Reviews

A super comedy series from the 1990s (Two series were made in total) that suffered in the UK ratings due to poor scheduling. When you are up against established comedies like 'Minder', even the best new comedies are going to struggle to get noticed.

Luckily, I caught the series from episode one and followed it avidly. I mentioned it to friends and family at the time, but everyone seemed to have been watching something else. Very, very frustrating.

Anyway, I loved both series and never forgot it.

Then I looked it up on the internet and found that an ultra-fan was trying to get both series released 'on his own'.

Well, both series are now available on DVD.

http://www.replaydvd.co.uk/joking_apart_S1.htm

I can't add much to what has been said already, except I'm going to have to because of the 10 lines minimum policy.

I've actually got this on a VHS-to-DVD copy, but the quality is quite poor and I desperately need for it to be officially released.

I can just imagine what extras I would like to see (Tim Healy's character swearing his way through one of those 'Football Bloopers' type programmes would be great!). You can imagine it now, can't you? But of course, it looks like most people will have to carry on dreaming about a DVD release.

Surely to God there must be someone in the DVD releases department at ITV who also knows something about British culture, is web savvy and has enough about them to look at IMDb now and again? Oh, well.

There's this American detective (Bonetti) who speaks English throughout the series.

Everyone else is Italian and has their dialogue dubbed in English. There's a supposed sidekick dog (Tequila) who doesn't do anything, apart from rolling over on his back and making supposedly 'funny' remarks.

One especially terrible episode features 'Bonetti' having to dress in drag so that he can infiltrate a gay/transvestite club to investigate some kind of crime. The ensuing drama/comedy is tortuous, to say the least.

A funny series, but for all the wrong reasons with dreadful, hackneyed story lines and acting.

Truly appalling, but as I said, strangely addictive.

A DVD release? Who on Earth would buy it?

Unlike most of the posters here, I actually have every episode of Sunnyside Farm, albeit on a desperately old fashioned VHS tape. What I tend to do with new (usually badly advertised) comedies is that I tape the entire series just in case it takes years for it to be released on tape or DVD. With Sunnyside Farm this strategy paid off big time as it wasn't even repeated on the telly. Anywhere. On any channel. Ever. For those posters who don't remember a lot of the funny scenes and lines, I will remind you of one of the best bits from episode one. It's the one where Ken (the really stupid one) informs Ray (the less stupid one) that he's lost their herd of cows. When Ray asks Ken what he means by 'lost', Ken says that 'I put them on a bus.' Ray then asks Ken to go through exactly what happened. Ken informs him that there was him, the cows, then there was a bus, then a lot of pushing and shoving, then the cows were on the bus, and then the bus drove off with all the cows. That may not sound funny to anyone who hasn't seen the series or doesn't remember that particular episode, but I almost cry with laughter every time I watch it. Ah, Sunnyside Farm. Fantastic.

NEWSFLASH: If you'd like to buy a newly-converted DVD of Sunnyside Farm, then drop me a line at: robwhiteheaduk@hotmail.com