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PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
French and Saunders-The Best of (1987)

French and Saunders-The Best of (1987)

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Released 9-Sep-2004

Cover Art

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Comedy Main Menu Audio
Rating Rated PG
Year Of Production 1987
Running Time 102:40
RSDL / Flipper No/No Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region Coding 2,4 Directed By Steve Bendelack
John Birkin
Kevin Bishop
Bob Spiers
Studio
Distributor

Roadshow Home Entertainment
Starring Dawn French
Jennifer Saunders
Lenny Henry
Robbie Coltrane
Case Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI $29.95 Music Simon Brint


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame None English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio None
16x9 Enhancement No
Video Format 576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio 1.33:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures No
Subtitles English for the Hearing Impaired Smoking Yes
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits Yes, Wait for it..........

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

    I am a great lover of English comedy of many styles and varieties; Monty Python, The Goodies, Red Dwarf, Chef, The Brittas Empire and many more. I have never been a big fan of Absolutely Fabulous, however, this earlier work of Jennifer Saunders with the wonderful Dawn French (star of The Vicar of Dibley amongst others) stuck in my memory and when I saw this disc come up for review I jumped at it. I had not seen any of this material since it screened here on the ABC.

    French & Saunders ran on BBC 2 from 1987 to 1993, but only four seasons were produced in that time. Another later season was shown on BBC 1 in 1996, however, this does not seem to feature on the disc, as far as I can tell. So then how does late eighties/early nineties humour stack up today? Well, the best answer I can give you is - patchily. There is some really funny material here, but there is also some stuff which has not aged well and some other stuff which I cannot believe would have been funny at the time. To be fair this is true of all great sketch comedy series including the mighty Monty Python. After the first ten minutes, I was beginning to wonder if my memory was failing me and if in fact this show was not funny to begin with. Luckily, things took a turn for the better and the rest of the disc falls either into the very funny or slightly dated categories.

    The highlights of the disc are their hysterically funny drag sketches where they are dressed up as two old, fat, balding guys who think they are sex gods. The sketch involving them watching the Miss World competition and discussing what the girls would like done to them is an absolute classic. Other good sketches include their Hollywood parodies and their take-offs of ballerinas and opera singers. Another funny sketch is their extended parody of The House of Elliott called The House of Idiot. This will only work if you watched the original series, which was a favourite of my wife. The musical parodies of Abba, Bros (Remember Them?) & The Mamas & The Papas were also good. To my mind, the dance parodies and the opening three part sketch At Home were not very good, but you may disagree because comedy is a pretty personal thing. Some sketches also went on a bit too long before delivering the laughs, such as Prison.

    Overall, this is a good selection of sketches from French & Saunders which fans will no doubt enjoy greatly.

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Transfer Quality

Video

    The video quality is pretty good but shows its 15 year old television roots.

    The feature is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio non 16x9 enhanced which would be the original aspect ratio.

    The picture was generally clear and sharp throughout, with no evidence of low level noise, although there was some light grain. Obviously, television of this age does not have the clarity of a modern blockbuster. Shadow detail was fine.

    The colour was reasonable but again obviously television of this age does not have sparkling and vibrant colours. There was some bleeding to be seen from time to time but nothing too bad. This disc was better in this regard than other recent BBC productions of a similar age I have reviewed, such as The Brittas Empire.

    Artefacts were fairly minimal. There was some real tape tracking errors here and there and some intentional ones at 9:00. There were also the occasional specks of black to be seen.

    There are subtitles in English for the hearing impaired. The English subtitles were clear, easy to read but a little summarised from the spoken word.
    

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

Audio

    The audio quality is good but very front and centre focussed.

    This DVD contains one audio option, an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack encoded at 192 Kb/s. Most sound came from the centre speaker.

    Dialogue was generally clear and easy to understand and there was no problem with audio sync.

    The theme song which plays over the menu is quite annoying. Do not leave this disc sitting on the menu and do something else before sitting down to watch like I did.

    The surround speakers added some minor atmosphere when played with Dolby ProLogic II

    The subwoofer was not used.

    

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

Extras

    Nothing!

Menu

    The menu includes one photo and a scene selection function.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

    The Region 2 version of this disc looks to be different based upon the minimal information I can find. It has a different cover and only includes 90 minutes rather than the 100 minutes on our disc. I will go with Region 4.

Summary

    A good selection of sketches from French & Saunders, a BBC comedy series starring Dawn French & Jennifer Saunders.

    The video quality is pretty good considering the age of the material.

    The audio quality is good.

    The disc has no extras.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Daniel Bruce (Do you need a bio break?)
Saturday, September 18, 2004
Review Equipment
DVDPioneer DV667A DVD-V DVD-A SACD, using Component output
DisplaySony FD Trinitron Wega KV-AR34M36 80cm. Calibrated with Digital Video Essentials (PAL). This display device is 16x9 capable. This display device has a maximum native resolution of 576i (PAL)/480i (NTSC).
Audio DecoderBuilt in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials.
AmplificationPioneer VSX-511
SpeakersBose 201 Direct Reflecting (Front), Phillips SB680V (Surround), Phillips MX731 (Center), Yamaha YST SW90 (Sub)

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