Marian 2 Details Released News Posted by John Hoare on 11th May 2006, 19:28 Bloody hell, I forgot about this! The release date is Monday 24th July, and the extras lineup is as follows: Audio commentary: By Tony Robinson, and some of the cast and crew – on two episodes! Excellent – all six would have been better, but it’s an improvement on just one from the first release. Excellent news about the cast and crew too – I wonder who we can expect to hear… BBC Internal Trailer: Interesting wording. Presumably it means a broadcast trailer like the last release, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Hunt the Chicken Game: Someone, please – shoot me in the head. Booklet: Written by Tony Robinson and illustrated by Paul Cemmick, as per the last series. Excellent stuff, and a nice way of adding a bit of class to the package. Overall slightly disappointing on the extras front, maybe – I want some interviews on future releases, please. Still, at least they’re making a bit of an effort, and I’m sure the commentaries will be marvellous – the Tony Robinson one on the first release was excellent, with him moaning on about all the things that were wrong with the episode, and generally being incredibly likeable. Still, with this kind of release it’s the actual episodes that are the exciting part. Nice cover, too. We need MORE SILLY FACES on the front of comedy releases, please.
Why are the words “special edition” on the front cover? It’s the first release this series has ever had on DVD – starting out with the “edition” label suggests for one that there might be other editions out there (which there aren’t) and also that this is incredibly packed with extras, which is misleading. I’m not complaining about this release, I think the episodes should stand alone, and I agree with the sentiment that we’re beginning to expect too much in the way of extras from our DVDs because we’ve become spoilt by releases of Red Dwarf and other things. But surely the words “special edition” inspire us to expect more than this? Why use them otherwise?
It plays havoc with later editions that are more worthy of that title, as well. So we end up with all manner of collector and ultimate and gold-wrapped editions, each apparently emphasising how much better they are than their predecessors, but they can’t form into any sort of meaningful heirarchy of value. VERY SILLY, it is.
