The Fast Show - Series One [DVD] [1994]

Built up from sketch ideas rejected when they were working on Harry Enfield and Chums, Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson conceived The Fast Show as a lean, protein-packed comedy package. The idea was to cut the essence of sketches and characters without undue build-up--hence the high number of catchphrases the show yielded. "Suits you, sir", "Brilliant!", "You ain't seen me, right?" and even "Chris Waddle" were all quickly established in 1994's opening series, whose highlights are on this video. Despite its relentless verbal riffing, slapstick and gleeful use of four-letter words, such as Whitehouse's "Arse!"-grunting sidekick to Coughing Bob Fleming, there's a very knowing subtlety about The Fast Show and a freshness to the subject matter. "Channel Neus", the skit on the TV station of indeterminate foreign origin is very cleverly turned, as is Whitehouse's incomprehensible pre-war comedian Arthur "Where's me washboard?" Atkins, while the sketch in which old man Unlucky Alf walks up a road and falls down a hole is, although it may not appear so on paper, a mini-comedy masterclass. Then, there's the perverse pathos of young landowner Ralph's infatuation for his elderly gardener, Ted. This pair are the least "Fast", yet possibly best characters on the show. --David Stubbs

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