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DVD Fawlty Towers - The Complete Series
Basil Fawlty, as created and performed by John Cleese, is the rudest, most boorish, most hilariously obnoxious man on the face of the planet. What a natural for a TV sitcom! His screen wife, Sybil (Prunella Scales), put it best in the episode "The Psychiatrist": "You're either crawling all over them, licking their boots, or spitting poison at them like some Benzedrine puff adder." He mockingly replies, "Just trying to enjoy myself, dear." With his gangly frame and contortionist abilities, Cleese brilliantly punctuates Basil's outrageous faux pas with absurd gymnastics and turns Three Stooges-style pokes and kicks into a slapstick ballet. Scales's Sybil is the genial but obliviously chatty voice of reason and Andrew Sachs mangles the English language as the Spanish bellhop Manuel, whose struggles with simple directions results in comic lunacy reminiscent of Robert Benigni. After a six-episode run in 1975, Cleese and cowriter and costar Connie Booth (who plays Polly, the maid all too often pulled into Basil's ridiculous plans) reunited the cast in 1979 for another six episodes without missing a punch line. The four-volume collection contains all 12 shows, interspersed with interview segments featuring Cleese discussing the genesis of the series and anecdotes about the individual episodes. Remember to watch the opening credits of each show to spot the creative misspellings on the hotel sign (my favorite: "Fatty Owls"). --Sean Axmaker
Review(s): DVD Fawlty Towers - The Complete Series
Run of the Mill British Humor
I see from the reviews that this series is extremely popular, but I am going to have to throw a monkeywrench into the works. Yes, John Cleese is very good (he is even better when parodying what he once called "Britain's previous national joke-Neville Chamberlain"), but the humor on the program is run-of-the-mill British humor, making fun of the class distinctions, vaudeville-type physical humor like throwing a pie in someone's face, ethnic stereotypes, seeing a moose's head seem to be speaking, ridiculing doddering, semi-senile old people, etc. This is all well-worn stuff in Britain. At the same time this was made in the UK, the Americans were coming out with ground-breaking comedy series like Barney Miller, Taxi and Saturday Nite Live. These programs were willing to push the limits in exploring social issues and personal eccentricities. Even in Britain, this series was followed a few years later by the masterpiece "Yes Minister/Prime Minister" which was willing to go head-to-head with the British Establishment. Unfortunately, Cleese and the others who made this series were still stuck in the old ways of doing comedy going over well-worn paths while others were passing them by.
The show is moderately entertaining and got a few chuckles out of me, but its potential was never reached. They could have made an interesting ensemble out of the characters, as was done in Barney Miller and Taxi, but this wasn't done...Fawlty's wife is pretty bland as is the young lady who works there, and the Spanish (or, really Catalan) worker seems stuck in his rut of barely speaking English and generally fumbling around.
My favorite scene is from the episode "The Germans" where Fawlty keeps warning his staff "whatever you do, don't bring up the War" in front of his German guests. In spite of that, when they order hors d'oeuvres he himself
repeats "Yah, Vee Must Obey Hors D'oevres All the Time!". That got a good laugh out of me.
Brilliant.
John Cleese is absolutely brilliant as Basil Fawlty. There have been attempts at recapturing the humor Fawlty Towers produced, but they all grey in comparison. This is a must see for any John Cleese fan, or for anyone with a slightly warped sense of humor.
Old is Gold
Just fantastic , brings rich comedy back with the same impact you saw this first time on TV.
Ideal for repeat viewings any time of the day to cheer you up
New for 2005, The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus 16-Ton Megaset packs together the original 14-DVD megaset with the two-disc Monty Python Live in space-saving Thinpaks. While more cautious fans may want to pick and choose among the previously released individual volumes of Monty Python for their collection, true Pythonites will want to own this definitive megaset that contains all 45 episodes (in chronological order) of Monty Python's Flying Circus. This "persistently silly" collection encompasses three-and-a-half seasons of dead parrots, cross-dressing lumberjacks, loonies, upper class twits, and spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, and spam. Click past the occasional clunker and go directly to such signature sketches as... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Ian MacNaughton - Terry Hughes DVD Release Date: Released the 27 September 2005 Usually ships in 4 to 11 days
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Bean, Bean, maniacal nut / The more you watch, you bust a gut! First unleashed in 1989, this sketch series was embraced by PBS viewers in the United States. In the tradition of the great silent clowns, Rowan Atkinson created a character with universal and multi-generational appeal (the sketches have little dialogue and are driven by often ingenious physical comedy). Like Bart Simpson, the resourceful, mischievous, and sometimes malevolent Bean is the inner child incarnate who acts on the impulses polite society normally represses. Atkinson has described Bean as "a 9-year-old boy, with an apparent lack of worldly experience, but an ingenuity that is quite clever in dealing with problems presented to him." These problems include not knowing a single answer on an exam, tactfully disposing of... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Paul Weiland - John Birkin - John Howard Davies DVD Release Date: Released the 29 April 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Set in a fictitious British suburb, The Thin Blue Line is the wickedly funny story of a rather down-at-heel police station headed by Inspector Raymond Fowler (Rowan Atkinson, best known as Mr. Bean), a pompous, repressed but well-intentioned anachronism who wants to do the right thing but who is constantly hampered by his own shortcomings, not to mention his blundering Criminal Investigation Department colleagues. Atkinson expertly balances his character's inflated sense of self-importance with the insight born of old-school police values, for which his galumphing, shiny-suited CID counterpart, DI Grim (David Haig) has no time at all. Strongest among the supporting cast is Sgt. Pauline Dawkins (Serena Evans), who also happens to be Fowler's live-in lover--a moral dilemma that his... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Rowan Atkinson DVD Release Date: Released the 15 June 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Could this be the funniest movie ever made? By any rational measure of comedy, this medieval romp from the Monty Python troupe certainly belongs on the short list of candidates. According to Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide, it's "recommended for fans only," but we say hogwash to that--you could be a complete newcomer to the Python phenomenon and still find this send-up of the Arthurian legend to be wet-your-pants hilarious. It's basically a series of sketches woven together as King Arthur's quest for the Holy Grail, with Graham Chapman as the King, Terry Gilliam as his simpleton sidekick Patsy, and the rest of the Python gang filling out a variety of outrageous roles. The comedy highlights are too numerous to mention, but once you've seen Arthur's outrageously bloody encounter... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Graham Chapman - John Cleese - Eric Idle Director(s): Terry Jones DVD Release Date: Released the 23 October 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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"Blessed are the cheesemakers," a wise man once said. Or maybe not. But the point is Monty Python's Life of Brian is a religious satire that does not target specific religions or religious leaders (like, say, Jesus of Nazareth). Instead, it pokes fun at the mindless and fanatical among their followers--it's an attack on religious zealotry and hypocrisy--things that that fellow from Nazareth didn't particularly care for either. Nevertheless, at the time of its release in 1979, those who hadn't seen it considered it to be quite "controversial."
Life of Brian, you see, is about a chap named Brian (Graham Chapman) born December 25 in a hovel not far from a soon-to-be-famous Bethlehem manger. Brian is mistaken for the messiah and, therefore, manipulated, abused, and exploited... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Graham Chapman - John Cleese - Michael Palin DVD Release Date: Released the 27 January 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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