The Fast Show - Live [DVD]

Recorded live at London's Hammersmith Apollo in 1998, The Fast Show Live features all of the original cast of the highly successful sketch series (Caroline Aherne excepted) including Paul Whitehouse, Simon Day, Charlie Higson and Arabella Weir and practically all of their myriad characters and catchphrases. This live show effectively marks a last hurrah for The Fast Show team, with routines like the Coughing Bob Fleming singalong reworked from the series. However, as a feat of inventive stage management and quick costume changing, they do manage to maintain the Fastness of the TV series live.

It was the catchphrases which earned the series its immense popularity and they raise large, predictable cheers of recognition when wheeled out at the Apollo, from Unlucky Alf's opening "Oh, bugger!" to the "Suits you, sir!" of the intrusively camp boys in the menswear department. The show's reliance on these might have been annoying if it weren't for the fact that they were built on such esoteric, peripheral and complex sketch and character material. Who but the Fast Show team would have thought of taking the mickey out of bad European TV, even inventing their own mock-Esperanto to do so? Or similarly, lampooned all those old 1930s music hall comedians whose risque jokes are incomprehensible to modern audiences? These, mixed in with modern archetypes like Ron Manager or the endlessly poignant Ted and Ralph made The Fast Show at once comfortingly familiar yet endlessly surprising viewing. They were influential also: Colin Hunt is surely a crude prototype for The Office's David Brent.

On the DVD The Fast Show Live has no special features on this edition, disappointingly. --David Stubbs