Sugar Rush: Series 1

R2 originaali, ei suomitekstejä. Tekstit englanniksi.

Channel 4 and the makers of As If bring Julie Burchill's novel Sugar Rush to the screen as a late-night drama series, starring Olivia Hallinan and Lenora Crichlow. Each episode is a different journey inside Kim's world as her wry observations take us into the mind of a screwed up, loved up, lustful adolescent experiencing the bright lights of Brighton and the rush of forbidden love for the first time. Being a teenage girl is tough. Being an un-cool, 15-year-old lesbian who's completely infatuated with the most outrageous and popular girl in school is downright unfair... Sugar Rush explores the world of Kim and her earth-shattering lust for the gorgeous and sassy Maria Sweet, otherwise known as Sugar.

• Director ? : ? Harry Bradbeer, Sean Grundy
• Media Format ? : ? PAL
• Run time ? : ? 4 hours
• Release date ? : ? 15 Aug. 2005
• Actors ? : ? Olivia Hallinan, Lenora Crichlow, Sara Stewart, Richard Lumsden, Kurtis O'Brien
• Subtitles: ? : ? English
• Language ? : ? English (Dolby Digital 2.0)
• Studio ? : ? 4dvd
• Producers ? : ? Johnny Capps
• ASIN ? : ? B000A0GLEE
• Number of discs ? : ? 2

Sugar Rush is perfectly pitched. Ultimately it's about youth: the feelings of first love, the exploration of sexuality and the belief that you can do anything.

Kim (Olivia Hallinan) is a fifteen year old who lusts after her best friend, the sassy town bike Sugar (Lenora Crichlow). Unfortunately Sugar is very much into men. Kim's next door neighbour Tom (Andrew Garfield in an early role, still with a baby face) is very much into Kim, though having two dads means that everyone assumes Tom is gay. Kim's mother Stella (Sara Stewart) is rather interested in their sexy new handyman Dale (Neil Jackson) whilst her father Nathan (Richard Lumsden) is woefully oblivious. And her little brother Matt (Kurtis O'Brien) thinks he's an alien.

Though a lot of serious and sometimes tragic issues are explored in Sugar Rush, it never allows itself to be depressing. Gay characters on TV and film often have such a hard time of it that you'd think it was a death sentence. Either that or they're obsessed with sex. However the portayal of Kim works. She (and the camera) looks at Sugar the way a straight girl may look at a teenage boy; the show doesn't shy away from the fact that Kim has sexual feelings towards her friend. However the universal appeal of the show is how it explores those intense friendships you have when you're young, where it's you and your mate against the world and you feel that you'll be together forever. In a way, it's a similar theme to Withnail and I, though the friendship there is loving but platonic.

The show is set in Brighton, known for being a fun loving place with a good gay scene. So there is no suggestion that Kim is doomed because she is a lesbian; actually, she has a whole world ahead of her. However Sugar's world, hedonistic and intoxicating as it may be, is falling apart. Lenora Crichlow perfectly shows Sugar's trashiness and self-absorption whilst showing that she has a tragic side underneath. Every girl, and maybe every guy as well, has had an idolic crush on a mate- that impossibly cool person that you can't even believe would be friends with you, let alone a best friend. Sugar Rush is very identifiable, whatever your sexuality.

Or even exploration of sexuality aside, it shows a teenager starting to realise that her parents' marriage is falling apart. Sara Stewart and Richard Lumsden find the comedy in the strainings of the marriage and Nathan's compensation for Stella's lack of maternal extinct by doing all the chores. However it is also desparately sad, as Stella looks longingly over an old picture of Nathan. Sometimes love is not enough. The effect of this on Kim and her younger brother is nicely contrasted, as it completely destroys her younger brother, though even then, still with a degree of humour.

If you're a viewer in your early twenties or around about that age, you may remember the CITV show Girls in Love, based on the Jacqueline Wilson novel. Olivia Hallinan also starred in that as well, and in a way, they are very similar. You can almost graduate to Sugar Rush.

As for that 18 rating, it makes you assume that the show will be sordid and titillating but it's not at all. What earned the show its 18 rating was the way in which it did not judge the characters' drugs taking. The actual content remains within the 15 boundaries, though I've noticed that the BBFC tend to mark a certificate up if the film or show deals with homosexual relationships. It's a shame because that 15-18 bracket are at an ideal age to watch this. For the rest of us, it's a look back at those wonderful torturous years of youth.

THE PRODUCT

There are some extras, plus subtitles for the main features. The extras include deleted scenes (which I haven't checked out yet), an outtake reel (basically a minute and a half of the cast messing about) and director commentaries on the first and last episode of the series (interesting but it would have been nice to get the actresses in as well).

As other reviewers have noted, there have been music edits, as is the case with other shows (This Life and Waterloo Road), which means that the original soundtrack is replaced by a score. It is frustrating that the producers don't use music that they can get DVD rights for- the reason for As If never getting a video or DVD release is that it would be far too costly to get the rights for all the music they used.

Levy ja kotelo hyväkuntoiset. Ostaja maksaa postituskulut 4 euroa. Samoilla postikuluilla menee myös toinen normaalikokoinen DVD/CD/Blu-ray:

Katso tästä muut kohteeni 

Jos ostat enemmän elokuvia, 9 euron postikuluilla saat niin monta elokuvaa kuin jaksat ostaa!