Title: Ideal Series 1(2 discs) Running Time: 223 minutes approx Certification: 15 Director: Dan Zeff Region: 2
Brief Story Outline: This series follows the life of Moz and his array of wild and wacky friends as he attempts to make a living selling cannabis to the local populous. Along the way meet a weary secondary school teacher, an irresponsible babysitter and many more of the people who visit Moz to score some hash.
Character (Actor) Descriptions: Moz (Johnny Vegas) is a hapless lay about who manages to scrape a living selling marijuana to the locals. Nicky (Nicola Reynolds) is Moz’s long-term girlfriend who also has a sexual relationship with PC the local police constable and Moz’s main drug supplier Cartoon Head (James Foster) is a mysterious hit man who is commonly believed to be psychotic and has a disturbing secret concerning the local mass murderer China (Natalie Gumede) is a 19 year old university student who, much to his annoyance, only sees Moz as a friend Colin (Ben Crompton) is on probation, yet still seems to be trying to offload stolen goods onto Moz and his friends Jenny (Sinead Matthews) A dozy babysitter who becomes pregnant with one of her charges’ children Kuldip (Ronny Jhutti) An up and coming DJ who dreams of international stardom.
Episode Synopses: Episode 1: Moz learns of the arrival of a new drug dealer in his neighbourhood and has an unfriendly confrontation with him. Meanwhile Nicki gets sick of Moz’s lazy habits as
a rat moves in and temporarily moves out herself. Episode 2: Moz learns that Nicki seems to be having a great time after having moved out of his flat. He also befriends a beautiful young student named China Episode 3: The locals learn that a sinister murder has taken place in neighbourhood, with the victim’s hand being removed. Nicki returns to Moz’s flat Episode 4: Moz meets with some more colourful characters, including a pair of men who have formed a techno group called “Silicone Valets” Episode 5: Moz and Nicki get a surprise visitor named Yasuko who, unbeknownst to Moz, only knows Nicki from a threesome they had while in Thailand. Nicki agrees to let her stay for fear of Moz finding out Episode 6: It’s Moz’s birthday and Nicki tells him she’s going to thros a surprise party for him. She invites all her friends and, much to his annoyance, none of Moz’s. They agree to have an open relationship for the evening and Nicki proceeds to sleep with 2 other men, before finally going to bed with Moz. Episode 7: Nicki finds out she is pregnant but unfortunately, after her night of passion, she doesn’t know who’s baby it is and so is hesitant to tell Moz. Meanwhile, Moz finally meets with his pseudo-stalker but a misunderstanding with Cartoon Head leads to his untimely demise Episode 8: Moz and CH have to enlist the help of Psycho Paul to dispose of the body and prevent anyone from knowing what had happened that day. ….. Also reveals to Moz that she is pregnant
Programme Review: Now I’d heard several good things about this “cult BBC3 viewing”. I spotted series one for a fiver at Virgin Megastores and I thought I’d give it a go. I enjoyed the first couple of episodes, as we were introduced to all the variety of characters who enter Moz’s life to score some drugs. It wasn’t hard to see that this was a very character driven show. But I have to say that after the first two episodes I started to lose interest. The acting, as a whole, was reasonably good with the “Moz” role fitting Johnny Vegas like a glove. Nicola Reynolds is excellent as the long suffering but promiscuous girlfriend. All of the supporting characters, and there are many, are all proficiently acted but you would expect this with the amount of comedy pedigree that there is within the cast. Graham Duff shows off his acting chops as “camp scally” Brian but I think that my favourite performance was that of Jason….. He only shows up in a couple of episodes but I found the character he played(slightly depressed man recently dumped by his girlfriend) absolutely hilarious. I believe that this was one of Graham Duff’s first writing projects and it shows somewhat. The show does seem to lack ideas which leads to the dull repetition of some. I think that the stuff covered could have been fit into a 6 part series rather than the 8 parts and the programme would have, in my eyes, been much better because of it.
My big problem with Ideal was that I struggled to connect with any of the characters apart from, to an extent, Moz, but that may be due to my middle class upbringing, and the repetitiveness of the dialogue was almost reminiscent of a poor sketch show. I was considering giving up after the first disc(episodes 1-6) but I have to say I’m glad that I gave it another chance as the last 2 episodes were absolutely by far the best in the series. Finally, there was some sense of a plot and it became more of a sitcom than the aforementioned bad sketch show, the sheer implausibility of the story and the culmination of events which seem to doom Moz to utter misery made it one of the funniest hours of TV I‘ve seen for some time. This helped to radically improve my opinion of the series and I shall be on the look out for the second series, with the hope that Graham Duff will capitalize on the experience gained from writing this and make Ideal into a much better sitcom and altogether a better show.
Disc Review: The special features on this DVD package are reasonable with the deleted and extended scenes presented in a genuinely unique way, with a police interview with Brian(Graham Duff), being questioned about the whereabouts of Cartoon Head. The outtakes were the usual stuff, fluffed lines and copious amounts of swearing, but at 5 minutes long, just short enough for me not to get bored. The making of documentary informs viewers of how Graham Duff developed the character of Moz and how they created his world, and also the reasoning behind how this sitcom was given the go ahead by BBC3. It also gives a quick look at each of the characters in the programme and how the writers and actors created their personalities. All in all, a worthwhile purchase and well worth the money I paid for it. Although the series has a flabby middle, the beginning and the finale more than make up for this and I hope to see the 2nd series soon.
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I'm always wary of anything starring Johnny Vegas; he has the potential to be very funny but doesn't always live up to it in my opinion. This sounds worth a try though. I don't understand why you have 2 "helpful" ratings for this review; it seems to me to deserve at least a VH. Perhaps it's the Ciao gremlins again! David
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