Review of Men Behaving Badly Series 3

Introduction

This long running BBC comedy series (from Hartswood Films and Pearson TV) has now made its debut on DVD, one series at a time.

The series started in 1990 over on ITV. Harry Enfield (as Dermot) initially starred as Gary`s flatmate before Neil Morrissey (as Tony) arrived at the beginning of Series 2. At the end of the second series, ITV axed it because of poor viewing figures but Pearson took it across to the BBC, utilising the same team. The BBC could see that this series needed nurturing to realise its full potential and invested in it hoping it would turn out to be another of those memorable BBC successful sitcoms.

Sure enough, the series gained huge support from the BBC viewers, and with the welcome replacement of Harry Enfield with Neil Morrissey, it was ensured a successful run. So much so in fact that six full series were made (which ended in 1996), with a final additional `Last Orders` session at the end. The series made household names of its four main cast members Morrissey, Martin Clunes, Leslie Ash and Caroline Quentin.

Series 3 contains some choice episodes:

`Weekend`: Gary and Dorothy decide to discover their sexuality and exchange their fantasies, but neither of them can spell `Alsatian`. Tony gets a job at Les`s pub and is eager to learn how to mix cocktails.

`Cleaning Lady`: Dorothy thinks she could catch a disease from touching Gary`s carpet, and orders him to get a cleaner in. Gary is not happy, until he meets her.

`Marriage`: Gary and Dorothy go out for a candle lit meal (at the "Pasta Pig"). He makes the best out of a bad night by proposing to her and she is all up for it. Gary is as happy as Larry... until the morning after. Gary realises he doesn`t want to get married.

Video

Having seen most of MBB from VHS recordings (for some reason I never really got round to watching it the first time on air), it is a refreshing treat to see this series in broadcast quality video. Of course we get a 4:3 ratio here, being originally shot on video for TV, but image clarity is generally good.

Audio

Just Dolby Digital stereo here as you would expect, nothing special, but does the job.

Features

Much care and attention has been paid to the menus. They feature a collection of sound bites from the series with an animated `sofa` scene, with lots of floating icons from the series on screen. Very nice.

As regards extras, we get four interactive quizzes on the series, each containing three multi-choice questions. If all questions are correctly answered, it allows access to the special `out takes` section, and very funny a lot of them are too!

Conclusion

This third series was the first series to be screened by the BBC, and was scheduled after 10pm, so the scripts could go a little further. It was necessary to capture viewers early on, as interest would have been generated in the channel change, and thus the series had a bit of a mountain to climb.

The DVDs will no doubt sell very well, and fans of the series will probably collect all six of them. This is the best you will ever see Men Behaving Badly, and the Out takes make the package more appealing. It is also nice to get the whole series together, rather than having to buy two separate tapes as you would with the VHS release.