Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson give the flat-share sitcom a much needed kick up the Bottom in the show which, alongside Men Behaving Badly (1992-8) injected new life into a legendarily dire genre. With glorious comic gusto they play Richie Rich and Eddie Hitler, a pair of misfits barely surviving unemployment in a Hammersmith hovel. They spend their life in frustration, minus female company or money, in facile schemes to entertain or better themselves, their best intentions always proving the catalyst for hilariously OTT cartoon-style violence. The humour benefits from being rude, crude and surreal, and though happily bereft of subtlety or sense the situations and set-pieces are always superbly constructed, delivered and directed. But that's only to be expected from a show that essentially presents two of The Young Ones a decade down the line.

Mayall and Edmondson had earlier perfected their surreal double act as The Dangerous Brothers and these first episodes of Bottom find them in side-splitting form. From a misadventure with pheromone spray and the wrong sort of dogs down the pub in "Smells" to a birthday "Accident", which introduces The Young Ones' Christopher Ryan as a regular guest character, this is BBC comedy at its best. Brace yourself, 'cos this is going to hurt.

On the DVD Bottom, Series 1 contains all six episodes presented in the original TV 4:3 ratio with mono sound. The transfer is flawless, if anything rather revealing the limitations of the source material. The only extra beyond optional English subtitles and a Danish dub is "Bottom Fluff" a 15-minute blooper reel that offers a masterclass in the art of swearing. --Gary S Dalkin

Bottom Live 2003: Weapons Grade Y-Fronts Tour is reputedly the swan song for Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall's Eddie Hitler and Richie Richard. If so, it's a mixed blessing, for while much of it is funny, it's also a long way from the original BBC Bottom series. The TV incarnation was always crude, but worked hilariously because it balanced real characterisation and comically absurd ingenuity with the vulgarity. Here Edmundson and Mayall spend 90 minutes swearing as loudly and repulsively as possible and indulging in cartoon violence, which can never--for reasons of self-preservation and the legal ramifications of killing people on stage--be as insanely inventive as on television.

With no other characters (where are you Spudgun and Dave Hedgehog when you're most needed?) and a barely existent story involving a device that inserts a sofa in a part of Richie where no sofa should fit, and a time machine that takes our heroes on a quest to reach the bar before the audience, the material is thinly stretched. Nevertheless, the theatre audience at the Cliffs Pavilion, Southend-on-Sea seem to have had a fantastic time being roundly abused by the stars. Probably, you just had to be there.

On the DVD: Bottom Live 2003 is presented with, for a live theatre show, a strong, anamorphically enhanced 16:9 image and perfectly serviceable, clear stereo sound. It's far from special, but notably better than the technical quality of previous Bottom live videos. The only extra is a slideshow of backstage images, which runs for a minute-and-a-half. --Gary S Dalkin

Film-makers often remark that it's just so hard to make a bad picture that few would take on the challenge if they weren't so naive. Steve Martin's Bobby Bowfinger is cut from that pattern, one of those sweet, indomitable operators of Hollywood who seem to be descended directly from Ed Wood (of Plan 9 from Outer Space infamy). To resurrect his ramshackle existence, Bowfinger opts to film his accountant's sci-fi spectacular,Chubby Rain, about aliens invading in raindrops. The snag is he needs to attach action megastar Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy), an actor so paranoid he counts the occurrences of the letter "k" in scripts to uncover possible Ku Klux Klan influences. When his effort fails, Bowfinger hits on an ingenious scheme to film Ramsey without his knowledge, throwing his actors at the hapless star whenever he appears in public. Only Kit begins to believe he's being hounded by aliens for real, and runs hysterically to his guru (Terence Stamp) at a Scientology-clone group called MindHead, where people walk around in fine suits wearing white pyramids on their heads. Deprived of his star, yet not to be undone, Bowfinger hires a look-alike, Jiff (also Eddie Murphy), to fill in. The tone of the picture is sometimes flat, rather than deadpan, but that's nitpicking. The farce is quick and engrossing, and populated with terrific performances, especially by Eddie Murphy, whose dual role as Kit and Jiff showcases his character-building gift, and by Martin, whose Bowfinger, part con man and part would-be visionary, manages to capture your sympathies. Heather Graham's would-be actress cheerfully sleeps her way to the top like she knows she's supposed to, and Christine Baranski plays her shopworn method actor with myopic self-absorption. --Jim Gay, Amazon.com