I hadn’t taken out a DVD for a while and popped into DVD Nouveau (where else) on Sunday. I got Step Brothers with Will Farrell (6/10 – you can skip that one) and Dead Calm with Billy Zane (it was the right thing to do – and it was good – get it). Although I didn’t feel quite satisfied and had another poke around the shop.

Now, I’ve been following Stephen Fry on Twitter for a few weeks and have thoroughly enjoyed his random mutterings, including one the other morning – “What a lovely day! Off for a morning stroll now, what!” His “tweets” have brought on a smirk or two so I decided to take home his new DVD, entitled Stephen Fry in America .

I’m busy watching the first disc now and I must admit it’s quite cool. He takes you on a journey across all 50 of the United States of America.

The journey was inspired by the fact that Stephen Fry was very nearly born in America, if it wasn’t for his father’s job choice.

On stephenfry.com he notes:

Most people who are obsessed by America are fascinated by the physical – the cars, the music, the movies, the clothes, the gadgets, the sport, the cities, the landscape and the landmarks. I am interested in all of those, of course I am, but I (perhaps because of my father’s decision) am interested in something more. I have always wanted to get right under the skin of American life. To know what it really is to be American, to have grown up and been schooled as an American; to work and play as an American; to romance, labour, succeed, fail, feud, fight, vote, shop, drift, dream and drop out as an American; to grow ill and grow old as an American.

For years then, I have harboured deep within me the desire to make a series of documentary films about ‘the real’ America. Not the usual road movies in a Mustang and certainly not the kind of films where minority maniacs are trapped into making exhibitions of themselves. It is easy enough to find Americans to sneer at if you look hard enough, just as it is easy to find ludicrous and lunatic Britons to sneer at. Without the intention of fawning and flattering then, I did want to make an honest film about America, an unashamed love letter to its physical beauty and a film that allowed Americans to reveal themselves in all their variety.

I enjoy Fry’s conservative “frightful” humour and give this DVD set the thumbs up.

Intuitive, funny and easy watching.

Get it and chill.

It’s safe.