Get the beers in (Early Doors - Series 2 (DVD))

Name: freediveheaven

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Product:	Early Doors - Series 2 (DVD)
Date:	20/07/08 (166 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent sharp comedy writing

Disadvantages: Poor DVD extras

Early Doors is a super little comedy that was originally shown on BBC 2 and in all two series have been made so far however whether a third one is planned or not I have no idea. I have seen series one repeated on cable channels but never series two so I was pleasantly surprised to see that Amazon were selling the DVD for series two for £4.98 so I snapped it up. In fact in a strange pricing policy it was cheaper to buy series 1 and 2 separately rather than the combined DVD version.

Early Doors comes from the writing team of Craig Cash and Phil Mealy both of whom also play characters in the comedy. Cash also appeared in and co-wrote The Royle Family and there are a number of similarities between the two comedies, not least the fact that both are very funny they also share the same style of humour. The comedy writing in this show is all about sharp dialogue and the interaction of a group of fairly normal working class people in a single social setting.

All of the action takes place in a back street Manchester pub called The Grapes, the name for the show comes from those regular customers who turn up bang on the opening time of the pub (before the days of extended licences for opening times). Cash and Mealy play too best mates, Joe and Duffy, who meet after work to enjoy a beer or three and delay returning to their wives, Cash character is almost an exact copy of the one he plays in the Royle Family while Mealy character is a bit of a jack the lad who delights in showing off pictures of his mistress in various states of undress and he has also slept with a few of the female regulars in the pub as well. Ken ( John Henshaw from the post office adverts) is the pub landlord, he is a rather mean no nonsense sort of bloke who has a soft spot for his step daughter (Christine Bottomly ) who is able to wrap him around her little finger. She lives with him and treats him as her Dad after her mother left Ken for his best friend. Ken also lives in the pub with his mother, Jean , ( Rita May) who never actually enters the bar area, instead she sits upstairs watching TV, eating constantly and gossiping with the cleaner as she claims to be too ill to do any housework.

The other pub regulars are a mixed bunch, Tommy ( Rodney Litchfield) is a tight fisted miserable pensioner who rudely declines all offers of going in a round, Eddie ( Mark Benton from the Nationwide adds) and his wife Joan ( Lorraine Cheshire) are a very simple minded couple and Eddie is the butt of a lot of the jokes from the others and he can be rather annoying but very good natured and my favourite two characters are Nigel ( Peter Wight) and Phil ( James Quinn) two of the laziest, incompetent and useless police officers you are every likely to meet. Their entire day is spent trooping round the pubs getting free handouts of drinks, they always go in the back kitchen out of sight and their accounts of their day are one of the funniest parts of each episode. The final character of note is Tanya (Susan Cookson) who in the second series provides some love interest for Ken.

Running throughout the second series there are a number of story lines, Ken is under pressure from the brewery to boost turnover which leads to him holding one of the funniest pub quizzes, you only get to hear the answers but from them it would seem that all the questions were from the News of the World stories, this is an example of how clever the comedy is and the fact that there are many subtle nuances throughout the episodes. Ken is also under pressure from a romantic front as Tanya makes her feelings more obvious and he is wracked with self doubt. It is also his daughters 21st birthday and following her attempts to track down her real father in series one he is due to attend the celebrations, there were some touching moments in series one on this topic and this closeness in the relationship between Ken and Melanie again comes through in this series and all the episodes build up to the final one which is the party itself..

Away from Ken, Duffy is anguished after his wife finds out about his cheating and then confesses her own affair and promptly leaves him while Eddie and Joan are mourning the loss of a family pet.

In all there are six episodes on the DVD and each one just gets funnier than the last. In particular it is the development of the two rogue police officers that starts to get more and more surreal, the episode where they discuss a drugs raid they attended while calmly rolling a joint as they tell the story is hilarious as they get more and more indignant about offenders while all the time their own behaviour is outside of the law. Given that both are veteran police officers just makes it even funnier.

What I especially like about this comedy is the relative simplicity of the show that belies the complex interaction of the characters; there are only three settings used with the pub, the main bar, back kitchen and the upstairs living area which is the domain of Jean. Rita May is brilliant in the role and there is a wonderful recurring joke that when she is slighted by a put down from either Ken or the cleaner Winnie (Joan Kempson) then she is off camera and all you hear is the sound of her inhaler as she indignantly gasps for breath making a sound like a kazoo.

I like the fact that there is no audience laughter to clutter the clarity of the lines; so much of the humour is of the dead pan style that I like while at the same time there are some nice human touches as you can sense what it means to be part of a small struggling community pub.

DVD Extras

I have to say this is the one area that lets the DVD down as the extras are a bit thin. There is an out takes section which is not very funny at all as all the mistakes are just missed lines or verbal stumbling and then there is a writer's commentary which again has little to offer the viewer. I would have thought they could have included some deleted scenes just to give something a bit more meaningful.

Despite this at a price of £4.98 you are getting each episode for just over eighty pence which is excellent value for such a great comedy.

Thanks for reading and rating my review.

Summary: Comedy in the same style as The Royle Family