Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

jon-1086 If you have never seen the Brittas Empire I wish I was you because I'd love to laugh at it again for the first time. Chris Barrie brilliantly represents the kind of officious but well-meaning twerp that the world is now infested with, believing in the words of his wife that he is the oil that greases the machine, when really he is a big bag of grit. I think you can see his influence elsewhere with Alan Partridge and David Brent just a couple of characters with a bit of Brittas in them.The other characters are well represented with the permanently afflicted Colin and his pill-popping wife standing out in particular. The episode in which Brittas closes the Leisure Centre in order to find a stolen £5 note and imprisons the near-incontinent Colin in a locker to catch the culprit unawares is a particular favourite.Some of the later episodes are a bit weaker but the writers on the whole do a good job of thinking up ways for Brittas to inflict misery on the staff and patrons of Whitbury Newtown Leisure Centre.It is a shame we don't see a lot of Chris Barrie these days as he has obvious talent as a comic actor as well as an impressionist.

IridescentTranquility Sometimes you see a character on television or in film that makes you wonder what you would think of them if they were a real person and you could actually meet them. Other characters you might be sure you'd run away from, screaming in terror. I think that - if I had the fortune (perhaps that should be misfortune) to cross the path of Gordon Wellesley Brittas, I would surely end up on as many combinations of tranquillisers as his poor wife Helen gets through. Earlier this year, I made the excellent choice to buy the complete DVD box set, including all the Christmas specials and every single episode from the seven series made by the BBC, and every now and then I like to watch a few (or maybe even more than a few) episodes, so I can remember the brilliant comedy I used to watch when I was little. This weekend, I've watched a terrible mix-up in communications that led to Buttercup the cow having her breech calf delivered to the strains of a Mozart piano concerto by a gynaecologist who'd just finished playing squash, while poor Carole the receptionist went into labour in the swimming pool and ended up having her twins delivered by a vet in the leisure centre sauna.I've watched a massive tarantula escape from the box somebody sent it to Brittas as hate mail in. I saw Brittas run amok with a chainsaw and concluded that he decapitated the poor unfortunate who had been knocked unconscious behind the door he was trying to cut through. I've seen him deal with his wife Helen's occasional visits to him by telling his deputy, Laura, "Take Mrs. Brittas for a cup of coffee, and perhaps a doughnut" over and over again. Poor Mrs. Brittas has twins in the middle of a high street while the whole town watches her, simply because she was unfortunate enough that she couldn't insist on Laura being the one who took her to hospital. Sometimes you see a character on television that you don't believe in, but I don't see anything of that kind at Whitbury Newtown Leisure Centre. I see Tim and Gavin, insanely jealous of each other, and yet in a relationship that is never explicitly stated, but that I can understand now much better than when I watched the comedy as a child. I don't know how Laura copes as deputy manager, and in the end I think she doesn't know how she does it, either. It is an eternal mystery to me that no one tries to treat Colin's countless skin complaints, or sends Julie the secretary on a customer relations course. I don't know how Carole's children survive living in drawers and cupboards behind the reception desk, but they do. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of Gordon Brittas is that he genuinely cares for everyone. His staff, his wife, his children and his leisure centre are all so very important to him, but it seems to be in his nature to drive them to the brink of sanity and back. And whatever Gordon does - be it knocking out a famous Russian pianist with a bowling ball, or taking charge of his irate staff when they get snowed into the leisure centre together - he always does it for the best. And that's the scarily appealing thing about him.

jez-14 The Brittas empire kept me in stitches. Chris Barrie is one of the funniest actors I've seen! Pity they stopped the show.

naxash Mr Gordon Brittas is chief of Whitbury Newtown Leisure center. He thinks he's brilliant, but in fact everything he does turns into a disaster. The only person in his staff who thinks he's brilliant too, Colin, who's cleaning toilets all the time, is an absolute failure. Brittas's wife is depressed all the time - guess why. No one's coming to the leisure center - guess why. Gordon Brittas has a dream, but it never quite turns out the way he planned it. THE BRITTAS EMPIRE does have its surrealist moments (Carol "Whitbury Newtown Leisure Center how may I help you?" is keeping her children in drawers), it has its "thrilling" moments (like when Santa Claus tries to kill the whole staff during a survival course)... but everything is always funny, like Gordon Brittas when he tells his own dad "don't you SON me" -- or when he tells his wife about a "magical moment" he spent with her but she doesn't know what he's talking about....or the Christian fundamentalists from the U.S. who pronounce Brittas's name as "bright-ass" and want to re-baptize him... THE BRITTAS EMPIRE is, as the man himself, Gordon Brittas, would say, "eeeeeexcellent"....