DVD review-Little Britain USA

One Saturday morning after my heart attack and bypass surgery I was out running errands in Sparky's car. I was listening to NPR and one the weekend edition of Morning Edition they were doing an interview with a couple of British guys and a TV series called Little Britain that was just hitting our shores. It sounded like it was something right up my British comedy loving alley.


Then a couple of weeks later while in a book store that also sold DVD's Sparky asked me if there was anything in there I might like for my birthday. I said that we both might like this DVD I had heard about called Little Britain. Being the great gal she is she bought it for me and we went home and began watching it. It was, we soon discovered, better than our wildest expectations. We laughed ourselves silly while watching the exploits of the various characters. We fell in comedy love with Vicki Pollard, the Scottish innkeeper, little Dennis Waterman, the hypnotist, the little round shop keeper and his nemesis Mr. Man, and all the rest of the characters. When the second series came out on DVD months later we snapped it up, just like we did when the third series came on DVD. We fell in love so much with Little Britain that it was one of the reasons why we got digital cable.


After the third series came out there was talk of Little Britain coming to HBO. Knowing the track record of transplanting British comedy hits into American TV shows, I was hugely apprehensive. For every Steptoe and Son (which was the basis for Sanford and Son) there were train wrecks like Amanda's by the Sea (a terrible American remake of Fawlty Towers), the US versions of Coupling (ugh), Men Behaving Badly (ick), and Cold Feet. In addition to a version of Little Britain coming to a US TV screen near me, there were also rumors that Scientologist Kirsti Alley was behind a US version of The Vicar of Dibley and that there was also a remake of Father Ted in the works. I took all of that as bad news.

Thankfully the remakes of Dibley and Father Ted fell through but HBO did indeed give us, as promised, Little Britain USA. And it's not as bad as I feared it might be. David Walliams and Matt Lucas, the two men behind all the main characters in Little Britain, did a very smart thing in adapting their hit TV show to the American market, they assumed that no one had seen their old show and they transplanted some of their top characters to this version. They also added some new running characters to this new series.

Over all the US version works well. They struck a good balance of old characters in new situations, although if they had left the character of Emily Howard behind it would have suited me fine, she's a one joke character that should have been retired after the first series in my opinion. And most of their new characters are pretty funny as well, my favorites are Mr. Dog and his owner, Bing Gordon the eighth man on the moon, and Ellie Grace and her mother. I'm not crazy about the two hunter characters but others may find them funny.

My only problem with this new series is that a lot of it seems old to me. I've seen the older series so many times that I almost gotten burned out on some of the characters like Sebastian, Marjorie from Fat Fighters, and Daffyd the only gay in the village. I would have liked to see more new characters but I can see why they relied so much on older characters, not everyone watched the older series as much as Sparky and I did.

If this DVD is your first introduction to the world of Little Britain then you'll find it funny, if you have a sense of humor that is, and it's worth watching. I'd urge you to check out the first three series after you watch this one because on the older DVD's there are more characters, the deleted scenes show some characters that they lads Walliams and Lucas decided to cut but actually are funnier than and more real than what's on most TV shows now, and because you will gain an appreciation of the characters you see in the US version.

This Week's Contemporary Hero

You may know him better as the taller half of the comedy duo behind Little Britain. Or you may know him from his numerous other TV, film, or radio roles. But we are singling out David Walliams for his heroic feats of last summer.

Mr. Walliams is a bona fide celebrity. He makes million of dollars to make people laugh and to entertain them. So why did he not only swim the English channel, but also become one of the top 50 people to ever do it and the first celebrity to ever do it as well?

While Walliams was in Africa a few years back he told someone who works for a charity organization called Sport Relief that he'd love to help them out in their charitable efforts among orphanages over in Ethiopia. This person asked Walliams if there was some sporting thing he'd like to try that could raise money for them. Walliams suggested, half jokingly, that he could swim the English channel. The Sport relief person immediately took him up on his offer.

Fast forward a year to the start of Walliams highly successful but physically demanding Little Britain Live tour of the UK. Every night Walliams and his partner in comedy Matt Lucas would take to the stage and perform sketches from their highly successful BBC show and every morning Walliams would swim and train for his English Channel attempt. Even if the tour took a night off, his training did not.

After 9 months of hard training the big day arrived and Walliams plunged into the Channel near

Dover, England. He swam through some of the roughest waters on this planet. Also in the Channel that day with Walliams were some of the biggest freighters in the world, nasty currents, raw sewage, and stinging jelly fish. Walliams plowed through, around, and over all those obstacles and in a little over 10 hours he emerged from the water and he set foot on French soil.

Now if you think swimming 21 miles in rough seas while dodging jelly fish, people's turds, huge freighters, and whatever else is in the water that day is easy, I invite you to go to your local pool and swim for an hour straight. Then when that hour is over, do it 10 more hours while people throw shit at you, toss hornets at you, and drive wave runners over your body.

In the end Walliams raised over 1 million pounds for Sport Relief. That means that those Ethiopian orphanages can stay open and provide better care to the children who live there.

Walliams didn't have to swim the Channel. He could have written a check and stayed warm and dry. But he didn't. He used his fame for good and he got a lot of people to help as well. That's why he's Monkey Muck's Contemporary Hero of the Week.

And we end this post with a gratuitous butt shot for the ladies. Here's David's butt for you ladies to enjoy: