Overview: The Sketch Show was a British television sketch comedy program, featuring many leading British comedians. It aired on ITV between 2001 and 2003 (Although it was originally pitched & rejected by the BBC) The original lineup of the cast was Lee Mack, Jim Tavare, Tim Vine, Karen Taylor and Ronni Ancona. The gender balance of this lineup enabled considerable variation in the dramatic setups for the sketches, in that all three men could be paired with either of the two women. Additionally, as all the performers traditionally used their own names in sketches, humour was able to be drawn from the attractive female Ronni being referred to with what is a stereotypically male name (Ronni being short for Veronica). This DVD of the first season was released by Visual Entertainment in Australia on 12 September 2005. All 8 episodes on the single-disc release are combined into a 3 hour feature. The opening and closing credits have been removed for all episodes, and a number of sketches have been edited out to fit the series onto a single disc.