Victoria Wood – As Seen On TV Complete

Distributor: 2 Entertain
Certificate: 15 | region 2 | 2 disc set | 2007
Extras: Yes

cast
Victoria Wood, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Denis Lawson, Celia Imrie, Maureen Lipman, Duncan Preston, Susie Blake, Patricia Routledge

After having made her breakthrough on New Faces and appeared on That’s Life Victoria Wood had latterly been writing comic plays for ITV, she then moved into what would be her forte, the sketch show, after a well received series called Wood and Walters (co-starring Julie Walters) Wood headed off to the BBC for the now legendary As Seen on TV.

A hilarious mix of opening stand up (always of the minutiae of daily life kind), songs, sketches and the faux soap Acorn Antiques. Over the course of two series and one Christmas special (all included here) and armed with her own rep company of players (including the likes of Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Susie Blake and Duncan Preston) Wood became the most important female comic in the UK and easily the funniest.

There is so much comedic gold here and it hasn’t dated at all from Patricia Routledge’s fruity monologues as Kitty, Susie Blake’s bored continuity announcer and best of all Acorn Antiques which plunders the style (or lack of it) of Crossroads to great effect. There is an edition in every episode and absolutely nothing happens but its hilarious and like Crossroads its full of shaking scenery, mistakes within the script and things going wrong.

Add to this some brilliant fake documentaries and a couple of funny/touching songs per episode and you are in for a real treat. We’ve long since worn out our taped off the telly videos so to have them pristine on DVD is brilliant.

Not to be missed tv at its best.