Men Behaving Badly - Series 6 (DVD)

Men Behaving Badly - Series 6 (DVD) ... Entertainment / Features of the DVD: Full Screen, PAL / The ultimate small-screen representation of Loaded-era lad culture--albeit a culture constantly being undermined by its usually sharper female counterpart--there seems little argument that Men Behaving Badly was one of 1990s' definitive sitcoms. Certainly the booze-oriented, birds-obsessed antics of Martin Clunes' Gary and Neil Morrissey's Tony have become every bit as connected to Britain's collective funny bone as Basil Fawlty's inept hostelry or Ernie Wise's short, hairy legs. Yet, the series could easily have been cancelled when ITV viewers failed to respond to the original version, which featured Clunes sharing his flat with someone named Dermot, played by Harry Enfield. Indeed, it was only when the third series moved to the BBC and was then broadcast in a post-watershed slot--allowing writer Simon Nye greater freedom to explore his characters' saucier ruminations--that the show began to gain a significant audience. By then, of course, Morrissey had become firmly ensconced on the collective pizza-stained sofa, while more screen time was allocated to the boys' respective foils, Caroline Quentin and Leslie Ash. Often glibly dismissed as a lame-brained succession of gags about sex and flatulence, the later series not only featured great performances and sharp-as-nails writing but also sported a contemporary attitude that dared to go where angels, and certainly most other sitcoms, feared to tread. Or, as Gary was once moved to comment about soft-porn lesbian epic Love in a Women's Prison: "It's a serious study of repressed sexuality in a pressure-cooker environment." Series 6 includes: "Stag Night" in which Gary agrees with Dorothy's suggestion they get married ("We've tried everything else.") provoking potentially disastrous stag-night shenanigans; "Wedding" in which Gary and Dorothy's wedding day fails to run smoothly. ("I don't want to get married--I haven't slept with enough women," he complains. "Do you want to squeeze one in?"); "Jealousy" in which the quartet make the grave error of going away for a weekend in the country; "Watching TV" concerns a quiet night in with Captain Kirk & Co ("On the Starship Enterprise, when no one's looking, do you think they all swivel round in their chairs really fast?"); "Ten" in which the communal boat is rocked by the simultaneous arrival of Dorothy's nephew and Deborah's mother; and "Sofa" in which Tony buys a snake. --Clark Collis The DVD version also features a quiz.