THE COMPLETE COMIC STRIP PRESENTS… CHANNEL 4 FILMS (1982-1999)
Label: Severin Films
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 895 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles
Cast: Adrian Edmondson, Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer, , Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Robbie Coltrane
The Comic Strip were a pioneering ‘80s comedy troupe that were key to the 80's UK alt-comedy movement, this 3-disc collection presents 3 seasons and 5 specials from The Comic Strip that ran on BBC4 from 1982-1999, but it is not a complete collection as it does not collect a pair of seasons that aired on BBC2 nor a couple of BBC4 specials not present here, but it is quite a collection just the same. The sketch comedy show is quite unlike anything I have scene before, each episode not a stitched together series of vignettes like SNL or The Kids in the Hall but each episode is a self-contained mini-movie, each one lampooning and taking the piss out of a genre, movement, or film. The first season kicks off with “Five Go Mad in Dorset”, a send-up a British children’s book series The Famous Five I am unfamiliar with, so that might have dampened it a bit for me, but it's along the lines of a Nancy drew story, so I got even if it felt a bit unfamiliar, series 2 features a follow-up sequel "Five Go Mad On Mescalin". The highlight of series 1 is most certainly the heavy-metal mockumentary “Bad News Tour”, a faux-doc about a dipshit band, pre-dating Spinal Tap (and is just as funny) by at least a year, this is probably one of the series most cherished creation, one that spawned a sequel in series 3.
Other notable episodes of the series include “The Beat Generation”, a black and white satire of counter-culture beat poets in the style of the British New Wave, the spaghetti western send-up “A Fistful of Travelers Cheques”, post-nuke “Slags”, and “The Strike”, a satire of how Hollywood takes on historical drama, this one focused on the UK Miners’ Strike of 1984, with the producers casting Al Pacino as a union leader, then dismantling the truth of the story, much to the harried dismay of the original screenwriter. The first two seasons episodes run about a half hour each while season three opened it up to nearly an hour in length, often with better production value in addition tot eh longer run time. The third disc houses the five specials that aired, these aired during in-between a couple of the seasons and deliver some of the series best stuff, parodying ’70s cop shows (“The Bullshitters”) and ta riff on Hitchcock’s Rebecca (“Consuela, (or, The New Mrs Saunders)”).
It's absurd stuff, always entertaining, and oftentimes genius, and while some of it felt a bit foreign to me coming into as an outsider, the meat of it was quite entertaining and it's easy enough to get onboard with a parody, even if some of the source material it's lampooning was not exactly in my wheelhouse. The main cast include Adrian Edmondson, Rik Mayall and Nigel Planer who would find success in the hugely popular sitcom The Young Ones (haven't seen it), as well as Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, also starred in their own French & Saunders comedy show, with Saunders going starring in Absolutely Fabulous (I've seen a handful of these). Peter Richardson (Glam Metal Detectives) is the series longest serving member, and series regular is the late Robbie Coltrane, probably most widely knows as the bearded Hagrid from the Harry Potter franchise. The most well-known to me (and probably a lot of others here in the US) outside of Coltrane is Rick Mayall, who co-starred in Drop Dead Fred (1991).
Episodes:
Disc 1:
S1, Episode 1: Five Go Mad In Dorset (November 11th, 1982)
S1, Episode 2: War (January 3rd, 1983)
S1, Episode 3: The Beat Generation (January 17th, 1983)
S1, Episode 4: Bad News Tour (January 24th, 1983)
S1, Episode 5: Summer School (January 31st, 1983)
S2, Episode 1: Five Go Mad On Mescalin (November 2nd, 1983)
S2, Episode 2: Dirty Movie (January 7th, 1984)
S2, Episode 3: Susie (January 14th, 1984)
S2, Episode 4: A Fistful Of Travellers' Cheques (January 21st, 1984)
S2, Episode 5: Gino – Full Story And Pics (January 28th, 1984)
S2, Episode 6: Eddie Monsoon – A Life? (February 4th 1984)
S2, Episode 7: Slags (February 11th, 1984)
Disc 2:
S3, Episode 1: The Strike (February 20th, 1988)
S3, Episode 2: More Bad News (February 27th, 1988)
S3, Episode 3: Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door (March 5th, 1988)
S3, Episode 4: The Yob (March 12, 1988)
S3, Episode 5: Didn't You Kill My Brother? (March 19th, 1988)
S3, Episode 6: Funseekers (March 26th, 1988)
Disc 3:
TV Specials:
- The Bullshitters: Roll Out The Gunbarrel November 3rd, 1984)
- "Consuela" (or 'The New Mrs Saunders') (January 1st, 1986)
- Private Enterprise (January 2nd, 1986)
- Four Men In A Car (April 12th, 1998)
- Four Men In A Plane (January 4th, 2000)
Audio/Video: Most of the episodes of The Comic Strip presents... are presented in AVC encoded 480i framed in mostly 1:33:1 full frame, which is the correct AOR. The source looks pretty soft at times, murky, and not particaurly sharp or well-defined. These looks to have been shot on film and there's is grain evident but it can smeary looking at times, most of these don't look to have been sourced from original film elements. While it never rises to the level of what the HD format is capable of it's quite watchable and colors are often quite attractive, though black levels are typically milky. Audio comes by way of uncompressed English DTS-HD MA 2.0 with optional English subtitles. It shows it's vintage with some muted fidelity but overall I found dialogue to be clear throughout and the songs sounded quite good, as does the recurrent opening title song "Quando, Quando, Quando".
Severin stack this release with some solid extras, we get a pair of feature-length docs by way of the new Severin produced 94-min The Rise Of The Comic Strip – Documentary with troupe members Peter Richardson, Nigel Planer and Alexei Sayle, plus contributions from John Landis, Stephen Frears, Simon Pegg among others, and 96-min 30 Years Of Comic Strip from 2012. As I was unfamiliar with the series and it's history I enjoyed these quite a bit, there's a lot of common ground between the pair, but both are excellent. There's also an early pre-series short that runs 30-min, The Comic Strip – Short Film By Julien Temple, and loads of bonus content relating to the Bad News heavy-metal mockumentary episodes by way of the 13-min Bad News: The Whole Sordid Story, a 4-min Bad News "Bohemian Rhapsody" Music Video, which is a cover of the iconic Queen song, the video produced by Queen's own Brian May! There's also the 6-min Behind The Scenes Of "Bohemian Rhapsody", the 3-min More Bad News Tour Stories, and a 1-min Bad News Photo Gallery. Extras are buttoned-up with a 10-min of Series Trailers. The 3-disc set arrives in a black keepcase with a flipper tray with a one-sided sleeve of artwork.
Special Features:
- The Rise Of The Comic Strip – Documentary Featuring Peter Richardson, Nigel Planer, Alexei Sayle, Sandy Johnson, Oliver Stapleton, Stephen Frears, Rowland Rivron & More (01:33:31)
- The Comic Strip – Short Film By Julien Temple (30:26)
- 30 Years Of Comic Strip (01:36:19)
- Bad News: The Whole Sordid Story (12:35)
- Bad News "Bohemian Rhapsody" Music Video (3:34)
- Behind The Scenes Of "Bohemian Rhapsody" (5:50)
- More Bad News Tour Stories (3:24)
- Bad News Photo Gallery (1:09)
- Series Trailers (9:53)
If you're a fan of absurdist humor and sketch-comedy along the lines of The Kids in the Hall, The Upright Citizens Brigade or the brilliant mockumentary series Documentary Now! and are not familiar with the British alt-comedy import I think you'll find it's cult-comedy styling to your liking, you should definitely check it out.