BBC Video has released the second series (season) of The Royle Family, one of the most brilliant, surreal, horrifyingly funny sitcoms I've ever seen. Picking up where Season One left off, The Royle Family: The Complete Second Season gives us seven more episodes of the Royle family doing nothing but watching TV, picking their noses, scratching their arses, smoking, eating, drinking, bickering, fostering ever more resentment towards each other, and ultimately, loving each other. It's an extraordinary viewing experience, with an emotional resonance the equal of the first remarkable series.

I wrote extensively about the aesthetics of the first series (please click here to read a review of The Royle Family: The Complete First Season), so I won't go into a detailed rehash of the show's mechanics and themes. If you're new to the series, The Royle Family chronicles the everyday lives of a working class Manchester, England family. Presented in "real time," each half hour show is devoted to showing the Royles sitting around on their lazy asses, doing nothing but watching TV, while snarking at each other. The series (at least up to this point) never goes outside the Royle residence, concentrating its action on the cramped, dirty living room, the dining room, and their tiny kitchen. The camera, set down low at couch level, remains largely static, giving us tight, claustrophobic close-ups of the characters as it impassively records their grindingly monotonous lives.

As I recounted in my first review, the genius of The Royle Family is in its resolute determination to first view the Royles unsympathetically, warts and all, while implicating us in their condemnation. We may sit back and marvel (and of course, laugh) at the crassness and boorishness of the various family members, but we are watching them, aren't we? In a series with a strong undercurrent of absolute contempt for the industry of television (the Royles largely waste away their lives in front of the box, viewing places they'll never go to, and seeing consumer items they'll never have), we find ourselves drawn into the whole complicated mess, because we're the ultimate extension of the show's irony: viewers sitting at home and staring at a TV family, whose series shows them sitting at home, staring at TV. And of course, just when we start to feel superior to the Royles, the writers have the characters show a flash of kindness or throw out a bit of empathy for someone, bringing us back to sympathizing and identifying with them.

The central story arc - if you can even call it that - for The Royle Family: The Complete Second Season is Denise's (Caroline Aherne) pregnancy. Having married Dave (Craig Cash), Denise has now further settled into a death-like sluggish torpor. Nights are spent over at her parents house, where she and Dave recline on the sofa, and stare vacantly at the TV while trading endless, "Oh, yeahs" with her mother Barbara (Sue Johnston). Unemployed Jim (Ricky Tomlinson), when he's not digging in his nose or digging into his crotch, is openly pleased with Denise's pregnancy, but the prospect of becoming a grandfather in no way alters his crass, disgusting behavior, or lessen his sharpish tongue (when Denise tells him the good news, he responds by saying that's at least one thing she can do right). Droning, dithering mother-in-law Nana (Liz Smith), the natural enemy of Jim, is pleased about the coming baby, too - when she can be roused from her naps on the couch. And Antony (Ralf Little), ever put-upon to go down to the store, or make bacon buttys for his ungrateful sister, or get a brew up for everybody, or to go hungry when he wants a bit more food, appears to be looking for anyway out of the family.

Denise has to be one of the worst potential mothers ever presented on a TV sitcom. Using her pregnancy to further her reputation as a totally idle cow, the minute she announces she's pregnant, she becomes helpless to do even the smallest tasks. Continuing to smoke and drink alcohol ("Loads for me; I'm drinking for two!"), she refuses to contemplate doing the most basic mothering tasks because she has to "maintain her independence." No breast-feeding for her (she says Dave can do it, and anyway, bottle-fed is just as good to her), the only reason she wants to get a baby monitor is so she can tell "it to shut up" from downstairs without climbing the stairs. With flat, dead eyes and a simpering, whining voice, she's a nightmare of indolent blankness. What a startlingly unsympathetic character for Aherne to write for herself.

