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Dom Robinson reviews
Complete Series 3
PT Video
- Cert:
- Cat.no: PTDVD 8095
- Running time: 145 minutes
- Year: 1978
- Pressing: 2001
- Region(s): 0, PAL
- Chapters: 13
- Sound: Mono
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: None
- Fullscreen: 4:3
- 16:9-Enhanced: No
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £9.99
- Extras: Interview with Brian Cosgrove
Director:
- Chris Taylor
Producer:
- Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall
Written by:
- Brian Trueman
Music:
- Joe Griffiths
Narrator:
- Joe Lynch
# “Jump in, we’ll take you for a spin and show you round theWheelie world!” #
And now the end is near as the third and final series of Chorlton and theWheelies drops onto DVD with more stop-frame animation from the late 70s.Fenella, the wicked witch in Spout Hall who sounds like she might be the mother of Nige fromChannel 4’s late-night review show, Vids (albeit with less foul language),has drained all the colour and laughter from the usually-happy landof the Wheelies and you know someone’s been dropping a tab of somethingconspicuous when help arrives in the form of orange dragon Chorlton, as helands in a brightly coloured egg. He’s so-called because he comes from theManchester area of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, despite having a Yorkshire accent.
This DVD contains the entire second series of 13 episodes, including :
- Spot the Happiness Dragon: Fenella casts a spell to steal Chorlton’sspots, but while one part of the plan works out, it causes spots to be spreadaround Spout Hall, Wheelie World and everywhere BUT Chorlton!
- Free-Wheeling Fenella: Wheelie World has discovered a new craze -skateboards – and after failing to get rid of him, Fenella tries to killChorlton off by jumping on her own set of wheels and going after him.
- The Royal Wheely-World Pipe Band: It’s the swansong for Chorlton andthe Wheelies and Fenella has all but given up trying to cause everyone harm.It’s “New Gear” and everyone’s due a service, but will the season of goodwillrub off on Fenella?
The episodes presented here are :
1. Fenella and the Face Fungus
2. Spot the Happiness Dragon
3. Queen Doris’ Silver Jubilee
4. Chorlton and the Spinning Spell
5. The Day The Lights Went Out
6. Free-Wheeling Fenella
7. Hop, Skip and Crunch8. Hide and Shriek
9. Octoblob at Twilight
10. Pablo’s World
11. Skateboard Special
12. Some Like It Hot
13. The Royal Wheely-World Pipe Band
Chorlton has doubts about the Monty Python spoof.The picture looks better than the first two series with less print damageand a lack of jerkiness that affected early episodes. Presented in 4:3 fullscreen,you might not think it was made nearly 25 years ago.The average bitrate is 6.21b/s, peaking over 7Mb/s.
The quality of the sound is the same. It’s in mono which comes across clearlyin some episodes, while others sound rather muffled.
As with series 1 & 2, there are no subtitles, but we are granted an extra inthe form of a 12-minute Interview with Brian Cosgrove, in which heputs forward the answers to nine questions. Alas, whoever set up thecamera and sound needs shooting since it looks too dark, the microphone is toofar from Brian and they could have re-shot some of the answers to save us seeinghim having a hearty cough.
The disc has a neat animated menu with the classic theme tune and Fenella”pops up” all over the place as ever. There’s one chapter apiece for each ofthe 11-minute episodes.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
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.