Watching The Defectives
Mr Don and Mr George.
Some stuff by Lee And Herring.
Maybe a nice compilation of Kenny Everett’s Christmas specials.
Having wracked my brain for the best part of 10 minutes, that is about the total amount of stuff that isn’t out on DVD that I would actually like to move over the shiny disc. There are admittedly other shows such as Harry Enfield’s Television Programme or Harry Hill’s C4 series I wouldn’t mind getting but thanks to repeats and videos, I can handle these not being on the market for the foreseeable future.
Time was I wanted everything I could get my hands on, especially if it was TEH ARCHIVES OLD and used to tape trade with some folks who became great friends over the years. It was a nice time but vastly prefer having A Bit Of Fry And Laurie on four tidy DVD sets than a bunch of VHS cassettes with a giant Paramount Comedy Channel logo up at the top right corner.
Yet as we march on out of what was laughably dubbed “the naughties”, so much of what I desired to own is now out on shop shelves, complete or near as damndest – Absolutely, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The Kids In The Hall, Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out, One Foot In The Grave, Victoria Wood As Seen On TV – you can even buy shit like Jaaaaaaaaaaam or 95% of Network DVD’s releases if you’re that blindly ignorant to reasoning.
When the recent Smith and Jones best of came out, there was uproar online (admittedly mostly from one clueless sod who shall remain oxygen-less) that it was outrage the whole thing wasn’t out to buy. Yet whilst I like the pair a great deal, anyone who thinks the public is going to pick up ten or so DVDs of severely diminishing returns when a really well done set of compilations with pretty much everything people remember plus some nice rarities and full specials can be bought for £15 is quite mad.
Plus, let’s be fair, a lot of incredibly feted sketch shows are actually much better represented in compilation form. Not The Nine O Clock News for example, which contains a number of good bits that could form a few more best ofs, but the idea of a full series run on DVD is ridiculous, not to mention extremely expensive thanks to its open door sketch submission policy, which means tracking down each and every writer used, regardless of whether they wrote a four minute classic or a 10 second news quickie. Besides which, people love the show more for the cherry-picked material used on the records and the comps anyway.
Lee and Herring are really the only big gap in my DVD collection (and I don’t mean Richard Herring’s “Farty Bum Fuck Buy My Shit Its My New Edinburgh Show” on Gofasterstripe) which could be filled with nice collections of Fist Of Fun and This Morning With Richard Not Judy, the latter almost screaming out to be edited into nice greatest hits sets after the disastrous skewering the same week repeats series 2 got at the time, often cutting away in the middle of sentences.
Not that every show should get this treatment but I think there’s just so much shit out on DVD now that a product has to be exceptionally strong to make any sort of dent. Spitting Image is a very good example of something that shouldn’t be available in full (at least until episode 1.8) and if they could edit The Twin Dilemma into a three-line pamphlet for me, that’d be even better.
Am I wrong to be happy with a strong set as opposed to warts and all releasing? Should I want to sit through rotten Dave Allen At Large sketches simply because its archive? Do I need to see any of Big Train again ever? Let me know your feelings in the comments box, I look forward to ignoring them.
Filed under: Consumer Monkey Business | Leave a Comment
Tags: Comedy, DVD, Lee and Herring, Monty Python, Not The Nine O Clock News, old tapes, Richard Herring is not a racist
No Responses Yet to “Watching The Defectives”