On the Buses-The Best of Series 3 & 4-Volume 2 (1970)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1970
Running Time	96:14
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Stuart Allen Howard Ross
Studio Distributor	VCI Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Reg Varney Bob Grant Stephen Lewis Doris Hare Anna Karen Michael Robbins
Case	?
RPI	$24.95	Music	None Given

    This is the second disc in the four disc series comprising the best episodes of On The Buses, series 3 and 4. The four episodes on this disc are taken from series 3. Again the stars are Reg Varney, Bob Grant and Stephen Lewis, and again the comedy is fairly lowbrow and obvious. And again, against my better judgment, I found myself amused by the antics of the employees of the Luxton Bus Company, especially the driver and conductor on the number 11 to the cemetery gates. The writers must have had some trouble with these episodes, as the endings are often pretty lame.

    The episodes on this disc are:

Mum's Last Fling (24:12)
    Mum loses about 30 years when she takes up with one of the inspectors. Is it a fling or the real thing?

Radio Control (23:53)
    The Management decides to install a two-way radio system in the buses. Stan manages to send some mixed messages to Blakey while "on the job".

Foggy Night (23:58)
    Taking a bus on a country route, Stan, Jack, Blakey and Stan's family are stranded when thick fog descends. A thick fog soon descends over the viewer.

The New Uniforms (24:10)
    Stan sizes up Arthur's sausage with a tape measure, leading to numerous double-entendres. Stan and Jack camp it up after being chosen to road test the new uniforms. Then they are mistaken for airline pilots by two female Swedish students. One of the students is played by Yutte Stensgaard (Lust for a Vampire), an opportunity to hear her real voice this time. Aficionados of the series consider this one of the best episodes.

Video

    The video quality of this transfer is no different from that offered for Volume 1 of this series.

    Being a TV series, the aspect ratio is the original 1.33:1.

    The video is not especially sharp, though it is slightly better than VHS quality. Indoor scenes shot on video look better than outdoor scenes shot on 16mm. Colour generally looks washed out, and shadow detail is average.

    Film artefacts abound in the 16mm footage, with dirt and flecks apparent. In the sections transferred from videotape source, there are tracking errors resulting in horizontal lines on a regular basis. During the scene in the cafe with the two Swedish girls in episode 4, there is some sort of interference causing white dots to appear across the screen.

    Again, this is a single layered disc with no subtitles. Hearing-impaired persons will probably be able to imagine the jokes anyway.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Audio is presented as the standard Dolby Digital 2.0 mono, as per the original source material. No surround encoding is present as far as I can tell.

    Audio is again quite satisfactory. High fidelity was not a strong point of early 1970s British TV. The actors tend to yell their lines sometimes, and the results are quite loud. I suspect this was not filmed before a studio audience, as the laughter and applause is at too high a level.

    The composer of the music is not credited, and apart from the opening and closing theme, there is some transitional music between scenes. Simple and efficient it is, too.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    No extras are provided.

    This is a clone of the Region 2 release, so I will call this a draw. It has not been released in Region 1.

    If On the Buses is your thing, then you will have already obtained it. Unless, of course, you have been waiting for this website's imprimatur, in which case: go for it.

    The video quality is adequate though not brilliant.

    The audio quality is satisfactory.

    Extras are non-existent.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall