I got my copy of the first DVD set of The Complete QI a couple of weeks or so ago and watched it over several days. There are 9 discs in the first set. Series A to D allot 2 discs per series with the 9th disc being a compilation of extras. Series A to C have 12 episodes and Series D has 13.
Stephen Fry hosts the show and Alan Davies is the permanent panelist. The quiz is about things that are Quite Interesting. There are points to be won and points to be lost. Alan has had a long string of minus scores over the years. The guest panels are quite interesting themselves. Bill Bailey has the largest number of appearances with 42 and Phil Jupitus follows with 38. The rest of the guests are often well known comedians, actors, news and TV presenters. Too many to mention, never mind that most wouldn't know them anyway. The comedians fill most of the guest slots. As you'd guess, there are plenty of jokes. I usually laugh a lot per episode, even after 3 or 4 views on some episodes now, and I learn something too. I don't remember much of it later but occasionally something pops out of the abyss. Often it's about cocks. There are some massive ones out there in the world. For example, the Blue Whale's penis is 16 feet long. Not that I'm looking, anecdotal evidence is fine for me.
It's nice to see the shows on DVD. I watched them first on YouTube and this is much better. The plan is to have the whole Stephen Fry years 2003-2015 out in four volumes, two came out in May and two are due in September. I preordered the first two sets as soon as I saw they were available and only paid about 50 bucks each delivered from the UK. There was a price drop before they were released and they honored that even though the price was higher when I preordered. The sets are £45 on Amazon UK currently. Add some shipping and exchange and you'd be looking at over $130. Depends on the exchange. The set is also Region 2 so anyone ordering it would need a multi-region DVD player or software to watch on a PC.
My only complaint about the sets is delivery system for the episodes. The menu above is from the first disc. It pops up with the episodes and a yellow arrow. Highlight the one you want to see, click and watch. There is no Play All button. I would have liked that. There aren't any subtitles, another thing I would have liked. The episodes don't always have chapter stops either. Minor quibble but it might have been nice to skip the intro music, even though I do like the catchy theme. That's not too much to complain about. I did also wish they had included the pilot episode but they haven't so far.
There are 4 extras with about 2.5 hours of material. The Making Of Qi is an hour long BBC documentary. It's pretty good. There's plenty of backstory and how it got made sort of stuff plus interviews with people who were on the show on why it's so good. I'd seen it a couple of times on YouTube but watched it again. 40 Minutes Of Unseen Archive Material is unused material from the original record. The unseen stuff was fun to see.
The show takes about 2 hours to record and they edit that down to about 29 minutes. In the later series there is a longer 45 minute show that appears a couple of days after the original half hour show airs. The longer episodes are included on the DVDs. I was sort of wondering about what they would do with that. Glad for more material. The longer shows is why they only have three series each in sets 2-4. There's also the increase in the number of episodes as the program continues on. There are 12 in Series A to C, 13 for Series D and E, back to 12 for Series F and then to 18 permanently with Series G. Two of those 18 episodes are compilation shows with clips from the series.
The other two featurettes, How To Do QI Research By The Head Elf and All The Buzzers In One Massive Compilation, are about a half hour each. The Buzzer compilation was surreal after a while. You can see the lite button in front of Alan there on the right. If you haven't seen the show, all the panelists have a different buzzer each episode. Hearing them all in a row is something else. The research featurette is a bit dull but the process is interesting. Massive research goes into the questions and they occasionally get it wrong. Points have been added and taken away in other episodes as the knowledge changes. The other fellow up there is John Lloyd, he's the creator and producer of the show. That was the time he appeared on the show as a panelist.
Other than the small complaints I have I'm quite happy to have the series on DVD. It's not going to appeal to everyone but those that I know that watch really like the show.
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