Russell Howard's Good News

Russell Howard's Good News

Russell Howard is another comedian of whom I know very little. I've seen him on Mock The Week as one of the resident panelists but initially didn't find him that funny, although he's grown on me a bit since those initial impressions. Whilst still appearing on Mock The Week, Howard branched out with his own show on BBC3 and Russell Howard's Good News has become the channel's most successful studio entertainment show (guess the categorising means that it isn't the most popular then...) with over 3 million viewers per week and was actually the most requested show on BBC iPlayer whilst still on air. And now that first series arrives on DVD.

Russell Howard's Good News kind of borrows the current affairs mantle from both Russell's other show and of course HIGNFY, but the format is different. This isn't a mock quiz show where the questions just set up some jokes, this is instead Howard mentioning something happening in the news that week (all neatly categorised) and making jokes about it. I only caught this show on occasion so whilst I know it was relatively short, I have no idea how many there were or everything it covered. This release doesn't feature each individual show, the best bits have all been compiled into a feature-ish length (an hour and fifteen minutes) episode and because I'm a little ignorant I couldn't tell you how much has been omitted. Still, what is here is very good and overall pretty funny.

I say overall as there are clearly misses in some of the humour, as evidenced in the extras where there's a featurette called Never Seen Before Sketches - most of these dropped as they weren't deemed funny enough after completion, and I agree in the most part. The unaired Pilot episode is included, which sets up the format and Howard makes a pretty good fist of it, clearly as he got a series out of it. There's also a Behind The Scenes featurette that is partly interesting in that it really in an exploration of behind the scenes, but didn't actually hold my attention. Finally, there's a commentary by Russell and his mates for the main feature - I haven't listened to this at all.

Russell Howard's star is clearly on the rise with the comedian becoming more prominent this year in his own right after also releasing best-selling live DVD's in the last couple of years in the traditional assault on Dad's Christmas stocking. Headlining his own show is clearly the next step on the way to global domination, although he obviously needs to make the transition from BBC3 to BBC1 or 2.

This is a good start and a useful diversion, although being a topical TV show I'm not entirely convinced of its longevity...