Skip to content
Dom Robinson reviews 
Series 6
PT Video
- Cert:
- Cat.no: PTDVD 1281
- Running time: 174 minutes
- Year: 1997
- Pressing: 2000
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 42
- Sound: Dolby Surround (Dolby Digital 2.0)
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: None
- Fullscreen: 4:3
- 16:9-Enhanced: No
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras : Scene index, Pub Quiz, Animated Menus, Out-takes
Director:
- Martin Dennis
Producer:
- Beryl Vertue
Writer:
- Simon Nye
Music:
- Alan Lisk
Cast:
- Gary: Martin Clunes (The Acid House, Carry On Columbus, It’s Good to Talk, The Revengers’ Comedies, The Russia House, Saving Grace, Shakespeare in Love, Staggered, Swing Kids, TV: All at Number 20, Demob, An Evening with Gary Lineker, Have I Got News for You, Hospital!, Hunting Venus, Lord of Misrule, Men Behaving Badly, Men Down Under, Never Come Back, Never Mind the Horrocks, Neville’s Island, No Place Like Home, Over Here, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) (2000), Rik Mayall Presents Dancing Queen, Sex ‘n’ Death, Shooting Stars, Suspicion, Touch and Go)
Tony: Neil Morrissey (The Bounty (1984), I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle, Staggered, Up ‘n’ Under, TV: Boon, Dive to Shark City with Neil Morrissey, The Flint Street Nativity, Happy Birthday Shakespeare, Have I Got News for You, Hunting Venus, Jack and the Beanstalk (1998), The Match, Men Behaving Badly, Men Down Under, My Summer With Des, Paris, Roger Roger, Shooting Stars, The Vanishing Man, A Woman’s Guide to Adultery)
Deborah: Leslie Ash (Curse of the Pink Panther, Dead on Time, Murder: Ultimate Grounds for Divorce, Nutcracker, Quadrophenia, Rosie Dixon – Night Nurse, TV: Cat’s Eyes, Driving Force ’86, The Gentle Touch, Haggard, The Happy Apple, Men Behaving Badly, Seconds Out, Shadey, Shooting Stars, Stay Lucky, The Tube)
Dorothy: Caroline Quentin (Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire, Party Party, TV: Don’t Tell Father, An Evening with Gary Lineker, The Innocent, Jonathan Creek, Kiss Me Kate, Men Behaving Badly, Robbie the Reindeer in Hooves of Fire, Up Line, Whose Line is it Anyway?)
George: Ian Lindsay (Food of Love, Little Dorrit, The Tall Guy, TV: Boon, Bramwell, Casualty, Forever Green, The Master, Men Behaving Badly, The Paradise Club)
Anthea: Valerie Minifie (Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair, Firelight, Miss Julie, The Pirates of Penzance, Queen of the Blues, TV: Alas Smith & Jones, A Dark Adapted Eye, Eastenders, A Man For All Seasons, Men Behaving Badly, One Foot in the Grave, Our Friends in the North, Paul Merton in Galton and Simpson’s…Twelve Angry Men, The Racing Game, The Railway Children (2000))
Men Behaving Badly, began life on ITV in 1991 with Harry Enfield and Martin Clunes as Dermot and Gary, two flatmates whose destiny in life is the three ‘B’s : booze, babes and more booze. Gary’s found the love of his life in the long-suffering Dorothy (Caroline Quentin, ex-wife of comedian Paul Merton), although he’s always after more and Dermot’s always on the lookout for his next love…and it always seems to be with Deborah (Leslie Ash).
From series 2 onwards, Neil Morrissey, aka Tony, replaced Harry Enfield as Gary’s flatmate always vying for Deborah’s affections, and since then the programme has gone from strength to strength, moving from ITV to BBC1 from series 3 onwards.
So what’s it all about? Gary and Tony are two flatmates whose aim in life is to drink as much as they can, be as crude as they can, and chat up as many women as they can, although in 99% of all cases, they only manage to fulfil the first two criteria.
Gary is a stressed-out supervisor for a security alarm company, working alongside the over-the-hill homely, cardigan-wearing George (Ian Lindsay) and middle-aged, rather clueless Anthea (Valerie Minifie). Tony (Neil Morrissey), the dim-witted type who’d flit from crap job to crap job to no job at all, depending on where the wind carried him.
Dorothy (Caroline Quentin) is a nurse and still lives with her parents, but spends most time with Gary – whether he likes it or not – and Deborah owns the flat upstairs. Tony would like to spend all of his time up there, but Deborah doesn’t whether Tony likes it or not. Given that her life is an equal mess to Tony’s – she has a VISA bill she can’t pay, negative equity, a feeling of no self-worth and no steady job – they should get on like a house on fire then!
The series was also shipped overseas with a new cast for the American version including Justine Bateman (Family Ties), Rob Schneider (Judge Dredd
, Demolition Man) and Ron Eldard (fireman Shep in series 2 of E.R.). It didn’t take long to get cancelled though as the men didn’t behave particularly badly at all.
