Product Description

Now on DVD by riotous demand, WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY?: THE COMPLETE SEASONS 1 & 2 features all 30 hilarious episodes from the show’s initial seasons. Host Clive Anderson directs the action--assigning points at random and enduring quips about his disappearing hairline--as players like Jonathon Pryce (Pirates of the Caribbean) and Steven Fry (Gosford Park) perform preposterous, slapstick antics in games of "Authors" and "Wrong Theme Tune." Laugh out loud as Josie Lawrence samples her vast array of silly singing styles and Greg Proops entertains a bevy of bizarre guests in "Party Quirks."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9319 in DVD
• Brand: A&E
• Released on: 2007-03-27
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 4
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 762 minutes

Features

• A British show in which actors and comedians improvise sketches in various "theatre-sports"-type games, based on audience suggestions. The games might include singing a Hoedown about Tory Politicians, acting out a soap opera as hamsters, becoming bizarre super-heroes, or making up a musical about the life of an audience member. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION Rating: N

Amazon.com
Few things are more of-the-moment that improvisational comedy, yet the first two seasons of the original British Whose Line Is It Anyway? are startlingly fresh and funny, despite debuting in 1988. Hosted by blithe and zippy Clive Anderson, the format is the same as the American version: Four improvisers are put through a variety of games, ranging from one where each player tells part of a story in the style of a different writer, to one in which two teams have to find different ways to use a common object, to one in which players act out an ordinary situation as it would appear in different film genres or theatrical styles. Pretty much every episode features some moment so flabbergastingly precise and funny you'll have trouble believing it was made up on the spot. Regular Josie Lawrence tosses off uncanny versions of a Stephen Sondheim or an Edith Piaf song about telephones and garden hoses; John Sessions, who anchored the first season, does a spot-on impression of Humphrey Bogart; Archie Hahn creates sounds for Paul Merton's mime that are amazingly synchronized. The first season, before American guest improvisers Greg Proops and Ryan Stiles began to appear regularly, is particularly distinctive--not because Proops and Stiles are poor improvisers, but because the Brits just aim at more surprising targets. (Let's face it, the American version didn't feature many stories told in the style of Samuel Beckett or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, let alone in the style of poets like Coleridge and Philip Larkin.) These episodes are like potato chips; you'll just keep gobbling them down. Early guests include such unexpected pleasures as Stephen Fry (Wilde), Jonathan Pryce (Brazil), and Peter Cook (Bedazzled). --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

The REAL (Original) Whose Line...
This is the one I've been waiting for. The REAL, British, version of Whose Line is it Anyway? While the American version is OK, it's just not quite as good as the real thing. This set should include all 30 episodes from the first 2 seasons which includes 4 compilation episodes and the original Pilot.

The first season introduces regular host Clive Anderson with early regular Whose Liners' Josie Lawrence, Michael McShane, John Sessions, and Tony Slattery with Richard Vranch on music support. You'll also find 4 2nd season episodes with Greg Proops, who appeared in 50 episodes in total, and one with Ryan Stiles who began with this season and went on to be in 75 others across the series 136 total episodes. Colin Mochrie would not appear until season 3. And, thankfully, there is NO Hoedown with Drew Carey to be found in any of the British episodes!

A real treat for fans of British humor and off-the-wall improv type comedy.

THIS is the way that it should be done!!!!
As others have said, I didn't mind the American version but I was let down that it wasn't as funny as the British version that had shown on Comedy Central here in the U.S. The British version is much edgier and more cerebral...while being funnier. I lamented that I wasn't able to get this on DVD until now. While Drew Carey is funny on his show, he wasn't quite the host that Clive Anderson was. Clive Anderson's strength is that he did NOT get involved with the players other than to move the show along. And he certainly did not try to be funnier than his comedic guests.

This is the set to get!!

Dream come true
You wouldn't believe the vast hordes of people out there who have scurried away old off-air recordings of these first two seasons. They are impossible to see on Comedy Central or BBC America, and even then probably have significant cuts.

There are very dry patches in these first episodes. John Sessions isn't so much "funny ha ha" as he is "WTF!? Who let this guy in?" There are long passages of games that never quite get to the point, and celebrity guests that aren't really cut out for improv (but it's sometimes funny to watch the others mock them as they fail.) These may sound like bad things, but in my opinion it is essential to have a "warts and all" first season to let the show grow and improve.

Once it does find its footing, however, you will again be dazzled by the wit and talent of the guests, mostly taken from the "Comedy Store Players" -- a very diverse group of bizarrely gifted people.

Enjoy!