Review of Peter Kay: Live At The Manchester Arena

Introduction

After the phenomenal success of Peter Kay: Live At The Top Of The Tower and Phoenix Nights, fans were waiting for Peter to tour again. This tour started up in 2002, and I was lucky enough to catch one of the shows on the tour. Needless to say, it was utterly hilarious.

A previous DVD of this tour has been released, 2003`s Peter Kay: Live At The Bolton Albert Halls. This new DVD features the final night of the same tour, recorded at the Manchester Arena (where Peter used to work) on his birthday.

Peter Kay has been on the stand up comedy circuit for many years now and is one of a rare breed of comedians who don`t have to resort to excessive swearing and jokes about genitalia just to get a laugh. Instead he recounts genuinely funny stories mixed in with a few good old fashioned gags.

Video

Well this is just a stand up comedy show, but as has become the norm now, it was filmed at a ratio of 1.85:1, and is presented on this DVD in 1.85:1 anamorphic. The transfer is fine, and that`s about all there is to say.

Visually this is not exciting as it`s just Peter on stage, with some chairs, a microphone and some balloons tied to tins of paint (the same set "design" was used throughout the tour).

Audio

A simple DD2.0 stereo soundtrack. Everything is clean and crisp, and that`s all there is to it.

Features

Peter Kay: Live At The Bolton Albert Halls was supposed to come with lots of nice extras, but in the end it turned up as a bare bones disc. Live At The Manchester Arena contains a tour documenantary "180" (referring to the number of dates on the tour, but possibly also with a sly Bullseye reference in there).

The tour documentary contains behind the scenes footage of Peter and his tour team (him and 2 tour managers) at different venues up and down the country. There are pre-show and post-show bits, as well as footage from various performances on tour. There are also interview sequences with Peter and the 2 tour managers who talk about various bits of the tour, sometimes prefacing the next bit of footage.

This is an interesting and rewarding extra, but it really should have been on the previous DVD!

We also get 2 versions of the Amarillo video that everyone is now utterly fed up of, as well as a photo gallery.

Conclusion

Another fantastic performance from Peter Kay, but a very short one.

Sadly the show on this DVD has been edited down to 45 minutes, the same as the TV broadcast on Channel 4. All of the other shows on the tour were at least 2 hours long, so this is a massive rip off. If you want the full show, you`ll have to buy the Live At The Bolton Albert Halls DVD. If you want the tour documentary, you`ll have to buy this DVD.

If you can pick this up very cheaply in the sales then I`d recommend it for the tour documentary, but it is really a rip off because that should have been on the last DVD along with the full show. Either that or put the whole Manchester show on this disc, not just the 45 minute TV version!

As you can guess I`m quite annoyed by this, because I wouldn`t be best pleased to find this rip off in my Xmas stocking (and I even had it on my Xmas list!)

The bottom line is that there`s some very funny stuff here, but avoid the disc until you can pick it up very cheaply.