PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

In The Red 1998 Mini-series

In The Red 1998 Mini-series. Based on the novel In The Red by Mark Travener, TV series created and written by Malcolm Bradbury, directed by Marcus Mortimer.

Alun Armstrong plays DS Frank Jefferson and Warren Clark plays George Cragge in this rather dark comedy. Someone is killing bank managers, George works for BBC radio news, he's in contact with the killer. The Reform Party has a solid subplot about a by-election. The party office is in a poor part of town, a noisy dominatrix upstairs, another naughty noisy business downstairs. The street is crowded with sex shops and strips clubs. One of the murdered bank managers had just been to the dominatrix before he was murdered.

In another subplot Stephen Fry and John Bird play two BBC controllers who are trying to oust the current General Director of the BBC by creating a terrible show that embarrasses the Corporation. Stephen wants the job for himself and hints that Bird will be his second in command. Fry and Bird play the same characters in the the BBC Radio/TV show Absolute Power.

There's a great cast besides Alun and Warren Clarke: Victoria Carling, Sally Phillips, Richard Griffiths, Rebecca Front, Reece Shearsmith, David Ryall, Lee Ingleby, Richard Wilson, Rachel Fielding, John Sessions, Mark Gatiss, Siobhan Redmond, Rik Mayall, Steve Pemberton, Kevin Eldon, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Vicki Pepperdine and more I didn't know.

I enjoyed the heck out of it and would recommend it highly. You can see a poor copy on YouTube. Here's part one, the other two episodes are on the up loaders web page.

Jeopardy!

Stephen Fry is the host of the new UK version of Jeopardy. He's got a bit more time for banter, the show runs an hour with 15 mins of commercials, and there's an extra round. The rest of the program is familiar enough. I don't care that much for the US version and haven't seen it in years. I doubt I'd watch any more of the 24 episode series beyond the first one.

Absolute Power Series 2

Absolute Power Series 2 was even more hilarious than the first series. Stephen Fry is never better. That was a well spent humor dollar. I look forward to watching them again someday.

Absolute Power Series 1

 

I watched the first series of Absolute Power today. It's a 2003 Stephen Fry sitcom about a PR firm. Stephen is partner with John Bird in an agency. All their clients seem to have some issue or another, the sort of thing that needs a spin doctor, or a magician to get them out of their predicament. Stephen's solutions get more and more extreme as the 6 episodes play. By the end of the first series he's lied so well a guy died.

Along the way there were many laughs. Sometimes I was laughing out loud. The scripts are really quite brilliant and the move the story long masterfully. It might help to know some of the celeb names in the show but it's not necessary, the situations are what's going to get the laughs.

Stephen and John are joined in their office by James Lance, Zoe Telford, Sally Bretton and Nick Burns. Some might remember Sally from Not Going Out. Absolute Power was created by Mark Tavenor who created the radio series that preceded the TV show. The series was written by Guy Andrews, Scott Cherry, Mark Lawson, Andrew Rattenbury and Georgia Pritchett. John Morton is the director.

I picked this up from Amazon UK and it's a region 2 DVD. Often you can tell from the red number on the front of the DVD. It's the rating system. There is swearing. I like swearing.

Stephen Fry - The Definitive Collection

I found this set on Amazon UK for 7 pounds, plus the same in postage, making this 8 DVD set just under twenty bucks delivered to me in the US. It's a collection of some of the non-fiction Television that Stephen presents on BBC. I've seen all of these programs before, some on DVD from the library and some on YouTube, and enjoyed them. It's nice to have them on DVD, and for so cheap. This is a Region 2 set so it won't play in most US DVDs, you'd need to have a multi region player or use VLC Player on a PC. Here's the run down.

Stephen Fry & The Gutenberg Press - Stephen spends an hour looking at the invention of the press. A guy carves a working one out of wood. 

Stephen Fry: The Secret Life Of The Manic Depressive - Stephen spends 120 minutes talking about his depression. He interviews others about their depression.

