Dom Robinson reviews
The Last Fast Show Ever:
Part 1
Distributed by
- Cert:
- Cat.no: BBCDVD 1037
- Running time: 78 minutes
- Year: 2000
- Pressing: 2000
- Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)
- Chapters: 75 plus extras
- Sound: Stereo
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English
- Widescreen: 16:9
- 16:9-enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: No
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Outtakes, Extra sound bites, Alternate menu schemes
Director:
Producers:
Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson
Screenplay:
Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson
Music:
Cast:
Paul Whitehouse, Charlie Higson, Simon Day, Mark Williams, John Thomson
and Arabella Weir.
Known as Brilliant! on BBC America, The Fast Show
was a hit sketch show on BBC2 which ran for three series, gained its own
theme night on BBC2 with a new episode of sketches, "You Ain't Seen These,
Right?", spawned a one-off special - "Ted and Ralph" - and
culminated in three final 40-minute TV shows broadcast between Christmas and
New Year 2000.
In the early days, the cast could count Caroline Aherne among its number
but she left to write and star in another success,
The Royle Family,
leaving Paul Whitehouse, Charlie Higson, Simon Day, Mark Williams,
John Thomson and, yes her bum does look big in that, Arabella Weir.
I really enjoyed the first two series of The Fast Show, but by the time
series 3 came along the ideas had begun to run dry, the aforementioned one-offs
weren't as funny as I'd hoped for and this final compilation, which has had
a third of the material broadcast edited out, had a few jokes worth laughing
at but was definitely a Christmas Special too far.
Many of the regulars returned such as: the sleazy 13th Duke of Wimbourne,
Competitive Dad, Louis Balfour - presenter of Jazz Club (Nice!), the thief
who's a little bit whooo a little bit wahay (so say the subtitles),
Jesse's Experiments (moving on from his diets), Channel 9, Swiss Toni,
"I'll get me coat!", Bob Fleming, Ted and Ralph, That's Amazing!, "..which was
nice" and scores more including a "Suits You" sketch cameo from
Johnny Depp, who apparently really wanted to be in a Fast Show
episode.
I don't recall John Thomson's astronaut character, nor the deaf stuntman
being in the series before and they certainly don't work.
The individual series were shot and presented in 4:3 fullscreen, but this
was the first venture into widescreen filming for the sketch show, save for
the Ted and Ralph special that concentrated solely on those two
characters. The anamorphic picture looks mostly very good and certainly better
than the BBC's treatment of its bitrate on SkyDigital since they dropped it
below a reasonable level last summer.
Here, the average bitrate is 7.64Mb/s - occasionally peaking close to 9Mb/s -
and the bitrate-skinflints at the BBC could never hope to attain that level
unless they gave that decision to someone with a brain. It used to look very
good before last summer, then it was dropped to a dreadful level leaving
artifacts all over the place and was slightly restored in mid-September when
the olympics began. I understand that those in charge deem the current bitrate
level acceptable, but it still looks awful. Programmes like Eastenders
look blocky as hell at times and when some stupid programme like My Family
or Office Gossip attempts to use that 'blurry film' look, which is
added AFTER the programme has been put together thus instantly making anything
unwatchable, it's artifact-city!
The stereo soundtrack is purely functional, giving clear English dialogue,
but nothing else is necessary.
There are a massive 75 chapters to this disc, covering the opening and closing
credits plus each individual sketch, selectable from two menu schemes featuring
DVD-related soundbites - a standard one and a Channel 9-inspired one.
Subtitles are in English only.
The extras contain eight minutes of Outtakes, an alternative
WWTBAMillionaire sketch and the promise of The Flesh Show!
which just has Colin's voice telling you that you're wrong. Eh?
FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
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OVERALL
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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2001.
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DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
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
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