Feature | Lights, Camera, Action! – Silicon Valley: The Complete First Series (DVD Review)

Silicon Valley: The Complete First Series (UK Rating: 15)

Focusing on the modern-day Silicon Valley, the show introduces a bunch of misfits living in what is basically a tech farm, where the (supposedly) best minds are bred, all under the watchful eye of Erlich (T.J. Miller - Transformers: Age of Extinction), a dotcom millionaire who lets them stay reside for free under the proviso that he claims a default 10% stake of whatever projects they each devise during their stay. The group consists of the mild-mannered and ridiculously twitchy Richard (Thomas Middleditch - The Wolf of Wall Street), who is busy developing a special compression algorithm that proves to be the main subject of the entire show, as well as his cohorts: Gilfoyle (Martin Starr - This is the End) and Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani - Sex Tape), who constantly bicker, attempting to one-up each other, and the outcast, Big Head (Josh Brener - The Big Bang Theory), who is basically nothing more than Richard's friend, not being specifically skillful in any one thing.

Over in Silicon Valley everyone is looking to be the next Google, Twitter, and so on, but can these self-proclaimed geniuses - actually portrayed as nothing more than high school nerds with no life throughout the series - take Pied Piper from its initial trappings as a music-based piece of software and convince the likes of major firm Hooli to invest in the idea to help develop it into the new worldwide phenomenon? Well, the simple answer is 'yes…to a degree,' since someone discovers the potential of the compression technique used in Pied Piper, sparking a bidding war between former friends, now enemies, Hooli founder and all-round hothead Gavin Belson (Matt Ross - American Horror Story) and an independent billionaire venture capitalist with an extremely off-the-wall persona, Peter Gregory (Christopher Evan Welch - The Master). With an absence of negotiation nounce, Richard fumbles his way along, attempting to guide his merry men to the big time, making all manner of crazy mistakes en route, picking up some friends (and enemies) in the process.

6/10

Good

Starting off very slow indeed, and lacking the true hearty laughs promised from its set-up, Silicon Valley: The Complete First Series is somewhat hit and miss. Over the eight episodes in Season One, the characters do start to grow, and one or two smiles will be had thanks to the ridiculous situations the group of cyber-geeks get themselves into, so there are high hopes for the second series. However, if wanting to drop £25 for the DVD boxset or £30 for the Blu-ray version, do note that this is indeed a slow burner, so be prepared to be patient…or ultimately disappointed.