Tom Green is allegedly one of America’s most watched, most shocking, and also most widely despised television hosts in history. Well known for his role as the mouse-swallowing Barry Manilow in Road Trip and MTV host of the self titled The Tom Green Show (how do these Americans keep coming up with all these creative new titles for television shows and sitcoms?) Tom seems to have carved out a name for himself that is as much loved as it is loathed; in fact, after reading several other reviews I’m thinking that the loathing actually far exceeds the love... maybe that’s why some love him, who knows, because quite frankly it is all quite beyond this now quite pale looking duck.

I must say though, before watching this disc I was expecting offensive material. Offensive enough to put grandparents into cardiac arrests and even vile enough to make the most hardened teenager scream out ‘yee gawds’, but, oddly enough, even that was a disappointment, as was the rest of the program. Tonsil Hockey is nothing more than nearly an hour's worth of unoriginal pranks, terrible singing, and the worst over-usage of facial expression since... well... EVER. Tom really is trying hard, his futile little brain is constantly working overtime trying to think of supposedly ‘new’ ways of shocking his pre-pubescent audience, but alas, anybody with any real intelligence and humour is left scratching his or her head. To be honest there were a couple of times when I laughed. No, I lie, there was only one occasion when I actually laughed out loud, but only briefly I might add, and only because it reminded me of the sort of pranks I’ve seen high school kids play on a Friday afternoon at the local K-Mart.

The video, audio and extras are all pretty dead ordinary. Most of the footage, excluding about two or three studio shots, are all recorded on a poorly held handicam, and a pretty cheap and average one at that. The audio is therefore mostly mono and the video looks like footage taken from your last family Christmas party, inclusive of the inebriated uncle behind the camera. The transfer itself is reasonably clean, with most of the faults easily blamable on the source material. So needless to say there is a fair bit of grain, shadow detail isn’t anything special, and there lacks a complete clarity or sharpness to the picture.

The video is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and is not widescreen enhanced, one would assume this is how it appeared on television. The audio is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0, but as said above, appears to be in mono for the entirety of the production. This really isn’t a problem as the dialogue is generally quite clear and audible and there are no special effects that require any surround usage.

The extras include a very brief interview with the production crew, a collection of some still shots, a text based timeline of Green’s career, bios of Tom and his abused sidekicks, as well as DVD production credits. Overall nothing special at all.

With this aside, one could only consider Tonsil Hockey a worthy purchase if you are already a big fan of Tom Green's work. His MTV hit series is quite popular in the U.S. and I’m sure there must be Australian converts around too, and for those hapless fools you may very well enjoy this sort of ‘best of’ DVD. For all those who remain... Stay clear!