Little Britain: The Complete Second Season

Director: Matt Lipsey
Writers: Matt Lucas, David Walliams
Starring: Matt Lucas, David Walliams, Tom Baker, Stephen Aintree, Anthony Stewart Head
Studio info: BBC Video, 2 discs

Eccentric British export is the dog’s bollocks

The Office’s primary contender for awards and audience when both were searing embarrassing images onto retinas for the first time, Little Britain captures the madness beneath the stodgy British exterior and pushes the boundaries of sketch comedy (and good taste) to the limit. Where The Office was embarrassingly real, Little Britain is embarrassingly surreal, with eccentric characters like two on-the-dole friends (one of whom scams his way through life pretending to be confined to a wheelchair) and two 19th-century transvestites with prominent facial hair. Distasteful, cringeworthy, horrific and absolutely hilarious, Little Britain takes up where Canadian sketch show Kids in the Hall left off.