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Meet the people of Little Britain, characters such as rubbish
transvestite Emily Howard; Daffyd Thomas, the "only gay" in
his village; Jason, the young man with a passion for a pensioner;
and inarticulate teenager Vicky Pollard. Just who are Britain?
What do they? And why...?
Following
two brilliant series on Radio 4, Little Britain has
made a successful transition to TV, and now you can enjoy
all eight episodes of the first series over and over again
on DVD. This is truly hilarious stuff from start to finish,
which really does stand up to repeat viewing.
My favourite characters include the wheelchair-bound Andy
(Matt Lucas), who isn't really disabled at all - just bone
idle - and his gullible carer Lou (David Walliams). Then there's
Jason (Walliams), who is passionately in love with his best
friend's grandmother. Not forgetting Ray McCooney (Walliams),
the unnecessarily cryptic Scottish hotelier, or gay Welshman
Daffyd Thomas (Lucas), whose attempts to gain attention via
his sexuality are constantly thwarted by the laid-back attitudes
of those around him. Oops, and I nearly missed out everybody's
favourite character, Vicky Pollard (Lucas).
Oh,
who am I kidding? They're all fantastic!
There's
an element of The League of Gentlemen's brand of dark
humour in several of the sketches - which is hardly surprising
when you consider that Leaguer Mark Gatiss is the programme's
script editor. This darkness is most evident of all in the
Jason sketches, which are as toe-curlingly cringe-worthy as
they are uproariously funny, and in the arch narration of
Tom Baker. Much of what Baker says could have been deeply
offensive, were it not for the sheer insanity of his sentence
structures and the eccentric tones of his voice.
My only real criticism of Little Britain concerns the
Fat-fighters sketches, which owe far too much to the job club
scenes in The League of Gentlemen. Marjorie Dawes (Lucas),
the bullying club leader, is uncomfortably similar in concept
and realisation to Steve Pemberton's horrid Pauline. And her
comeuppance in episode eight is almost exactly the same as
that of Pauline at the end of her first series. There are
also elements of Alan Partridge in the embittered children's
TV dropout Des Kaye and has-been Olympic athlete Denver Mills
(both Walliams).
As
was the case with The League of Gentlemen and Dead
Ringers, some characters and sketches have not survived
the transition from radio to television. As a result, roughly
half of the material in this series is brand new. Andy ("Yeah,
I know") and Lou are completely new characters, as is the
mental patient Anne (Walliams).
In addition to the resonant tones of former Doctor Who
Tom Baker, sci-fi fans should derive particular pleasure from
the names of several characters in the skits concerning hopeless
inventor Matthew Waterhouse (Walliams), for they are named
after performers who played Doctor Who companions.
The Prime Minister in the Sebastian Love (Walliams) and Michael
the PM sketches is amusingly played by Anthony Stewart Head:
that bloke off Buffy, as Baker puts it.
As
if eight excellent episodes were not enough, this double DVD
pack is also brimming with extras, including 36 minutes of
behind-the-scenes footage in How to Make a Little Britain,
a 32-minute radio interview, and 15 minutes of material from
the Teenage Cancer Trust charity show. You can also select
compilations of sketches featuring many of your favourite
characters by accessing the Character Playlist. My favourite
extra of all is the half-hour Best of Rock Profiles,
which features hilarious highlights from Lucas and Walliams's
previous television venture.
As
you might expect, the humour of Little Britain even
pervades the DVD menus. For example, on the extras menu you
hear Ray McCooney asking: "Ye want to know ma secrets, do
ye?" However, the compiler of the subtitles rather missed
the point of the Vicky Pollard sketches by abbreviating her
inarticulate ramblings into rather lucid statements!
Now,
I don't hand out tens very often, but this superb product
truly deserves it.
(Are
you sure? Ed)
Yeah.
(Because
once you've given it a ten, you can't mark it down again.)
Yeah,
I know.
(So
you definitely want to give it a ten?)
Definitely.
 
Richard
McGinlay
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