disc one. At 48:55 you can see the black halo on his shoulder, where the shirt he is wearing is white, but it stops at the sleeve, which is green. Unfortunately, the haloes are visible throughout, much as they often are in digital transmissions.

    The Games footage is of a lesser visual quality than the studio footage. The first sequence of footage of an actual event, the cycling road race for men from 6:28, shows considerable artefacting such as pixelization, aliasing and macro-blocking. There is also some posterization visible on the road surface when the cyclists are viewed from a helicopter shot. As far as I can recall, similar defects were present in the original digital television broadcast, though to a lesser extent.

    Apart from the haloing, the studio footage is virtually free of artefacts. This may in part be due to the lack of any swift or unexpected motion. There were a couple of faint examples of aliasing, most noticeable on H.G.'s furrowed brow. There also seems to be some Gibb Effect. I had to peer carefully to see it, so most viewers will probably not notice any problems, especially those with displays smaller than 68cm.

    There is a slight break-up of the digital picture at 56:56 on Disc One, resulting in some parts of the image freezing for a fraction of a second. This does not affect the audio stream. Similar problems occur at 48:34 in the extra material, and on Disc Two at 56:21.

    No subtitles are provided.

    Both discs are RSDL-formatted. The layer change on Disc One is placed at 87:25. It occurs during a relatively quiet sequence and while I did notice it, it did not disrupt my viewing. The same can be said of the layer change on Disc Two, which is placed at 80:04.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is just the one audio track, in Dolby Digital 2.0.

    This is a pretty unexciting stereo mix without any surround effects. The voices are centrally located in the soundstage with the audience sounds spread across the main channels. The music and the audience noises are the only sounds which suggest that this is a stereo mix.

    Dialogue is clear and distinct, not too difficult to achieve as both of the boys talk at considerable volume. There were some fluctuations in the volume level at times when Roy was speaking, but I think this was due to his increasing excitement at what he was saying causing problems with his microphone, and is not a mastering defect as such. The sound of plates smashing is also well caught.

    There are some compression artefacts in the audio. There is a slight sibilance and harshness that suggest that higher frequencies have been filtered out. Bass response is better, though the bass is really only heard with the music. There is a slight dropout of the audio at 0:02 on Disc One.

    The show has a music theme by Burkhard Dallwitz, but I am not sure what it is called. It probably goes by the inspiring name of Channel 7 Olympic Theme or similar. There is some non-original music used, mostly excerpts from recordings by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, such as their rendition of Mikos Theodorakis' Zorba the Greek theme. All are used for comic effect, naturally.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Main Menu Audio

    After what seems like an eternity punctuated only by the logos of the various Olympic organisations that own the rights to the Games footage included on this disc, a static main menu is displayed. The theme music of The Dream is played in the background.

Interviews (56:06)

    The interview footage that appears in the main programme is merely excerpts. This extra comprises complete interviews with Australian medallists. Each runs between six and nine minutes in length, approximating the time between commercials. Each interview can be selected separately from the menu, or by choosing the first interview you can watch the lot.

    The interviews are with Australian medal winners Sara Carrigan, the women's relay team, Ryan Bayley, Brooke Hansen, Anna Meares, Chantelle Newbery and Ian "Lion of Athens" Thorpe.

Additional Footage (28:15)

    The extras on Disc Two consists of extended sequences from the show, such as the interview with Nana Mouskouri, the quite unfunny The Greek Theatre, the sequence with the Delphic Oracle and some weightlifting commentary.

    This material seems to be available in Region 4 only.

    This is quite funny stuff and well worth acquiring.

    The video quality is good despite a few issues.

    The audio quality is good.

    There is plenty of additional extra material.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall