DVDs in Review - #10: Sugar Rush (The Complete Series 1 + 2)

Sugar Rush was a show that I caught occasionally on Channel 4 a few years back and it left an impression on me. So when I had a chance to pick up series 1 + 2 together on the cheap I decided "Why not? Lets see if it's as good as I remember it."

Show:

Sugar Rush is a teenage drama about a young lesbian called Kim who is secretly in love with her best friend 'Sugar'. It's a show that manages to capture the trials and issues that occur for teenagers in love and deals with them in a funny and sensitive manner. Kim narrates the show, providing much of her insight and thoughts on situations as voice over. Now narrated shows are pretty common these days and some shows are gratuitously over narrated (Scrubs has become a culprit of this, but Pushing Daises also springs to mind), but Sugar Rush strikes the right balance between narration, action and dialog without leaning too hard on the narration to explain events.

The perfomances from the cast are superb, from the fiesty and self confident Sugar all the way to the deeply wierd and disturbed Matt (Kim's younger brother), the show feels real. All of the characters have their lives and it feels like they do exist even when they're not on screen. It's this extra level of reality combined with the humour and the attention to detail that makes Sugar Rush so much fun to watch. It's not just for lesbians, it's for everyone who's ever been a teenager.

8/10

Packaging:

Sugar Rush's packaging is nothing special. It's a little bulky for the amount of discs (4 in two seperate standard cases) but the box art looks fine and both seasons look similar without being the same. It's a decent job, but nothing amazing here.

7/10

Extras:

Sugar Rush have very little in the way of extras; each season has some outtakes, a few deleted scenes and other bits. But there's nothing amazing here, no commentary or in depth documentries. I flicked through it but was quickly bored, it's not as good as the show is.

5/10

Price:

Unusually for a British series Sugar Rush has 10 episodes in a series which means it totals at 510 mins for the price of £12 (in Zavvi). This works out at an astounding 1.9p per minute, which I believe is the new record for price. So the show is undoubted value for money as it's well under the 3p mark.

10/10

Overall:
Show: 8
Packaging: 7
Extras: 5
Price: 10

Final Score: 75%

But if you don't care about extras the score of this show goes up quite a bit. It's tremendous value for money and great entertainment. It's just not the best DVD package ever.