Ballykissangel Video Volume One

Ballykissangel: Volume 1 - Trying to Connect You, The Things We Do For Love [VHS] List Price: $14.98 Sale Price: $3.00 Used From: $1.91 Average Rating:

Reviews

We all love the videos or have seen all six series!! (not all pbs stations air this wonderful show either). So, Please Please, Please, BBC, when are you going to get your act together and put more of these series on videos or DVDs? this is mind boggling that you have not done so already.

Watching these first two episodes of Bally-K is a supremely pleasant experience. After watching a couple seasons of the show, to go back and see the beginning is fun. One can see foreshadowings of future plot lines, appreciate the characters and their quirkiness, and relax with these old friends.

Another reviewer has compared BALLYKISSANGEL to NORTHERN EXPOSURE, and there's certainly some truth to that. An outsider arrives in a small town. He quickly finds himself squeezed by the pressure of the local financial overlord, the town conscience, a group of occasionally odd individuals, and his own feelings for an unattainable woman. And, just when the the transplanted hero gets REALLY interesting, the actor playing him decides to "pursue other interests", leaving the show's producers to scramble in another lead actor. Only, unlike NORTHERN EXPOSURE, BallyK's inhabitants are a bit more realistic than Cicely's. You won't find radio announcers making catapult art, insane hypochondriacs badgering hermit chefs, or waitresses breaking into chronic song. Rather, BallyK is peopled by characters who present us with humor derived from their very ordinary humanity.In truth, after the departure of Stephen Tompkinson and Dervla Kirwan, that humanity becomes a little too ordinary, and the show slips into a kind of soap opera normalcy. But for the two-year tenure of Tompkinson's Father Clifford and Kirwan's Assumpta Fitzgerald, BallyK is a fascinating place, where the storyline is fresh, and the characters genuinely evolve.It's clear that the writers love their characters. They take great care to provide us with ones so involving, it is sometimes difficult to discern who the stars of the show actually are. Each main character has a well-defined relationship with all the rest.At the end of the day, however, the show is most about two of them. The writers' greatest feat is the complete story arc of the Clifford-Fitzgerald relationship. It stands as one of the most complex liasons in the history of English-language television. Each episode teases greater definition out of the characters, and greater loyalty out of the viewer. By the end of their run, both Father Clifford and Asumpta have grown well beyond their initial characterizations. I don't think that the whole of the first two seasons is yet available on VHS, but no matter. Start here at the beginning and work your way slowly forward. By the time you get to Topkinson and Kirwan's departure, you'll be left wondering why series television can't generally be this good.

This is a charming, funny, engrossing and thoughtful series that I first saw on BBC America and highly recommend. The story of a young English priest sent to a quirky Irish village, it deals with the all-too-human foibles of the inhabitants thereof and addresses many serious subjects with humor and understanding. It is a very high quality series and the actors are uniformly excellent.

Let's face it. We all have our favourite programs to watch, whether it is an hbo tv series, the news, the comedy channel, or a nice BBC program for us to view here in america. Ballykissangel just happens to be the one of the best bbc programs I have ever seen. I just hope they keep putting more of them on video to enjoy as our local stations don't show them in a steady stream. ballykissagel vol. 1 (trying to connect you and the things we do for love) video are worth buying! I give it 5 stars! I also recommend vol.2 (live in my heart and pay no rent, fallen angel) and vol. 3, (the power of glory, and missing you already)