Take That - The Ultimate Tour DVD by James Ellaby

Take That's comeback tour could have gone one way or another. It could have been a Phantom Menace style disaster, where the girls who grew up idolising them saw a bunch of old and podgy failed solo stars run through their hit singles in a tired and cynical fashion, or it could have been a stunning show that brought back all the great memories and created a whole load of new ones. As this DVD displays very well, it was certainly the latter.

The Ultimate Tour features one of Take That's shows at the City Of Manchester Stadium in the summer, and it's easy to see why they picked this venue rather than the MEN Arena, where we saw them a month or two earlier. While the enclosed nature of the Arena makes for a better gig-going experience than the open air COMS, a football stadium is obviously much more cinematic, and it was even more spectacular-looking in this preview at the AMC Cinema at Great Northern.

The DVD helps brings the gig to life in a way that standing half a mile away from the stage never can, so it's going to be a pretty much essential purchase for anyone who went to the shows, and it won't disappoint. The camerawork is spot on without falling into the usual trap of over-flashy MTV style editing, while the sound is great quality. But the most important part of the DVD is the gig itself, and like the 5-star show we reviewed at the Arena, it's a corker.

There are exotic salsa dancers, walls of fire, pouring rain, fireworks, dance moves, a guy who looks like Christopher Lloyd and lots of sexy ladies wearing thongs (particularly in the soft-porn backdrop to Why Can't I Wake Up With You), not to mention a (rubbish) hologram Robbie Williams and a Beatles medley. There's also the colourful and camp orgy of PVC and flames in Relight My Fire, which features Lulu dressed as an ostrich for reasons we can't even begin to comprehend.

While the fans who turned up to this world premiere preview of the DVD were disappointed at the lack of Gary, Mark, Jason or Howard, they loved the event itself, singing and clapping along like they were back at the gig. And who can blame them? The Ultimate Tour is quite a tag to have given such a risky enterprise by a band whose prime was more than ten years, but by the time the fireworks are going off during the awesome finale of Never Forget, anyone who didn't go to one of the shows will be wishing they had...