15 Storeys High : Complete BBC Series 1 & 2 [DVD]

This show has been criminally overlooked in my opinion. Short version - The Office meets Green Wing in a south London council estate. Now if those shows aren't your thing, fine, move on. If, like me, you loved both of them, this will go straight to the top of your favourites.The setup is pretty classic sitcom. A grumpy misanthrope has to deal with the annoyances of his life - a job he doesn't care about, neighbours with varying degrees of annoyance and insanity, and a chirpy but naive flatmate. Where it flies is just how far it's willing to push the strangeness envelope. Lock's character, Vince, is a compulsive liar who steals other people's anecdotes and tells them back to them, including pretending to have only one testicle just because he thought it made him more interesting. His flatmate Errol is so pathologically nice he has to hide in the basement to avoid telling a customer they don't have what he wants in stock.Interspersed between Vince and Errol's stories are vignettes from their neighbours - from the man who mostly asks his mail order bride for help in locating pencils and lost hamsters (no, get that filthy thought out of your mind), via the human statue who's definitely getting a custodial sentence this time, to the man who'll only communicate with the police through a glove puppet that is his housekeeper.No amount of text can really do justice to the sheer strangeness and brilliance of the series, just go ahead and buy it.

Very funny series from a very talented guy. Probably a bit downbeat for the British public? Bloody funny though!

I enjoyed the tv show, so bought the DVD to share with other family members.No quibble whatsoever with the concept, writing or performances - which were every bit as good as I remembered.Qualitywise, I no longer recall whether the _lighting_ came across as quite so gloomy on the broadcast version and wondered if there had been a problem/fault in porting across the original source material to DVD...(I believe that the show has recently/belatedly been added to iPlayer, so may be able to check for myself).

I had no idea what to expect, I saw it as a recommended purchase on my Amazon listings. I'd seen Sean Lock in other comedies and I thought it would be interesting to see what he could do on his own.I was blown away. If you like very dark, very dry and very sparse humour, this is a blinding series. It's very low key photography with drab sets and constant understatement in everything. The humour comes from suggestion and understanding the situations, it's not constant funny gags that are in your face.Errol ( Benedict Wong ) is just such a superb actor. He's now a big Hollywood star but this show really proves he has a stunning talent for understated comedy and the occasional hilarious slapstick moment, the scene in the car spares shop just had me laughing so hard.The whole series is based on the fact that there is very little point to the character's existences, they simply drift through life with no real purpose but they carry on regardless. Despite the name there are no real stories to be told other than the silly things that happen to the two main characters. It's no surprise that this wasn't promoted by the BBC more highly, it's not a laugh a minute prime-time sort of series, you need a certain sense of humour to appreciate its quirkiness and it's not something everyone is going to get. If you like the typical US type comedy shows then steer well clear of this as you will probably find it quite boring and far too slow paced.

I love comedy that's surreal and offbeat but this tried to hard and just didn't work for me. Ok a couple of scenes brought a smile to my face but compared to Milligan , Python , The League Of Gentlemen, and Ideal this was just a ugly snoozefest. On the plus side it's cheap in price so nothing ventured nothing gained.

I tried watching this series a couple of times - once when it was first shown on BBC3 and again, later on - both times I gave up. However, a prominent comedy website suggested that I give it another go and I'm so glad that I did. The premise is that creator/writer Sean Lock plays a London tower block resident, Vince. Vince works as a lifeguard in a local municipal swimming pool and spends most of his time recounting other peoples' stories as his own. He rents his spare room out to Errol, a strange man who holds down a variety of different, often bizarre, jobs during both series. The true beauty of this show is the way that the director cuts to other scenes occuring in the other flats, which gives it an impressive and surreal edge.There are commentaries on two episodes in the first series (both of which I have watched), plus there's a 'making of' featurette in the second series' DVD. Just a great show.

Sean Lock at his best. Being able to watch the daily life's behind closed doors of a cynical man, his gullible flatmate and the rest of the tower block residents is absolutely hilarious. Co-written and starring Sean Lock, much better than a lot of his stand up and hopefully maybe a return from him soon, now that he's left 8 out of 10 cats.Includes director's commentary which is interesting.Also to note, there is a 3 series BBC radio show that is the prequel to this floating around the internet if anyone is interested.

Originating as a radio series, this is the complete TV series that followed, introducing TV viewers to Sean Lock. Over twelve episodes spread over two series we enter the world of Vince, a swimming pool attendant living in a run down tower block with his lodger Errol. Vince is reclusive and a depressive - hardly the stuff of comedy? Wrong. We watch him spying on the neighbours, giving his flatmate the run around and trying to cope with the minuté of daily life with very funny results. The humour is surreal, the plotting tending to concentrate on one facit of Vince's character at a time. His meanness runs throughout. The strange thing is Lock plays the part straight, the fallout happens around him. It's a lovely look at a man trapped in a world he can't escape from. Think of a much darker Steptoe and Son.