The Comic Strip Presents - The Complete Collection

Anyone who loves ribald British comedy or wacky parody should appreciate the efforts of the performers from London's Comic Strip Club comedy venue. With their friends and associates, they produced short stand-alone films that have aired for over two decades. "The Complete Collection" brings 39 episodes together. Some are downright hilarious, some are more perplexing. With any anthology series, you will have a variance in the degree to which you will embrace certain stories. For my part, I tend to think the series started rather consistently, but got entirely more hit-or-miss as the years progressed. But it is still fascinating to see how the show evolved in time as it kept up with trends in pop culture and modern entertainment. Many of the cast members from "Absolutely Fabulous" and "The Young Ones" (and many other shows) hailed from The Comic Strip so if you follow British humor, you're likely to see plenty of familiar faces including Jennifer Saunders, Robbie Coltrane, Rik Mayall, Dawn French, Alexei Sayle, Nigel Planer, Keith Allen, Adrian Edmondson, and Peter Richardson.

While this is called the "The Complete Collection," it falls a little short as it does NOT contain the one-off specials from 2005 (Sex Actually) or 2011 (The Hunt for Tony Blair). While I would have wanted these as well, I guess I'll be happy with what I do have.

Disc One (From 1982-83): (1) Five Go Mad In Dorset, (2) WAR, (3) The Beat Generation, (4) Bad News Tour, (5) Summer School, and (6) Five Go Mad on Mescalin.

Disc Two (From 1984): (1) Dirty Movie, (2) Susie, (3) A Fistful of Travellers' Cheques, (4) Gino: Full Story and Pics, and (5) Eddie Monsoon: A Life?

Disc Three (From 1985-86): (1) Slags, (2) edited for Amazon: The BSers, (3) The Supergrass, and (4) Consuela.

Disc Four (From 1986-88): (1) Private Enterprise, (2) The Strike, (3) More Bad News, and (4) Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door.

Disc Five (From 1988): (1) The Yob, (2) Didn't You Kill My Brother?, and (3) Funseekers.

Disc Six: (From 1990): (1) South Atlantic Raiders, (2) South Atlantic Raiders Part II, (3) GLC, (4) Oxford, and (5) Spaghetti Hoops.

Disc Seven: (From 1990-93): (1) Les Dogs, (2) Red Nose of Courage, (3) The Crying Game, (4) Wild Turkey, (5) Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown, and (6) Space Virgins From Planet Sex.

Disc Eight: (From 1993-2000): (1) Queen of the Wild Frontier, (2) Gregory: Diary of a Nutcase, (3) Demonella, (4) Jealousy, (5) Four Men in a Car, and (6) Four Men in a Plane.

Disc Nine: 132 minutes of Bonus features including a retrospective, footage from the actual Comic Strip, and documentary specials.

This is a must-have for a certain audience (and you know who you are). I won't pretend that every bit is fantastic, I quite disliked a few. The highlight for me, perhaps, came with Mr. Jolly. But as TV history, this is practically essential and earns my highest recommendation despite some of its weaker links. Note on packaging: Discs are double stacked in the fold-out case, which I hated, but it's better than flipper discs! If you are a fan of British humor, don't miss this one! KGHarris, 1/12.

Love this show so much i bought an extra copy to have as back-up!This has to be one of my better, most valued dvd purchases.So much fun, especially if you are a Rik Mayall fan like myself.Out of all the episodes a good 90 percent are genius with only a few,,,maybe 2 eps being boring.If you are a fan of The Young Ones,French and Saunders, ABFAB and so on, you will love this set, this is where they all got their start!

› Go to Amazon.com to see both reviews  5.0 out of 5 stars