Worst. DVD Menu. EVAR.
DVD Menus are often a pet peeve for me. Any producer that decides that it's cool to waste my time by showing worthless animations at startup or (even worse) when I make selections on a menu should be shot. Well, at least removed from making DVD menus. I've seen some pretty atrocious ones. I remember Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Scrubs as wasting my time in particular.

But, I have a new winner for all-time worse DVD Menu EVAR. That's season one of MI-5. It's a fine British spy show. No Sandbaggers, but still very nice, but the DVD Menu ... shudder. There's all the slow transitions that you'd expect from STOOPID DVD design, including a full minute to get to the first menu. But, here's the kicker:

THERE'S NO WORDS ON THE MAIN SELECTION SCREEN. Instead you have to pick among visual elements on a desk. For example, there's a pile of DVDs on the main menu, and so that's the episode selection. A pile of DAT tapes lets you change sounds. There's two bits of paper on the desk. One led to the special features, and I have no idea where the other went.

To try and help guide you there's an audio which instructs you which elements to click for each thing. You know, like those instructions you get when you call up some company and you get thrown into a hell of phone menus? That's right, someone thought that'd be great for a DVD. And it only plays once, so if you step away (say, because you always load up a DVD a few minutes before you're ready to see it, because of outrageously long startup graphics), you'll have no idea what to do.

Bad Spooks! No biscuit!