A smaller subplot this season is Barb's menopause, which of course brings out the worst in Jim. There's a remarkable episode where Barb makes a horrid Sunday meal for everyone (who, as usual, are totally oblivious to her hard work putting it on the table), where the camera catches Barb several times looking sadly off into space, with the viewer only guessing what kind of dreams she's imagining are gone. The subsequent episode tops it, having Barb, for perhaps the first time in her marriage, coming to real clarity about her life (she says it's not a life, but existence) as she precisely identifies all the drawbacks of Jim and Denise (tellingly, she only has sympathy for Antony, whom she feels was irreparably harmed by Jim's poor parenting). Leaving the house - something she doesn't usually do - Jim and Denise trade blame for her possible desertion. And just when you think the episode will go in a direction that will bring the matter to a head, when maybe some kind of crisis might bring a change in the family dynamic, both Jim and Denise forget all about poor Barb and become deeply involved in watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. They really start to play it, too, caring far more about the ultimate fate of the anonymous contestant they instantly take a liking to on the telly, rather than about their mother and wife who has left the house in terrible emotional despair. It's a brilliant, sick joke, the kind that The Royle Family excels at - with the sickest part being when we find ourselves getting just as wrapped up in the game show as Jim and Denise.

The final episode of the series (not including the Christmas special that's also included on this disc) achieves an exquisite parity of gross-out humor and tender sentimentality, an almost impossible balancing act the series routinely achieves. Antony's big moment, his 18th birthday, has come and he's bringing home his new girlfriend, posh Emma Kavanagh (Sheridan Smith). Immediately descending into disgusting, cringe-inducing hilarity, Emma is introduced to the bottom of Dave's boot, after it's discovered that he's the lucky one with dog dirt on the bottom of it (the search for the offender is priceless). Barb is then compelled to take off Dave's boot (he's so pathetically lazy he can't do it himself), while she tells Emma, "I bet this never happens in your house." If that's not bad enough, Barb then proceeds to scrap off the dog mess...into the kitchen sink, before running tap water over the boot to finish the job. Bringing the boot back to Dave, she pronounces it clean, with Jim upping the gag reflex by announcing he's "got a turtle head in his underpants" and that he's going to the toilet.

When things can't get any worse, the writers of The Royle Family: The Complete Second Season pull an astounding switch. Next door neighbors Joe and Mary Carroll (Peter Martin and Doreen Keogh) arrive, with their pudgy, good-natured lump of a daughter Cheryl (Jessica Hynes). After Jim gets everyone in a party mood with a rousing banjo tune, Joe, who earns the unending disdain of Jim for being possibly the most boring man on Earth, and taken with too much drink, suddenly breaks into a love song. The whole room becomes quiet, as they listen to Joe's surprisingly tender rendition of, "I'll Take You Home, Kathleen." As they sing along, the camera pans along the group, showing everyone touched by the song. It's a sentimental moment, and quietly powerful. But the makers of The Royle Family: The Complete Second Season aren't letting that beautiful moment stand. The camera pans again, but along with Nana crying (she says her deceased husband used to sing it to her) and good guy Antony taking his girlfriend's hand in his (she smiles sweetly at him), we see Cheryl stuffing her face, and Antony's shady friend Darren (Andrew Whyment) sullenly watching TV (there's never a time when at least one person isn't staring at the droning TV). And as soon as the song ends, surly Darren says, "I can still smell the sh*t in here." Roll credits. It may be the funniest, most deeply offensive end to a TV season I've ever seen. That's the genius of The Royle Family's hysterically funny, touching, and deeply sad, message: there is no beauty in this world, no grace, no tenderness, without the stink of sh*t.

The DVD:

The Video:
Shot on grainy, crappy 16mm, The Royle Family: The Complete Second Season looks appropriately grimy, and the full-frame, 1.33:1 video image faithfully captures the funky mess that is the Royle world.

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English 2.0 stereo audio mix is perfectly suited to this largely dialogue-driven series. Subtitles are available.

The Extras:
Criminally, there are no extras for The Royle Family: The Complete Second Season.

Final Thoughts:
Absolutely brilliant. One of the finest, strangest, most hilariously sad sitcoms to ever grace the airwaves, The Royle Family: The Complete Second Season continues to astound with its Ozu-like implacable camera, as the Royle sloths sluggishly move about their living room and kitchen, always keeping one eye on the TV as they insult each other to the point of distraction, and ultimately, exhaustion. I urge you to get the first and second season of this British masterpiece. I highly, highly recommend The Royle Family: The Complete Second Season.