Butterflies-Series 1 (1978)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Menu Animation Interviews-Crew-Carla Lane (Writer) Filmographies-Cast Production Notes
Rating
Year Of Production	1978
Running Time	181:51 (Case: 190)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No Dual Disc Set	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	John B. Hobbs Sydney Lotterby
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Wendy Craig Geoffrey Palmer Andrew Hall Nicholas Lyndhurst Bruce Montague Michael Ripper Joyce Windsor Cindy Oswin
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$34.95	Music	Dolly Parton

    I have a soft spot for English television comedies including everything from The Good Life to Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Yes Minister, The Young Ones, Black Books, Red Dwarf and many many more. It was with interest then that I approached this comedy series which ran from 1978 to 1983 on the BBC and has a reputation of being one of the classic English comedy series. Unfortunately, I came away disappointed. I found the series dated, the acting stilted and the whole thing generally uninteresting. I apologise to fans of this show but that was how I felt about it.

    Butterflies is a domestic sit-com set around four main characters. They are:

• Ria Parkinson (Wendy Craig) - a home bound wife who is fed up with her lot as housekeeper, cook and bottle washer to three generally unthankful men. She wants to get more excitement into her life and relationship and the whole series revolves around whether or not she will have an affair.
• Ben Parkinson (Geoffrey Palmer) - Ria's husband, who is a dentist. He is very traditional, boring, prudish and his main interest is collecting butterflies. He expects to be waited upon by his wife.
• Adam Parkinson (a young Nicholas Lyndhurst) - Their teenage son who doesn't work and spends most of his time getting into trouble or having car accidents.
• Russell Parkinson (Andrew Hall) - Their other son who has not spoken to his father for some time and also doesn't work.

    The title refers to many things such as the characters being a bit confused and fluttering around, the father's collecting and a variety of other references in the show. This first series runs over 6 episodes each of approximately half an hour. They are spread across two single layer DVD5s. The episodes are not titled and each follows the adventures of Ria as she meets and becomes interested in Leonard (Bruce Montague), a lonely businessman. He becomes obsessed with getting Ria to have lunch with him. She struggles between her love for Ben, despite his difficult personality and her desire for change and excitement.

    A small point of trivia is that the title song, annoying as it is, is sung by Clare Torry who provided the female singing voice on Pink Floyd's famous album Dark Side of the Moon.

    As I mentioned above, I personally did not find a lot to like in this series, however, if you enjoy British comedies which are more bittersweet and dramatic than out and out funny this may be worth a look. If you are a fan of this series, there is no reason not to purchase this set..

Video

    The video quality is good, surprisingly so for a television series from 1978. I have seen worse video transfers on much newer BBC material.

    The feature is presented in a 1.29:1 aspect ratio non 16x9 enhanced which would be the original aspect ratio.

    The picture was reasonably clear and sharp considering the age of the material, with no evidence of low level noise. There was not much shadow which required detail to be shown in it, however what there was was adequately presented. There was light grain throughout.

    The colour was fine although dull. It had some minor issues such as purple discolouration on hands and backgrounds at 8:55 on disc 2. There was also some flaring or comet trails from lights.

    Artefacts were present in the form of black and white flecks and hairs. These were not too bad however some bigger lines and hairs occurred now and again. There were some tape tracking artefacts although these were not too distracting. An opaque black bar appeared at 67:50 on Disc 1.

    There are no subtitles.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio quality is fine.

    This DVD contains an English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono soundtrack encoded at 192 Kb/s.

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

    The theme song of this series becomes annoying and the other music is quite nondescript..

    The surround speakers and subwoofer were not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    The same extras were repeated on each disc.

Menu

    The menu included motion but was silent. It did the job but you certainly would not get excited.

Interview with Carla Lane - Writer (11:17)

    An interview with the writer recorded in 2002. Presented 16x9 enhanced. Despite being a fairly pretentious interview subject she does discuss some interesting stuff about the significance of the title, casting, how much of the story was autobiographical and her life now. Interesting for fans of the series.

Cast Filmographies

    Text filmographies for the main four cast members and Carla Lane.

Production Notes

    A short section of text notes about the making of Butterflies.

    This series has been released in Region 2 in the same format. It is being released in Region 1 in July. I could not find any details of this edition's specifications. At this stage, the Region 4 is just as good as anything else.

    The video quality is fine.

    The audio quality is fine.

    The set has a small selection of extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall