OBLONG!!!!!

78% Recycled Material
Review date: 2005-10-11 Rating: 4 out of 10

This rather strange DVD is a live recording of a charity gig held in March 2004, and has a very amateurish feel to it. I'm a big fan of Alan Partridge (a.k.a. Steve Coogan) and Ricky Gervais, but I was hugely disappointed by this show because I've seen nearly all this material before in their other performances. Large chunks of Partridge's material were used before in his 1998 live stand-up DVD, and Ricky Gervais's entire routine was featured in his last DVD (Politics) and in the snippets he recorded for Comic Relief on BBC1. Alan Partridge hosts the whole evening, although he reads much of his script from a clipboard - possibly because Coogan couldn't be bothered to learn his lines. This totally kills off his rhythm and makes the show feel slow and unspontaneous. This is NOT Partridge at his funniest. The routine between Partridge and Simon Pegg as the Milky Bar Kid was good, but again it was also performed on Comic Relief on BBC1 in 2005. The Little Britain segment is an insult to any fans of the show - it's one very short sketch ("the only gay in the village") which has already been performed in the actual TV show, and is nothing more than a token appearance by Lucas and Walliams. The show was padded out by a few other third rate comedians that I'd never heard of and failed to make me laugh. Partridge fans will enjoy the extras on here - particularly the interview with Roger Daltrey on Radio Norwich, which makes the DVD slightly better value. As it's for charity you can't complain too much, but I feel this was one very lazy effort by everyone involved.

Product Details/Specifications