How I Met Your Mother (hereafter known as HIMYM) is the story of Ted Mosby, as told by the future Ted Mosby in retrospect to his children - providing the very first joke of the show (and one of my favourites) the looks on his son and daughter's faces as Ted bores them to death with his overly long winded tale of how he met their mother.

Fortunately for us, the viewers, the stories Ted tells are shown in full colour episodes and are far more entertaining than older Ted seems to be. HIMYM could be described as 'the new Friends' and while it seems to have more than a couple of parallels with the older show - most of these are actually superficial ones like the style (sitcom), the setting (New York) and the cast (mixed genders with strong, funny characters in both).

The show is narrated by none other than Bob Saget (as Older Ted) and stars Josh Radnor as Young Ted along with Jason Segel as his best friend Marshall Eriksen, Alyson Hannigan as Marshall's significant girlfriend Lily Aldrin, Cobie Smulders as Robin Scherbatsky and the amazing, incredible, hilarious and awesome Neil Patrick Harris as Barney Stinson Ted's best friend. The cast are uniformly fantastic but it is Neil who genuinely steals most of the episodes and scenes with his portrayal of the womanising Barney.

The first season starts with Ted recounting the story of how he met Robin and going from there, following Ted's continuing search for his very own Miss Right - with his sights set firmly on Robin. It's a light-hearted and funny show which doesn't overstay it's welcome and also manages to provide an ongoing sense of continuity as well, many sitcoms fail to provide this - instead giving us episodes which could be watched in almost any order. But HIMYM not only has a tangible passage of time, it also plays with the retrospective narrative by giving us hints of future events.

HIMYM is one of my favourite currently running sitcoms and while unfortunately only the first season is available in the UK right now it's still something that I consider a must watch for those of you who enjoy light comedy entertainment.

Extras:
Audio commentary on selected episodes
Video Yearbook featurette
Happy Hour Blooper Reel

Details:
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Language: English
Rating: 12
Region: 2
Run time: 462 mins
Subtitles: Swedish, English HOH