Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned:
Live from London's West End
Distributed by
Momentum Pictures
Cert:
Cat.no: MP013D
Running time: 70 minutes
Year: 2001
Pressing: 2001
Region(s): 2, PAL
Chapters: 16 plus extras
Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround)
Languages: English
Subtitles: None
Widescreen: 16;9 (1.77:1)
16:9-Enhanced: Yes
Macrovision: Yes
Disc Format: DVD 9
Price: £19.99
Extras: Biographies, Photo Gallery
Director:
Peter Orton
Producer:
Robyn O'Brien
Well, this time there was something planned about Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned
- a video and DVD release, but there may be some comedy fans out there who are
still in the dark about the concept.
The first Unplanned gig was performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1998 at
the Pleasance Theatre where the pair charged a mere £2 a ticket and
saw the light of day on ITV in the summer of 2000. No script is planned and
the humour is derived from the questions asked by the audience and the general
quick-witted behaviour of Baddiel and Skinner. For the TV series any subject
was open to discussion with one exception... football, which made a change
from their Fantasy Football shows that contained nothing but!
A second series on TV followed and the 10.30pm screenings attracted an average
rating of 6.1 million viewers. Classic moments from all of the TV broadcasts
include the audience exchanges made for Baddiel, especially, as well as Skinner,
which gets a mention during the extras, as well as the time when an audience
member put their hand up to ask a question, they were picked out and they started
their speech with, "At the end of the
The Sixth Sense
it's revealed that..." - and I won't reveal the ending myself, but after
he'd said his piece he went on to ask the proper question. Frank hadn't seen
the film by that point and neither had I and his wasn't the only jaw hitting
the floor in disbelief at what had happened, particularly when he asked the
guy why he'd done it and didn't get a satisfactory answer.
I remember one thing that was partially planned though from the very first TV
show, which was when Baddiel brought on a book with a picture of him taken at
a charity football match showing him to have long straggly hair and saying he
looked more like American porn star Ron Jeremy!
Topics for discussion this time round include streaking, what celebrities look
like close up, pub crawls, daytime TV, women, Wembley and Birmingham, as well
as the secretary selections and the need for a song at the end of the gig.
The whole thing is excellent through and through, although I'm sure over the
weekend this was filmed more than 70 minutes of footage was filmed. I'd like
to see it unplanned and unedited.
Baddiel and Skinner ponder on the show's success.
Like the TV series, this too has been shot in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen and
is flawless as you'd expect. The sound is perfectly fine too, but is used
purely for dialogue and the brief singalongs at the end, with musical highlights
culled from the various shows.
The extras are rather light here - just 20 or so pictures in a photo gallery
and the transcript of what happened when the duo's stand-ins were shown, as
stated earlier on in this review.
The disc contains 16 chapters, hence one for each topic which is fine, animated
but silent menus and, sadly, no subtitles in any language.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
