Bottle Rocket is a quietly daffy comedy that should have been an indie hit, but ended up being ignored by audiences. Too bad; it's a wonderfully sustained caper movie about friends whose career choice is all wrong. Low-key Anthony (Luke Wilson) and high-strung Dignan (Owen C Wilson--the two actors are brothers) are brought into a life of crime by Dignan's ambition to be a small-time thief. After a few amusingly laid-back trial burglaries, they (and a third buddy) find themselves over their heads when they hook up with an experienced crime boss (James Caan).

Because this movie is so relentlessly deadpan, you really have to be dialled in to its brand of humour--but you're once there, Bottle Rocket shoots off plenty of sparks. Above all, Owen Wilson's portrayal of Dignan is a terrifically original comic creation; Dignan is so sincerely focused on his goals that he can't see how completely absurd his ideas are. Owen Wilson, who has since made something of a trademark out of similarly knuckle-headed performances in everything from Armageddon to Starsky & Hutch, wrote the screenplay with director Wes Anderson. --Robert Horton

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