The Fast Show-Series 2 (1995)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Main Menu Audio & Animation
Rating
Year Of Production	1995
Running Time	202:56
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	John Birkin Arch Dyson
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Paul Whitehouse Charlie Higson Arabella Weir Simon Day Caroline Aherne John Thomson Mark Williams
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	Various

'Scorchio!'

    This is one of the best sketch comedy shows of the 1990s, devised and mostly written by Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson, who also appear as various characters. It ran for three seasons from 1994 to 1997 in the UK on the BBC. Included on this disc are the seven episodes which made up the second season in 1995. Each episode runs for just under 30 minutes.

    The format of this show is of very short sketches, mostly with characters which recur throughout the episodes or across the entire season (or the entire series). Some of these recurring characters and ideas are brilliant, most are at least very good and some just don't work or have only one joke in them rather than the 8 or 10 they try to milk out of them. This is certainly true of all sketch comedy series, even the greatest series such as Monty Python's Flying Circus. Of the various characters and ideas, my personal favourites are Channel 9, the foreign language channel including the hilarious show Bonko Rumpo; the men's clothing retailers, Ken & Ken 'Suit you, sir' ; the woman who crops up in various scenes asking 'Does my bum look big in this?'; the Lord of the Manor, Ralph and the object of his desire, Ted the Irish gardener; the geezer who is 'a little bit wooh and a little bit waah'; and the people who want to talk about Jesus at every available moment. An excellent one off in this series is Monkfish, a tough and rude policeman/vet/doctor. On the other hand there are some things which don't really work for me such as Jesse's Diets; the music hall pisstake, Arthur Atkinson and the Drunk QC. Jazz Club is a good idea but unfortunately it is not really a good enough one for the number of times it is used during the series. Comedy is definitely 'in the eye of the beholder' so you may find your views differ from mine about what the best bits are. Regardless, this is high quality sketch comedy with a higher hit than miss rate, which is all you can ask.

    If you enjoy English comedy but have not had the chance to catch this series you should definitely give this a shot. If you are a fan, you have probably already purchased this disc.

'Boutros, Boutros Ghali'

Video

    The video quality is good but as you would expect for mid 1990s television, nothing spectacular.

    The feature is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio non 16x9 enhanced which is the original aspect ratio.

    The picture was reasonably clear and sharp throughout - no better or worse than you would expect considering the source of the material. Shadow detail was decent but nothing special. There was light grain throughout and some sections had fairly heavy grain.

    The colour was fine but a bit dull as you might expect. There were occasional spots where the colour looked more faded in some parts of the screen but these were not overly distracting.

    Artefacts included mild aliasing on ties, jackets, Venetians (e.g. 26:45 ep 1), some jagged edges, occasional white specks, a hair at 26:20 in episode 1 and some patches of cross colourisation.

    There are subtitles in English for the hearing impaired. The English subtitles were clear and easy to read but somewhat summarised from the spoken word.

    The layer change must be between episodes as I did not notice it.
    

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio quality is reasonable.

    This DVD contains an English Dolby Digital 2.0 surround soundtrack encoded at 192 Kb/s.

    Dialogue was reasonably easy to hear, however it was sometimes drowned out by an intrusive laugh track although I would assume this was an issue with the original material rather than the transfer specifically.

    The surround speakers carried a bit of laughter but that's about all.

    The subwoofer was not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    None.

Menu

    The menu included  music, scenes from the show and the ability to select episodes and subtitles.

    This disc is available in the same format in Region 2 but not in Region 1.

    The video quality is good considering the source.

    The audio quality is decent.

    The disc has no extras..

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall