Fawlty Towers-Volume 1: Basil the Rat (1975)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Menu Animation & Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	1975
Running Time	94:17
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	John Howard Davies Bob Spiers
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	John Cleese Prunella Scales Andrew Sachs Connie Booth
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	?	Music	Dennis Wilson Susan Imrie Bob Rymer

    Fawlty Towers is without a shadow of a doubt the greatest television comedy series ever made. If you haven't seen it you should. Enough said.

    This series has been previously available on DVD being released as a box set back in 2001. Now the series is being re-released as four separate discs each containing three episodes. Based upon what I have seen so far there seems to be no reason to buy these discs if you have the set. Additionally, if you want to own the entire series, the 3 disc set is still available for about $50 and these discs are nearly $20 each. It just doesn't add up. This disc has no extras and the video quality does not seem to have changed (it was quite good to begin with). The box set had quite a lot of extras. Our review of it can be found here.

    This first disc contains three episodes which all come from the second original season of the show. They are episodes 1, 5 & 6 from that series. I can't really see why these three episodes have been put together on one disc. The episodes included are

1. Basil the Rat
2. Communication Problems
3. The Anniversary

    In short, this is great television but the original box set seems to be a much better buy. However, this may be useful present for someone in your life if you only have $20 to spend.

Video

    The video quality is quite good considering the age of the series. Based on the previous review I think these transfers are the same ones used previously.

    The feature is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio which is the original aspect ratio.

    The picture was nicely clear and sharp throughout, with no evidence of low level noise. As you would expect grain is evident throughout but the level is reasonable for the age of the show. The shadow detail is pretty ordinary. The bright studio lighting would certainly add to this problem.

    The colour was quite dull generally speaking and there was some bleeding, flaring (comet trails) and chroma noise.

    There is some aliasing, edge enhancement, telecine wobble in the opening credits and posterization to be seen.

    There are subtitles in English. They are clear and easy to read.

    The disc is single layered.
    

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 very clear and easy to understand and there was no problem with audio sync. This is obviously the critical part of the audio transfer.

    The music consists mostly of the famous theme which is slightly distorted during the opening credits.

    The surround speakers and subwoofer were not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    Nothing.

Menu

    The menu design is very good, featuring scenes from the show. It allows for episode access and subtitle selection.

    The series does not seem to have been released in this format in Region 2.

    The video quality is good for a series of this age.

    The audio quality is fine.

    No extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall