Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23080 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-04-28
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 300 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
With Jam, the TV follow-up to his Radio 1 series Blue Jam, Chris Morris focuses more on unease more than the satire of Brass Eye. Indeed, it's a moot point whether Jam can actually be categorised as comedy at all. Each sketch is steeped in a heavy brine of dark, ambient music (including Bark Psychosis, David Sylvian and Brian Eno), grainy imagery, fast-cut editing and slo-motion. Its mirthless, Kafka-esque scenarios feel like an attempt to morph into some new species of post-comedy that is more like the stuff of nightmares. The credits, in which Morris stalks the moving camera, uttering Lear-esque words of foreboding immediately announce that this "sketch show" is a galaxy apart from The Two Ronnies.

The appalled look on actor Kevin Eldon's face in the opening sketch of the series, as a young couple invite him to endure being buggered by a mutual acquaintance ("I need a break"), sets the tone. Rape, chemotherapy, wanton urination--as a naked "Robert Kilroy-Silk" goes insane in a sketch full of detestation for the oleaginous TV presenter--and recurring sketches involving callously authoritarian NHS doctors, all go to make up these annals of the bizarre and perverse.

Ultimately, Jam doesn't quite work, not on TV anyway. The repetition of the same, small cast over and over, broken up too briefly by Morris' own appearances (as a "country gentleman" living outside his house, for instance), coupled with the gruelling treatment of the sketch material makes for a psyche-probing, jaw-dropping experience--but in parts also a nullifying and strangely predictable one. Morris's "failures" are far more interesting than most people's successes. --David Stubbs

Special Features
Disc 1:
All 6 episodes of the Jam TV series, plus the following extras:

• Miniaturised viewing option for programme 1
  
• Moving miniaturised viewing option for programme 2 (pong version)
  
• Programme 6 speeded up and then slowed again to original duration
  
• Lava Lamp viewing option
  
• Programme 4 FFWD version
  
• 1st 19 seconds of programme 5
  
• Original Test shoot material
  
• London/Tokyo jam exhibition competition
  
• Selected scenes retaining original audience sound
  
• Adam & Joe's Goitre
  
• Undeleted Scenes
  
• View all six programmes at once.....and many many more, plus hidden extras

Disc 2:

• All 6 episodes of the Jam TV series

Synopsis
JAM is yet another disturbing dark comedy series from Chris Morris, the twisted genius behind the BRASSEYE and THE DAY TODAY. Spread over two discs, JAM avoids Morris's trademark satire in favour of a disorientating mixture of bizarre sketches and electronic music which probe the darker regions of the soul.

Customer Reviews

POP PERFECTION
A brilliant collection from the best pop - punk - mod band of all-time.
Paul Weller is a genius and Bruce Foxton was the best bass player of his generation - and I aint just saying that coz he came to my wedding.

Genius...
The Day Today focuses mainly on news reports, while Brass Eye is a balance of news reports and basically sketches, now Jam is totally made up of sketches. Each one of these programmes is a classic in it's own right, and sadly Jam is often overlooked due to the sheer infamy of the previous two shows.

Jam, as previously stated, is a series of fairly extreme sketches using only about 5 actors. Although at first this can be very slightly annoying seeing an actor who just played a pervert, suddenly playing the serious character in the next sketch; it ultimately works to it's advantage as particular actor's tend to play certain characters and you find yourself anticipating more and more what the said actor will do next.

There are 6 episodes, each roughly 23 minutes long, there is a disk 2 which features the original 6 episodes but in slightly different shades of colour, and many of the special features consist of either written text explaining that your disk has it missing, or is simply unwatchable because it is so tiny that you can't see it. In simpler terms, Chris Morris has created a satire on dvd's themselves with pracitcally all special features being completely pointless. In an amusing way, of course..


The humour is alot less blatant, than the intellectual humour of the previous two shows, however that doesnt stop some of the sketches being absolutely hilarious. Favourites include the boy not returning home from school sketch, the man who has his funeral while in his prime, any of the GP visit ones, and the man who lives outside one. But yeah their all brilliant and guarenteed to make you laugh!

However if humour involving dead children, disabilities, murder etc is not to your palate, then steer clear to avoid any offence.

For everyone else, enjoy..

genuinely unique; there really is nothing like it
there are some extraordinarily borderline elements to this quietly disturbing piece of work which occupies a genre all on its own; Brass Eye was sufficiently left of centre to warrant some psychiatric inquiry but this Jam thing is clearly in the realm of a lengthy admission to a mental health ward; doctor examining his own knee rather than his patient's - what's that about? Breughelesque entertainment; it's like being stabbed slowly but without physical injury yet with all the expected trauma...

Chris Morris rules in Hades