Futurama: Bender's Big Score

As it proclaims on the opening credit screen, Futurama is the show that "just won't stay dead".

Embarking on a Family Guy-esque resurrection through a feature-length direct-to-DVD movie, Bender's Big Score telegraphs the many reasons that the show was originally cancelled two years ago and, as a Matt Groening vanity project, The Simpsons' creator just doesn't know when to let a good thing end.

In an introduction parodying the show's unfortunate cancellation two years ago, the mini-movie starts with the executives of the Box Network (a not very subtle allusion to the Fox Network) canceling Planet Express's contract, though thanks to the Box board's recent annihilation the team are "back on the air". Groening himself has described the Lazarus-like return of the show as the production staff "writing the new series as movies and chopping them up to try and make them work as separate episodes", so we can expect three more of these random off-shoots.

Things start off very wobbly, but after the first half hour the gags begin to come thick and fast and fans of the lamented show are hugely well catered for with a series of in-jokes that even the fair-weather fan will enjoy. The featherweight plot has the Planet Express crew fighting to save the world from internet scammers (who just happen to be nudist aliens), who send Bender back into the past to steal the world's greatest treasures. The location of the theory of time travel is a revelation (to say the least) and the twist ending is amusing, though I'm not sure if it will be worthwhile tuning into these mini-movies before the expected boxset compilation at the end of what will be a strangely staggered "Season Five" rollout.

Extras: Commentary track, Hypnotoad episode, Maths lecture First draft of the script, character sketches, 3D models, deleted scenes, the complete five-minute trailer first shown at ComicCon 2007 and a "Futurama returns!" comic book reading.

Released on 7th April 2008 by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Written by Simon Cole.