5 Britcoms I want on Region 1 DVD!

Some of the best stuff I’ve seen come out of the UK has been in a small, grainy box on Youtube and that needs to change in a hurry.  Come on BBC video, get cracking and get these shows ready for me to purchase!

The Mighty Boosh is a splendidly surreal trip into the universe of Vince Noir and Howard T.J. Moon (Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt).  Each episode finds the duo faced with a bizarre foe (often played by Fielding or Barratt) who often wants, or steals, something ridiculous from them.  Loaded with big laughs from the stars along with Rich Fulcher, Michael Fielding and a guy in an ape suit, the Boosh is a must have for my DVD collection.  Favorite characters include the Hitcher, the Crack Fox, Saboo, local crocodile Eric Phillips, and, of course, Old Gregg.  Look into this one if you love bizzarre comedy.

Peep Show series one is available but there are four more series out on DVD in the UK.  What happened?  Get those discs out.  A look inside the twisted minds’ of best friends, Mark and Jez (David Mitchell and Robert Webb), Peep Show pushes the boundary of good taste with each episode and I love it.  How can such horrible characters keep me wanting to see more of their story?  The best sopporting character has got to be Super Hans.

A similar case is I’m Alan Partridge starring the brilliant Steve Coogan.  Alan’s mock talk show Knowing Me, Knowing You and series one of I’m Alan Partridge are available but where is my series two?  Long before Ricky Gervais made you cringe uncomfortably, Alan was getting himself into some pretty awkward situations.  The biggest blowhard since Ted Baxter, Partridge is a great program that I want to see properly and in its entirety, please.  Fantastic stuff.

From Father Ted creator Graham Linehan comes the hilarious I.T. Crowd.  Moss and Roy are socially inept computer geeks who work in the basement of Reynholm Industries; their new boss, Jen, knows absolutely nothing about computers.  The set-ups in this sitcom are fantastic.  Roy trapped under a desk or Moss attempting to extinguish a fire don’t sound particualarly funny, but they are.  Snappy writing and great performances (especially Richard Ayoade as Moss) highlight the 12 episodes produced thus far.

Another sitcom featuring, and directed by, the aforementioned Richard Ayoade is Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace.  The show is a bit high concept, which may explain why it lasted only one series, but it is ace.  Back in the 80s, schlock horror writer Garth Marenghi (the brilliant Matthew Holness) created a TV show which never saw the light of day, except for a brief run in Peru.  In the new millenium, however, the network asked him to release six episodes of the program spliced together with interviews of the cast.  A hilarious send up of cheap 80s sci-fi/horror, Darkplace needs to be on a shelf in my living room.

If you can find any of these shows anywhere on the world wide internet, watch them immediately.  Otherwise, wait and see if they arrive on this side of the pond for purchase as proper DVDs.  You will not be disappointed.

Honorable mention:  Nathan Barley and The Inbetweeners.  The first is a cult hit and the second is quite recent.

Life on Mars USA

Coming to ABC on October 9 at 10/9c is an American remake of the stellar BBC drama Life on Mars and I feel equal parts dread and optimism.  The British version stars John Simm as Sam Tyler, a modern day cop who is run down by a car and upon waking finds himself trapped in 1973.  Sam, along with his 70s boss Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister) solves cases in the past while trying to find out how to return to the present.  “Am I mad, in a coma or back in time?” Sam asks in the opening credits of each episode.

The short run of BBC shows (just 16 total episodes in the case of LoM) allows for the development of neat and tidy little story arcs that do not get bogged down by network executives wishing to stretch out a successful TV program’s run.  Which brings me to concern number one.  The mystery central to LoM works great in the shortened BBC series format, but I wonder if it has the legs to carry an American show over 4-5 seasons.  Will we all get sick of hearing Sam’s weekly question about his mental state?  Certainly the writers will throw us for some loops, but I have my doubts on this issue.

Another worry is the horrible pilot episode that leaked to the internet and had a brief lifespan on ABC.com.  The episode was just a clone of the BBC pilot with one major exception: the running time.  The BBC receives funding from license fees rather than ad revenue which means an hour long program is exactly that, not 47 minutes.  The US pilot cut a full 13 minutes of story from the British version and, wow, did it ever show.  The characters were poorly realized, the story wrapped too quickly, the pacing was all wrong, and it just didn’t work.  Thankfully all of the characters have been recast (except for Jason O’Mara as Sam) because chemistry was definitely absent.  Colm Meaney, as much as I like him, just failed to convince me that he could knock Jason O’Mara’s block off with a right cross.

That being said, the new cast brings me hope for the Americanized version of Life on Mars.  Things started looking up with the addition of the underrated Gretchen Mol as Annie and Michael Imperioli as Ray, a role seemingly tailor made for him.  The end all, however, came with the announcement that Harvey Keitel would play Gene Hunt…yes, Harvey Keitel in his first ever recurring TV role.  He looks like a guy who could knock anyone’s lights out with a single punch.

The proof is in the pudding, so I’ll give the new version of Life on Mars a fair chance to win me over, but if it falters I can always rewatch the BBC original.