Stephen Fry - Wagner And Me - Stephen visits Germany in this 89 minute program. He talks about Richard Wagner, his music, and his mixed feelings about the Nazi connection.

Stephen Fry In America - A series of 6 hour long programs have Stephen driving around the US in one of those black London cabs. He visits people and places in all 50 states.

Stephen Fry: The Last Chance To See - Back in 1989 Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine did a BBC radio show about six endangered animals. Stephen and Mark visit the same animals 20 years later in this 6 part TV program.

A Bit Of Fry & Laurie Series 1-4

Between 1985 and 1989 Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie made 26 episodes of A Bit Of Fry & Laurie. I had seen the first two series on PBS back in the late 80s but it wasn't until a few years ago that I saw the 3rd and 4th series on DVD. I finally ordered myself a copy, I chose to get a British DVD set because it was cheaper and more complete. It's minor stuff, a couple of bits of background music has changed and the bit where Stephen and Hugh sing Hey Jude had been cut for the US release. Nothing too worrying to miss but it was cheaper than buying the US sets and it comes in a nice box set. It's a sketch comedy show with Hugh occasionally doing a musical number. There's plenty of word play and silly nonsense. It gets pretty physical at times with Hugh getting smacked a lot. All the episodes are just under a half hour long so there are plenty of jokes. I liked a lot of them, though I skipped one or two that I had seen enough. I'd seen the 1st and 2nd series quite a number of times so the last two series were fresher to me and that made me laugh a bit more. This is a show that belongs in a well stocked comedy library. The same can be said of the ITV production of Jeeves And Wooster with Stephen as Jeeves and Hugh as Bertie.

The Last Leg Series 13

I found a page on YouTube of the current series, 13, of The Last Leg. They started airing January 26 and the YouTube person started uploading the 8 videos the 6th of this month. I hadn't seen them anywhere else so far and I had trouble finding nice copies of Series 12 last year. I just assumed Channel 4 was just getting them taken down as fast as they were being posted. As usual Adam Hills hosts and Josh Widdicombe and Alex Brooker co-host. They talk about the news and have guests. David Tennant, Stephen Fry, Richard Ayoade, Noel Fielding and Kathy Burke head the list of folks I like to see. By the 7th show they've really started to spend more time on the Paralympic Games.

QI Series H to M

My copies of the 3rd and 4th volumes of QI arrived today and I've already watched 2 discs. Don't worry, there's plenty more, with 13 in each set it will take a few days to get through them. Each series has a letter and each letter has 16 episodes. You can only get them in the UK and you'd need a special player to play them if you did buy them. The price is about $45 each delivered to the US. I know I'm excited, QI is one of my favorite shows, I know I'll watch them a few times.

Qi - Series A to D

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.

Qi - DVD Release May 8 2017

I was excited to see that the first two volumes of The Complete Qi are coming out May 8, 2017. I already have mine ordered. Each volume is listed at £48 on Amazon UK, but when I checked my order the price had fallen to £40 each. Must have been a temporary price decrease since I ordered a few days ago. If you wait a while the price should fall but I'm not going to wait. I've ordered a few DVD sets from Amazon UK and they often will have a lower price in the invoice than on the page. Usually it's a pound or less different. Never been sure why.

The DVDs are Region 2 PAL so a special player is needed for those in Region 1. That's includes the US and Canada. I bought a cheap all region DVD player from Amazon for less than 40 bucks last year. You can also play these on your PC with the help of VLC Player. I'll just be glad to have really nice copies of the show to re-watch. It's a favorite of mine.

The first volume has Series A to D on 10 discs and the second volume has Series E to G on 9 discs. I'm wondering what they will do about the series with regular and XL episodes. Both F & G have XL versions. The shows premiered at about a 29 minutes and a few days later a 43 minute version aired. I won't dump my downloads from YouTube just yet. No word on Amazon as to when the rest of the series will arrive. Hopefully the sales are good enough that they will finish up the Stephen Fry episodes at least.