At Last the 1948 Show
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Movie Reviews of At Last the 1948 Show
Movie Review: Bloody Brilliant Comedy, Bloody Awful Packaging
Summary: 4 Stars
Cleese and Chapman have pretty much always been my favorite Pythons, and the chance to see them alongside the wonderful Marty Feldman (always Igor in Young Frankenstein to me) and Tim Brooke Taylor was too good for me to pass up.
The material here is brilliant. This is the sort of anti-authoritarian, incisive, satirical stuff in embryonic form that would find its full form a few years later as Monty Python's Flying Circus. There's even a skit, The Four Yorkshiremen, that the Pythons would regularly perform in their live shows. And since the shows were recorded virtually live, its wonderful to see when something goes wrong, such as the Policemen in Drag, where they're all obviously struggling to keep from laughing. I also bought the "Do Not Adjust Your Set" collection, which is aimed at younger children, and doesn't appeal to me as well, although it does contain Palin, Idle, Jones, and occasionally Gilliam.
There is some surviving video from twelve of the thirteen episodes from its 1967 broadcast, and it seems like most of this material is spliced together from those bits to form the five 'episodes' packaged here. I don't know if this contains all the surviving material.
As is most surviving TV shows from this era, the image quality (being a film copy of a video original) is poor. Many contemporaneous episodes of Doctor Who, for example, have been restored to near-original condition with the use of VidFire technology, and certainly this show is just as meritorious of restoration.
I dock this one star for the packaging. At just over two hours, why this couldn't be fit onto a single DVD is beyond me. No commentary, no subtitles, a hard-to-read menu screen. There are interviews with Tim Brooke-Taylor and Michael Palin (of Do Not Adjust Your Set), but these are also included on the "Do Not Adjust..." discs too. Audio exists for all 13 episodes, and it would have been nice to hear some of those lost skits (Cleese and Feldman doing "Bookshop", for example).
Movie Review: Blimey, What A Cheap Show
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this to make up for not getting it with Do Not Adjust Your Set like you do in the UK version.
The cast: Marty Feldman, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Aimi McDonald (and a host of other guest lovlies).
The condition of the footage is degraded, but wonderfully preserved considering no-one actually *did* preserve it. There are a couple of places where the sound drops out and the horizontal hold goes out causing a momentary frame roll but all-in-all not bad for something in all likelihood filed in a leaky basement for 50 years. (The show has been resurrected from "found footage" mostly, and is massively incomplete as far as episodes go).
People will point out the obvious draw - the original version of The Four Yorkshiremen Sketch, but I found the set laced with gems of comic genius. My favorite was a sketch entitled "Mice Laugh Softly, Charlotte" which had me rolling around gasping for air. YMMV.
It also was good to see Feldman at his best. The scene in "Mice Laugh Softly, Charlotte" in which he clambers through the window dressed as a nun wearing frogman flippers for no readily apparent reason - pure comedy.
If you are expecting the polished finish of MPFC footage, forget it. All the money in the world won't fix what time, neglect and lack of foresight have wrought.
And boy were Rediffusion tight with the cash. The show almost squeaks.
Others have remarked on the lousy DVD menu, so I won't. I dunno what someone was thinking.
The special features are two interviews, duplicates of the ones on the Do Not Adjust Your Set collection, and two trailers.
That's it.
Movie Review: Historically Interesting Python Precursor
Summary: 4 Stars
"At Last The 1948 Show" was a short-lived television show long believed lost. Recently several of the shows were rediscovered and rushed to market as this two DVD set. The show is most interesting to fans of "Monty Python," as Graham Chapman and John Cleese star in the show, and many of the sketches written by the duo later appear in differing (although frequently not differing that much) forms in "Python."
As a "Python" fan, I was surprised how much I enjoyed Marty Feldman in this show: I expected him to be a weaker spot, but I think that he, along with Chapman and Cleese were the unquestioned stars of the show. I have to admit that I never found Tim Brooke-Taylor to be terribly funny or talented, and costar Aimi MacDonald was, while easy on the eyes, painful to watch. In her defense, MacDonald was normally used in simplistic linking bits (that Terry Gilliam's animation would largely perform later in "Python") that were not especially well written and seemed like afterthoughts. Considering this was only a couple of years before "Python" it is amazing to see the relative lack of production values, although I understand that the picture quality itself in the broadcast episodes was much better.
Overall, I gave the series four stars: it is historically significant, and frequently funny, but some of the material is flimsy at best and poorly executed, especially by Brooke-Taylor and MacDonald. I recommend this to fans of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and other period British comedy: others likely may find it dated and boring.
Movie Review: More like Python's Flying Circus than I assumed.
Summary: 4 Stars
I originally ordered the DVD to qualify for free shipping. The show was better than I expected.
The two pre-pytons are funny of course. Marty Feldman (Igor in Young Frankenstein!) and Tim Brooke-Tyler are cast well.
There is much Aimi Macdonald bashing in these Amazon reviews! I like her. Basically, her role is to introduce the next skit. The "joke " is she introduces the skits as if the show is about her. For example she introduces the next skit by dedicating a song to herself. The only line is "I love the lovely Aimi Macdonald". It has nothing to do with the skits she introduces. Even if you think she is annoying, she's on and off within a minute or so.
I took off one star for the transfer. There are many scratches and picture anamolies. In fact, in one skit (the english lesson) the sound actually drops out for a line spoken by Cleese. This probalby couldn't be helped because the original tapes are lost.
Other than that, great stuff.
Movie Review: A must for Python fans
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a great collection of some of the pre-Monty Python work by Graham Chapman and John Cleese, along with Marty Feldman, Tim Brooke-Taylor, and the lovely Aimi McDonald. Watching Cleese and Chapman, you can really see the beginnings of Python.
I would have liked to have given this 5 stars, but from what I can tell, there was no restoration work done on the prints. They should have taken the time to present this in as good of condition as possible. Also, the opening menu is hard to read, the shows are not chapter stopped, and the interviews with Tim Brooke-Taylor and Terry Jones, as interesting as they are, are the same ones that are on the "Do Not Adjust Your Set" collection.
Griping aside, the shows are a lot of fun and feature many hilarious sketches including Tim Brooke-Taylor doing the Chartered Accountant Dance; Let's Speak English with Cleese at the top of his form; and the original Four Yorkshiremen. This is a wonderful set, but it easily could have been better.