"Actor: Bella Donna"

• The Fast Show - Series 2 | DVD | (18/08/2003) from £3.99   |  Saving you £12.00 (300.75%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The second series of The Fast Show races on from where the first series left off, taking the now-familiar characters and projecting them into new and unusual situations. The "Suits You" men are let loose as waiters in a restaurant, Indecisive Dave finally makes his mind up, Unlucky Alf tries his hand at courting, Bob Fleming splutters his way through a midnight Badger Watch and Channel 9 branches out into light-entertainment with predictably incomprehensible results. The seven episodes also add further depth to many of the catchphrase-reliant characters. Rowley Birkin QC finds a touching reason to wish he hadn't been "very, very drunk", Ted and Ralph's romance stutters on, Brilliant! gets depressed and things turn sour for Which Was Nice. All our favourites are present and correct, but the freshest laughs come from the new characters and less-established sketches, such as an inept croupier blundering through his first day on the job, Brilliant!'s dad ("Rubbish!"), haughty, mistake-prone history presenter Gideon Soames, and the world-weary Carl Hooper's unspectacular show "That's Amazing!". On the DVD: The Fast Show, Series 2 comes to DVD with no extras, aside from some nicely animated menus, episode and scene selection. --Paul Philpott

• The Fast Show - Series One | DVD | (05/08/2002) from £9.99   |  Saving you £6.00 (60.06%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Fast Show, like Viz comic and Private Eye magazine, is one of those comedic institutions whose principal appeal is its utter predictability. The jokes in every episode are exactly the same, every sketch an only slightly different path to one of a few familiar punchlines ("I'll get me coat", "Where's me washboard?", "Scorchio!", "Suits you, Sir," and so on): once the viewer or reader is in with the jokes, they feel part of the club. This sort of reductive comedy is extremely easy to do badly: it is testament to the writing and acting of Paul Whitehouse and his team that not only are most of the set-pieces funny every time they reappear (the overly prurient tailors, the pub know-all, the Trevor Brooking-esque football pundit Ron Manager), but that each individual sketch is funny more than once. This first series of The Fast Show does not include a couple of characters who became well-loved mainstays; neither the licentious car salesman Swiss Tony, for whom everything was "like making love to a beautiful woman", or the incomprehensible raconteur Rowley Birkin QC, had been developed at this stage. However, aficionados will regard this collection as indispensable for the beginning of the saga of awkward young aristocrat Ralph and his unrequited passion for his gardener, Ted: a funny yet oddly affecting rendering of love thwarted by circumstance. On the DVD: The Fast Show--Series 1 on disc includes interviews with the cast, and English subtitles. There is an episode selector and an individual scene selector, though the latter is confusingly laid out. --Andrew Mueller

• The Fast Show - Series 3 | DVD | (30/08/2004) from £6.98   |  Saving you £11.01 (157.74%)   |  RRP £17.99

  These eight episodes from the Fast Show's third series brought us sparking new characters like the 13th Duke of Wybourne No Offence Taff Lad and the Hearty Hikers and treats in the shape of Swiss Toni Dave Angel Eco-Warrior and the Posh Cockneys to join old favourites like Suits You Chanel 9 Colin Hunt Ted and Ralph and the ever-increasing parade of catchphrase heroes.

• Naqoyqatsi | Blu Ray | (16/04/2012) from £20.00   |  Saving you £4.99 (24.95%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh (Best Director, Traffic, 2000) presents Naqoyqatsi ('Life As War'), from filmmaker Godfrey Reggio, in collaboration with composer Philip Glass, whose original score features renowned cellist yo-yo Ma. in this cinematic concert - a follow-up to the critically acclaimed Koyaanisqatsi ('Life out of Balance'), and Powaqqatsi ('Life in transformation') – mesmerising images are plucked from everyday reality, then visually altered to chronicle the shift from a world organised by the principals of nature to one dominated by technology, the synthetic and the virtual. Extremes of intimacy and spectacle, tragedy and hope fuse in a tidal wave of visuals and music, giving rise to a unique artistic experience that reflects Reggio's vision of a brave new globalised world.

• The Fast Show - The Last Fast Show Ever - Part 1 | DVD | (04/12/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The success of The Fast Show has always relied on the number of sketches devoted to your favourite characters. While this, the last ever series, suffers a little for the loss of Caroline Aherne (presumably busy with The Royle Family?), and from the fact that those sketches based on a single catch-phrase or joke--Jessie's Diets, "Which was nice", and even the cough-prone Bob Fleming--seem to be running out of steam, the show's more rounded creations are all back and still going strong. Swiss Tony has emerged from therapy a new man, Colin Hunt gets the sack from his beloved office job and Ralph struggles on with his unrequited love for handyman Ted. There are new characters: a ragged, Charlton Heston-like astronaut who runs into different situations screaming, "What year is this? Who is the President?!", and a cynical, middle-aged woman who meets every note of human kindness she encounters with a sarcastic "Hah!", are particular standouts. However, as always, the series works best when the regular characters collide with contemporary phenomena, so here we have Indecisive Dave being phoned by a friend who's appearing on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?; the "Suits You!" tailors harassing an incognito Johnny Depp; the cheeky criminal stealing a child's Pokémon cards; John Actor playing hard-nosed interior designer Laurence Lewellyn Monkfish in Changing Monkfish; the send-up of recent gangster Brit flicks A Right Royal Barrel of Cockney Monkeys (populated entirely by pseudo-cockney public schoolboys); and a sketch in which Channel 9's gardening presenter is assisted by a topless woman. Nice Dimmocks! --Paul Philpott

• The Fast Show Live | DVD | (18/11/2002) from £6.23   |  Saving you £9.76 (156.66%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Recorded live at London's Hammersmith Apollo in 1998, The Fast Show Live features all of the original cast of the highly successful sketch series (Caroline Aherne excepted) including Paul Whitehouse, Simon Day, Charlie Higson and Arabella Weir and practically all of their myriad characters and catchphrases. This live show effectively marks a last hurrah for The Fast Show team, with routines like the Coughing Bob Fleming singalong reworked from the series. However, as a feat of inventive stage management and quick costume changing, they do manage to maintain the Fastness of the TV series live. It was the catchphrases which earned the series its immense popularity and they raise large, predictable cheers of recognition when wheeled out at the Apollo, from Unlucky Alf's opening "Oh, bugger!" to the "Suits you, sir!" of the intrusively camp boys in the menswear department. The show's reliance on these might have been annoying if it weren't for the fact that they were built on such esoteric, peripheral and complex sketch and character material. Who but the Fast Show team would have thought of taking the mickey out of bad European TV, even inventing their own mock-Esperanto to do so? Or similarly, lampooned all those old 1930s music hall comedians whose risque jokes are incomprehensible to modern audiences? These, mixed in with modern archetypes like Ron Manager or the endlessly poignant Ted and Ralph made The Fast Show at once comfortingly familiar yet endlessly surprising viewing. They were influential also: Colin Hunt is surely a crude prototype for The Office's David Brent. On the DVD The Fast Show Live has no special features on this edition, disappointingly. --David Stubbs

• The Fast Show: The Farewell Tour | DVD | (24/11/2003) from £3.69   |  Saving you £12.30 (333.33%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In October and November 2002 The Fast Show favourites took to the stage.... to rapturous applause. This sell-out tour represented the final outing for a host of favourite characters from the 'suit you' tailors to a musical incarnation of Ted and Ralph to the office joker Colin Hunt.