Click on each of the following pictures for a sound-bite from that episode!
Stag NightIn the first episode, it’s Gary’s stag night – obviously – “and tonight I shall be acting like a stag…”. Indeed he does, when he finds he’s woken up with a mysterious woman named Sally-Anne (Race Davies, Eastenders‘ Jackie Owen), making him feel good about himself until he finds out Dorothy had a similar venture. Tony, meanwhile, has a venture of his own in the Birthing Pool business and is seen starting to win Debs over, despite stealing some of her underwear earlier on…
WeddingThe basis of the episode is obvious, but Debs has finally decided to allow Tony to sleep with her. However, he’ll have to wait until Gary and Dorothy get married and you can expect some last-minute hitches, not least in the decoration of the wedding car by pub landlord Ken (John Thomson).
Click on the picture to the right to find out what’s on Tony’s mind.
JealousyThis is what Gary and Dorothy feel now that their wedding didn’t quite go to plan, while Debs and Tony are shag-happy – and also how Tony feels when he thinks other men are after Debs. They all go for a weekend in the country to smooth things over. While Gary has a big problem giving up smoking, resorting to expensive extremes, Tony speculates what it would be like if you got married but had never seen your bride-to-be’s bits and pieces.
This episode also features a guest appearance from The Full Monty‘s Hugo Speer as another camper.
Watching TVThis is one of the lads’ favourite habits and here they get to draw Debs and Dorothy into their Star Trek heaven, with Gary’s thoughts on where the “captain’s log” originated and Tony gets tricked into a game of “which historical figure can we dress up as from items found in our bedrooms”, resulting in a distinct Mel Gibson moment.
Gary is also asked whether he thinks he watches too much TV… something I’d know nothing about, he said settling down to the entire series 6 of Men Behaving Badly…
TenThis is the age that Gary and Tony wish they still were given that their late 30s is creeping up on them and is also the age of Dorothy’s nephew who’s coming to stay. When he arrives, they’re greatly surprised to learn that he’s one of those kids that actually does as he’s told, even when it comes to ferrying a beer from the fridge or doing the dusting.
The conversation, between the adults, also turns to the places in life where they’ve made love – and who’s had the most exciting life out of all of them. For Tony though, it’s crunch time: whenever you’re in a relationship – whoever it is – you’ll have to meet the folks at some point. It’s crunch time for Dorothy and Gary too as they’re off to see a counsellor about their relationship.
SofaIn the last episode of the series, it’s time to part company – for Gary and the 25-year-old sofa in the title. It’s disgusting, covered in gallons of bodily fluid and needs to be destroyed. Tony has his own problems with a monster hangover and a snake.
Both of them take time out though, to reminisce about the past – Gary about when they first got the sofa and he punted his tortoise the whole nine yards and Tony about the problems of smoking in school.
Presented in a 4:3 ratio and free of artifacts, the picture looks great and everything you could ever want. It can often be comfortably zoomed in to a fill a widescreen TV without losing anything of importance. The average bitrate is 5.24Mb/s for each episode.
The sound, presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround), comes across as clear as a bell. Obviously, being a TV show free of special FX it isn’t going to be one to test your speakers to the limit, but it’s spot on for what it needs to do.
Extras :
Chapters : There are 7 chapters per episode – making 42 in all – with an onscreen menu decked out like cans of lager in the fridge. In each episode, there’s one apiece for the opening and closing credits with five left for the programme itself, so the five lager cans actually lead to chapters 2-6.
However, this doesn’t quite work for episode one as the opening credits came after the first scene, Marriage, so selecting that brings up the opening credits and not the scene itself.
Languages and Subtitles : All the episodes are in English, as you’d expect, but there are no subtitles which is a shame. I’d like to see this rectified for future releases if possible.
And there’s more… : Four Interactive Quizzes are included, in the form of a pub quiz game to test your knowledge of the series. Get it right or wrong and you’ll hear a cry of enthusiasm or jeering in a soundbite from Gary or Tony. Complete the quizzes (3 questions apiece) and you’ll be rewarded with special out-takes.
Menu : The main menu is well-animated and scored, bringing the charm and poise of the lads’ lifestyle to life with things floating around the living room, including a blown-up condom, while Gary and Tony burp, fart and chant “Lager, Lager, Lager”.
Overall, I’ve been waiting for Men Behaving Badly to be released on DVD for ages. It’s one of my favourite TV series and the tapes are getting a bit worn now.
It’d be nice to have a few more extras, even perhaps a running audio commentary from the cast and crew as the out-takes show they all clearly had a lot of fun in making it.
For now though, what’s here is well worth the asking price and it looks and sounds as good as it should.
Series 2 through 5 will be released in June and July, so I’m looking forward to those, but I’d love to also see releases for the Xmas specials from 1997 and 1998’s three-parter “Last Orders”, but this time in anamorphic widescreen and not cropped to 4:3.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL Visit the official website at : Men Behaving Badly.com
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.