Nighty Night - Series 1 - DVD (Julia Davis, Angus Deayton, Kevin Eldon, Rebecca Front - Dir: Sarah Smith)

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Customer Reviews of Nighty Night - Series 1

Karl
Farnborough UK
13th November 2008

Toe curling, darker than dark matter, hugely funny
This is a Marmite product; you will either love it or hate it. I love it!

The series touchs taboos and boundaries but fundamentally creates some wonderful dysfunctional characters.
Kath - the wheelchair bound, MS sufferer
Don - Her breast obsessed GP husband
Jill - Completely off the wall, Machiavellian, alluring, psychopathic
Linda - Jill's long suffering asthmatic assistant

If you like The Worst Week of My Life, or the Office or Extras, this will probably appeal.

scousebird
liverpool
14th June 2008

she is so cheeky
I watched the whole series back to back and I was highly amused from start to finish.
Jill is a nasty peice if work but you can't help but root for her.
Loved Glenn the freak and his nervous "frog catching the fly" twitch.[It sounds daft but thats what he does]
I won't go into details about the plot as previous posters have covered it all but I can honestly say you will laugh out loud at Jill and the gangs very far-fetched shennanigans[the funeral scene where jill arrives to the church on a black stallion to the Pretenders"I'll Stand By You" just cracked me up-talk about O.T.T] and you will love every single minute.

mccanns23
ireland
11th November 2007

simply stunning!
Nighty night is a dark comedy set in the west country of England,it is written and created by julia davis who also stars as jill,a woman so evil,it is unlikely that she can be compared to anyone in tv before her.
The idea behind the show is that jills husband,terry,has been diagnosed with cancer,it doesnt look good for him,as soon as this is known,jill heads to a dating agency,thats callous hey,no other way of putting it.She heads out on date with a loser called glen,she leaves him sitting in the restaurant but he keeps reappearing,all the while,a new family move in across from jill,husband don,played with pomp by angus deayton,yes,the same angus,and his wife who has M.S who he spends alot of time caring for.Jill soon falls for don and stops at nothing and i mean nothing to get him,she wants his wife out of the picture.
The show is extremely cringe worthy,far more so that the office,jill is filled with spite and nasty jibes but all the while she is an anti-hero of sorts,and wait to you see what happens to her ill husband terry and what she does about that.
The supporting cast are all key here as well,all contributing fine laughs and head in hand embarrasment for them.This is excellently writtem,very dark,very sinister and very funny and awkward and who couldnt help but take to a show that has the theme tune to the classic film 'my name is nobody' as its theme,vital,yes,you heard me,vital.

Johnny Myo
London, UK
9th November 2007

All hail the West Country witch...
There's not a lot I can add to what previous reviewers have said about this show. Suffice to say that Julia Davis' writing, and timing, are impeccable as ever, and if you haven't seen her deadpanning her way through her gig in The Alan Clarke Diaries as the "secretary" of the eponymous anti-hero (Played by John Hurt), then that's definitely worth a look, too.

I've got a bit of a "comedy exchange" thang going on with a mate in Australia, and mailing this over is my response to Summer Heights High, the latest "mockumentary" comedy by Chris Lilley on ABC over there. That one's the best comedy (anywhere) since Kath & Kim (although I personally think that a second series would be pushing it - without entirely new characters), and it's raised the bar so high, in terms of sick, cackle-inducing spectacle, that Nighty Night is the only UK-produced comedy I can think of that lives up to it. Little Britain? Forget it! Anyway, sketch shows are doomed to repetition.

That said, I wouldn't bother with Series 2 of Nighty Night again - which I caught when it was aired on BBC2 - as there are limits to which even I can stretch my disbelief, even if the soft-rock soundtrack was a hoot. Lord knows, nothing can shock me - maybe I'm even a little jaded - and Ruth Jones is great again as downtrodden Linda, but when Davis has her concealing a large trout in her nether regions for no particular reason other than a cheap laugh, it's time to give it the wide berth that recent John Waters films deservedly get these days. It's a bit like watching a precocious nephew or niece high on Asti Spumante at a wedding.

deanne9499
Sunny South Shields
9th December 2006

I've had a lot of compliments in my time Don...
For me, writing a review for "Nighty Night" is essentially like writing out a Valentine's day card for your one true love - no matter how hard you try to express your love, no matter how much you try to avoid cliches in the name of sincerity, you always feel that somehow, words just aren't enough.

Briefly, "On discovering her husband Terry has cancer, beautician Jill Tyrell is eager to move on and find new love. It comes in the form of a bearded doctor, Don Cole. Jill's only obstacles are Terry's return to health and Don's disbaled wife, Cath. But when Jill wants something, she will stop at nothing to get it".

I am going to stick my neck out here and say that, in my opinion, "Nighty Night" is the best programme I have ever seen. Rarely has a sitcom captured such polarity - with such an "unbelievable" leading character on the one hand, yet such a "believable" setting on the other. Throughout my first viewing of the series, I remember thinking that with each episode, the character of Jill became more extreme - from the somewhat "tactless" visit to the dating agency in the first episode when her husband is supposedly dying of cancer, to the audacity of buying raw meat and presenting it as Terry's not-so-dead body later on in the series: just when you think that Jill can't get any worse, she always does. Only a truly brilliant show can have you warming to such an unbelievably unlikeable character - only a truly brilliant show can make you laugh out loud so much, make you feel embarrassed for the characters (think of Terry's funeral) and even make you gag through the use of what, in the end, is only your imagination (think of the scene where Glenn supposedly has a "stool" in a plastic bag).

Despite Jill's supposed "unbelievability", the show still manages to remain "believable" through it's supporting cast of characters that we can all identify with. All of us know someone who is self-centred, thoughtless, and willing to go to any length to get what they want (though, unlike Jill, few of us know anyone who would kill to achieve their ends). Many of us can identify with the character of Cath - a woman with immense patience, always prepared to see the glass as being "half-full", far more tolerant of other people's misgivings than most of us would be. Some of us know a Don-like figure - oozing professionalism through their choice of career, but deeply flawed in their private life: no doubt, a few people reading this review have Glenn-like qualities - naive (and therefore vulnerable) but ultimately possessing a heart-of-gold. The only character I found it hard to identify with was Sue. When I watched "Nighty Night" the first time, I remember thinking that there was more to her than initially meets the eye. Although, on the surface, she seems to be morality personified (being the Vicar's wife and, ultimately, trying to protect Cath from Jill's overbearing presence), there was something about her that didn't quite sit right with me. For those of you who felt the same on watching it - I would urge you to watch the second series as it seems that Julia Davis deliberately left the door open for character development here.

I cannot finish this review without making two final points. Firstly, despite there being a truly outstanding supporting cast here, five stars should go to Julia Davis alone - not only for casting herself in the role of such a tyrant, but also for really capturing the essence of Jill through her mouth-watering one-liner's, choice of wardrobe and body language. Finally, the sound-track is well thought-out, with each song being specifically chosen to capture the spirit of the moment: look out for Gabrielle's "Don't Need the Sun to Shine", always played when Don does finally manage to get "some quiet time", also look out for the darkly ironic DVD-edited inclusion of "I'll Stand by You" at Terry's funeral - something which in the end, Jill never really did.