Marion & Geoff - Series 1Label: 2 Entertain VideoDescription: PRODUCT DESCRIPTION The complete first series of the BBC comedy show. Rob Brydon plays taxi driver Keith who in a series of monologues delivered directly to a dashboard-mounted camera gradually tells the whole story of how his wife Marion left him for her colleague Geoff. FROM AMAZON Originally broadcast in 10-minute segments on BBC2 Marion & Geoff is a very funny if at times unrelentingly bleak comedy in which Rob Brydon plays Keith a hapless cuckold who addresses us via a camcorder set up in his mini-cab. The Marion and Geoff of the title are his estranged wife and her new lover though as Keith--who never fails to perceive a bright side to his utterly dismal existence--says I don't feel I've lost a wife I've gained a friend. Through his monologues we learn that Keith has a room in a student house where banging techno is played day and night; that in order to make the journey to see his two boys he must make an overnight journey from London to Cardiff by car; that his only friend is a tollbooth operator (though the operator doesn't seem to know it) and that although he's been driving a minicab for a while he's yet to pick up a fare. Keith's attempts to buy presents for his children generally backfire (I've kept the receipts. I learned that from my old dad. He always used to say keep the receipts) no more heartrendingly so than in an evidently disastrous attempt to pay a surprise visit to the newly attached Marion and the kids in Disneyland. As he hugs the tiny Winnie the Pooh puppets he's tried to give to his children his uniformly chipper tone wavers momentarily and the comedy threatens to darken into something like tragedy. However Keith's indomitable if inappropriate optimism eventually enables him to bumble through. Masterly in its veracity and Pooteresque banality Marion & Geoff is as near-flawless as The Office. On the DVD: Marion & Geoff on disc comes with an informative if somewhat giggly commentary featuring Brydon and director and cowriter Hugo Blick. There's the Comic Relief special in which Keith's cheque to the charity bounces with typically pitiful consequences and outtakes from the series all of which would have merited inclusion in the final edit. --David Stubbs
This product would be a great fit for fans of heartwarming family stories.