Joking Apart - DVD Release

DVD Release

Both series have been released on DVD. The DVD is notable because a fan of the show, Craig Robins, bought the rights from 2Entertain, BBC Worldwide's DVD interest, and released it on his own independent label, Replay DVD. Robins put up £30,000 of his own money to buy the rights and produced the series one disc. As a professional videotape editor, Robins was able to restore the video, and author the disc himself, using a piece of freeware to transcribe the dialogue for the subtitles.

The first series was released on DVD on 29 May 2006. It contains audio commentaries on four of the episodes from Moffat, Bathurst, Gillies and Bennett. It also contains a featurette, "Fool If You Think It's Over", with retrospective interviews. The second series was released on 17 March 2008 as a two-disc set. It contains audio commentaries on all episodes: five featuring a mix of Moffat, Bathurst, Gillies, Bennett, Raffield and Ptaszynski, with episode two featuring Spiers, and production manager Stacey Adair that concentrates on the behind-the-scenes production. The pilot from Comic Asides is also included on Disc 2, along with a complete set of Series Two scripts in Portable Document Format (PDF) and a PDF article entitled "Joking Apart In The Studio". The release includes a companion booklet.

Replay DVD was commended in reviews for the quality of the disc. DVD Times reports that "Joking Apart looks much sharper than the average television show on DVD. The colours are also much richer and have obviously been fixed throughout to present a more uniform image while the picture is bright and clear." The featurette on the series 1 set is labelled "a great little feature", with Moffat particularly praised for his contribution. DVD Times identifies "a real sense of friendship and of a real liking for this show" within the commentaries, highlighting that Moffat "sounds really happy ... for Joking Apart to have finally gotten some recognition".