Review of Ultimate Goodness Gracious Me, The

Introduction

The team behind the series are Sanjeev Bhaskar, Mira Syal, Nina Wadia and Kulvinder Ghir. They all play various roles portraying Indian stereotypes and playing up Indian characters. When it first aired on BBC2 back in 1998 there was nothing else like it. It was a comedy sketch show written mainly by Indians for everyone, including Indians; there were characters that everyone had seen somewhere before and the show making fun of Indian tradionalists was a hit. If, like me, you`re Indian and Hindu, you`ll come across humorous digs at Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs as well as others, and this is perhaps only acceptable because the cast are Indian and can get away with it. The series featured such diverse characters as Skipinder the Punjabi Kangaroo, the Marhareshi Yogi, the Bhangra Muffins and Smeeta Smitten Showbiz Kitten.

The Ultimate Goodness Gracious Me spans fours discs; the first three contain series 1, 2 and 3, while the fourth has the 45-minute special, Back Where They Came From. All discs have character selection as well as episode selection so if you want to see all of the `Mr Check Please` sketches it`s easy to do so. This also features song selection for those that want to hear the songs from the series.

Video

The first series of Goodness Gracious Me comes with the original fullframe video transfer, while series 2 and 3 are widescreen enhanced. As you might expect from a TV series, it`s shot on digital video and it`s preserved well enough here. Colours and detail are well balanced and contrast looks fine too. There are no glitches or problems with the transfer that I could see.

Audio

Dolby Digital 2.0 is the order of the day and it serves the series well enough. It`s mainly dialogue so this is clear and comes from the centre channel. All other sound effects and music come out well from the front speakers too. Don`t expect anything in the way of surround sound though.

Features

Easy to navigate menus with various extras on all four discs:

• Disc One:
-Song List - You can pick any of the songs from the series, so if you have any favourites, this is the place to see them.

-Interview (widescreen enhanced) (31:59) - This isn`t an interview, but rather a spoof documentary going behind the scenes with the main cast playing up to the camera. There are quite a few clips of the GGM live show interspersed and frankly, it`s not interesting because all the live stuff is stuff from the series.

-Out-takes & Bloopers (13:39) - Just what it says. This is amusing for the short time it`s on but once you`ve seen one set of out-takes, you`ve seen them all.


• Disc Two:
-Song List - You can pick any of the songs from the series, so if you have any favourites, this is the place to see them.

-Christmas Special (44:20) - Almost 45-minutes of GGM`s Christmas special.

-Out-takes & Bloopers (3:11) - More out-takes.


• Disc Three:
-Interview with Nina Wadia (widescreen enhanced) (17:29) - A proper interview with one of the four comedians on her comedy beginnings, meeting her co-stars and working on television. This was an interesting interview and she proves to be quite a talker.


• Disc Four:
-Back Where They Came From (widescreen enhanced) (49:27) - Four characters from the series, the `Coopers` and the `Robinsons` take a holiday together and instead of skiing, they end up going to India. The horror of it, for the characters that is... This also features other popular characters from the series.

There are no subtitles. This 4-disc set is packaged in a cardboard digipack.

Conclusion

The first time this was on television I thought it was funny and novel; I identified with the Indian humour and it always left a wry smile. There weren`t any other sketch shows prominently featuring ethnics and nothing since The Real McCoy, so this was required viewing. The problem with the series however is that it only had the one off funny show and even then its jokes were repetitive. That`s the problem with the series; we had the same characters week in, week out saying the same thing. It became predictable and less funny as time went on. Once you`ve seen it once, there`s little incentive to see it again. With a box set containing all three series, you`re not likely to find a lot of variation.

This collection has good video quality and good sound, but a lack of interesting extras makes this ultimate boxed set only worth getting if the series still makes you laugh.