I remember seeing the adverts for the show when it was on TV but I never seemed to caught any of the episodes, so I was pleasantly surprised to find it was very funny when I watched this on DVD last week. The premise of the show is each episode is a story of a Celebrity (Star) or Celebrity Couple and then it takes you through a part of their life. If like me you are a wary of shows which do “impressions” because they usually consist of someone doing a good impression but with a script that stinks more than a full nappy from a baby feed solely on a diet of sprouts and Kebabs. Well fear yer not my friends this show suffers from none of that because the cast only have a passing resemblance to the stars. The result of having dodgy looking doppelgangers enhances the show because the show works on the strengths of story telling and quality comic acting, it also seems much more amusing and adds to the fun of guessing who they are.
Half of the show is selecting what star story you are going to choose and the list is
David & Victoria: Our Story, George Michael: Watch Without Prejudice Vol 1, Catherine Zeta Jones: 'Her Quest to Prove Herself... and Also Find Love', Madonna: The Wife's Life, Brad and Jen Aniston: The One Where Jen's Husband Dumps Her for a Total Bitch nifer, Sadie Frost 'Her Side of the Story'. I found the David and Victoria and George Michael episodes easily the best ones. The other stories are good but I don’t know if it was the underlying story of the stars or whether I didn’t find those stars as interesting.
The David and Victoria episode is fantastic, The characters are also distorted versions of originals, it’s the kind of characters that would result if the League of Gentlemen did something like this, they are all a little grotesque or odd in some way or another. Daisy Beaument plays Victoria Beckham brilliantly (and later Evil Angelina Jolie) and really masters the looking and pouting. Beckham is a slightly chubby Oliver Maltman which makes it deliciously silly. Kevin Bishop (comedy sketch show out later this year) plays a deranged Alex Ferguson and completely steals the show.
Bishop in the next episode plays George Michael and easily the best performer over the whole series. The George Michael episode highlights what the series does well, it treats the stories with good mix of silliness and satirical fun by twisting the story and the characters in it to make them unexpectedly entertaining and unusual. There are also film references dropped in for you to look out for, in this episode Boy George keeps popping up like the women in the horror film The Ring and telling everyone George is a gay. I really like the writing for this show and although the later episodes are not as good as the early ones, the writers work hard to make a story about Sadie Frost entertaining. It’s the small bits they add like Bono, Paul Weller and Sting threatening to beat up George Michael because his lyrics are serious enough and then in comes Bob Geldof shouting “give me your money” and “your not bigger than the Boom town rats” and everyone ignoring Midge Ure.
The final episode about Jennifer and Brad Pitt was very funny and the parody of Friends was spot on the money. In the episode Angelina Jolie is a vampire preying on the men and Brad Pitt is seen going out with every leading lady he does a film with before taking advice from Anthony Hopkins. The Madonna episode was a bit average but is kept entertaining by Bishops impression of Sean Penn.
Overall I enjoyed the series and I think it could be improved by choosing better subject matter because the writers are excellent and the acting was very good as well. I’m glad to hear that there is a second series on the way and four of those shows have been shown on TV already and hopefully they will be repeated, so keep you eyes peeled to make sure you catch it if it sneaks onto the TV schedules again.
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