Dom Robinson reviews
The Complete First Series
Vision Video
- Cert:
- Cat.no: 0783042
- Running time: 180 minutes
- Year: 1998
- Pressing: 2001
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 6 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Stereo)
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: None
- Widescreen: 14:9 (1.55:1)
- 16:9-enhanced: No
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: None
Directors:
- Liddy Oldroyd
Producer:
- Sue Vertue
Screenplay:
- Jonathan Harvey
Music:
- Philip Pope
Cast:
- Linda: Kathy Burke
Tom: James Dreyfus
Suze: Beth Goddard
Jez: Brian Bovell
Beryl: Rosalind Knight
“It was this big, I tell you!”
Occasionally, Gimme Gimme Gimme has its bad days as well as its good days, but on the whole this flat-sharing comedy of two male-obsessed housemates, Linda (Kathy Burke) – complete with disastrous orange hair – and Tom (James Dreyfuss), who has fantasies aplenty about Peak Practice‘s Simon Shepherd. Linda, on the other hand, goes for Liam Gallagher, or more recently in the third series, Danny from Hear’Say.
While I thought that the comedy quotient would lessen as time passed on, I was surprised to find that it hadn’t and once you’d re-learned to appreciate the clever wordplay, endless smut and double-entendre of always-failing wannabe actor Tom and.. “well, what does she do for a living?” Linda you could jump straight into it again.
Making up the rest of the principal cast is ex-prostitute landlady Beryl (Rosalind Knight) and the upstairs well-to-do eco-friendly couple Suze (Big Bad World‘s Beth Goddard) and Jez (Prospects‘ Brian Bovell), each of which give their all to their characters.
All six episodes from the first series are here. It doesn’t really matter what the titles are as each one is packed with one-liners and doesn’t restrict itself to the subject matter alone. However, they are: Who’s That Boy, The Big Break, Legs & Co, Do They Take Sugar?, Saturday Night Diva and I Do, I Do, I Do.
Linda: “Where you goin?”
Tom: “Why, you gonna miss me?”
Linda: “Like a cat with no neck misses licking his own arsehole!”
Tom: “….is that a yes or a no?”
Although not treated quite as unfairly as Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), I can only give the picture rating 1/5, the “1” simply for trying, because the series was shot in anamorphic 16:9 widescreen, as shown on digital TV, but here it’s been cropped to 14:9 letterbox, as shown on analogue TV. Other than that it looks sharp and colourful enough.
The sound is stereo, plain and simple. It’s perfectly clear but never gets stretched in any way.
When it comes to any other additions to the disc you can forget it. No extras, no subtitles and no chapters – unless you consider one per 30-minute episode as a chapter! Menus are animated but silent.
Day of the Dead.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
0 OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.