Do Not Adjust Your Set
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Movie Reviews of Do Not Adjust Your Set
Movie Review: Great shows but...
Summary: 4 Stars
I'll cover both the Do Not Adjust Your Set and At Last The 1948 Show. I'm ecstatic to have some of these shows finally available in the U.S. The 1948 Show includes the original Yorkshiremen sketch and Adjust Your Set is a must if only for the Bonzo Dog Band performances (including one with Eric Idle singing lead!). The 1948 Show is the funnier of the two shows, but at only five episodes, it's a bit brief. There are sketches here not so very different from what Cleese and Chapman would do shortly later in Python. Every bit as good. Tim Brooke-Taylor's chartered accountant's dance is brilliant (God knows how many Python sketches that inspired). And seeing Marty Feldman makes me ache to get those shows of his that played in the U.S. one summer decades ago. And of course the Yorkshiremen sketch is one of the great comedy sketches of all time (written by Brooke-Taylor and Feldman! Take that, dead parrot!). Adjust Your Set was designed to be a children's show and the humor tends to be juvenile for the most part. But every now and then something slips in that screams Python (The shop sketch where ordering a long list of groceries gets you only a can of shoe polish. The famous person hanging from a cliff. A couple other sketches about irritating people where you can just see Eric Idle warming up for Nudge Nudge.) And anyway, I'm a huge Bonzo Dog Band fan, and there are at least a couple performances of songs I've never heard before, songs never released on albums.
My problem here is the DVD packaging. There is NOTHING in the packaging to tell me when exactly these episodes were broadcast. The DVD packaging claims these are all recently discovered episodes. So are these the only 5 surviving episodes of The 1948 Show? Plus just what does recently discovered mean? The first episode of Adjust Your Set I have on tape from years ago, a copy from a copy from a copy, originally recorded off UK Gold before making its way to the U.S. I know for a fact these aren't all the surviving episodes of Adjust Your Set. Am I to believe these are all the surviving episodes from the first season? The packaging of Adjust Your Set also lists Terry Gilliam as animator. But Gilliam's name only appears in the credits on episode 3 and there is nothing like the cartoons for which he is famous. There is in fact no animation at all beyond a few special effects for Captain Fantastic. Goofy, too, is that the same Terry Jones and Tim Brooke-Taylor interviews appear on both sets. Why? It feels like a rip-off. Couldn't there have been a bonus episode of The Frost Report or Marty Feldman's show? The Do Not Adjust Your Stocking episode?
I'm also curious to know if these episodes are considered to be complete. At least the first episode of The 1948 Show lists people appearing in the show who aren't in the episode on DVD. Is it just that the credits were wrong? (At least the DVD's appear to be complete episodes rather than some sort of highlight reel. I appreciate that a great deal.)
So, complaints, rather than hitting on the head. Nevertheless, I'm hoping they put out the other Adjust Your Set episodes. The Do Not Adjust Your Stocking episode (or was it a special?) is the only other one I've seen and it is much funnier than the early episodes. And it actually has some famous Gilliam animation in it. And how about those Marty Feldman shows? Any other 1948 episodes?
Movie Review: Do Not Adjust Your Expectations
Summary: 4 Stars
Maybe my title is a bit off. On second thought, you may have to adjust your expectations ever so slightly. The problem here is that the show is being marketed as "the classic series that lead to the creation of 'Monty Python.'" (Of course so is "At Last The 1948 Show," which actually is more prototypical of "Python.") If you are expecting the level of sustained cleverness or wit found in "Python," you may be somewhat disappointed; if you view this for what it is, you will be pleased.
"Do Not Adjust Your Set" began as a children's show, but with elements that would become trademarks of "Python" such as sketches with non-linear elements, no conclusions, absurdist twists, etc. The show began to gather a wide adult audience as well and it is obvious that over time the show became more geared toward subtle adult humor. The three proto-Pythons (Palin, Idle, and Jones) are the standouts here (of course) while David Jason (a British actor who is best remembered from the "Captain Fantastic" segments in every episode, and who later went on to become the voice of a toad in a television production of "Doctor at Large" in 1971) is middling. He has some good lines, but falls short of the other three guys. Denise Coffey is the token female cast member, and is by far the weakest of the five, though nowhere near as bad as Aimi MacDonald on "At Last The 1948 Show."
The other big feature of the show is the musical presence of the mysterious "Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band," who are extremely odd performers. Although they never perform my favorite of their songs, "Canyons of Your Mind," they do perform some amazingly unusual musical numbers, including "Love is a Cylindrical Piano," "Death Cab for Cutie," "Tubas in Moonlight" (which features and early musical adaptation of silly string,) and their notorious musical intro, this time adapted to have Terry Jones performing with toast. (You'll just have to see it.) Overall the Bonzo's are a mixed bag, some of their numbers are merely boring, but some of the more unusual ones are worth their weight in gold. Speaking of music, I found the "Captain Fantastic" segments (a spoof of older serials) to drag and not be that amusing, though I did like the concept of a "horrible handbag" that could end the world, and was greatly amused by the walking tree. The one thing that I can't forget is the theme song to the segments: I warn you, if you watch "Captain Fantastic" you will almost assuredly get the theme song stuck in your head for an extended period of time.
The show is definitely worth watching, especially if you are interested in the early careers of Michael Palin, Terry Jones, and Eric Idle, just realize that you aren't buying "Monty Python," you are buying proto-Python for kids with a pit band. For those that may be animation fans, the box claims it is "featuring original animation by Terry Gilliam." While I know that Gilliam did work on the show, I never noticed it in these episodes, and if it is here, it is certainly in extremely insignificant quantities.
I recommend this without reservation to fans of "Monty Python" or other fans of period British comedies, but outside of that group, this set will have fairly limited appeal. As for me, I love "Python," and I enjoyed it: four stars.
Movie Review: Nostalgia Ain't Wot It Yooster Be
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this set (which in the UK is included with "At Last The 1948 Show" but here in the USA for some reason ain't) so my daughter could see what "real kid's TV was all about".
She is now convinced I had a deprived childhood.
I think anyone who didn't see the show the first time around wouldn't get much from this set, which showcases content badly degraded from neglect and 50 years in a leaky basement. The footage has stood up surprisingly well, with none of the frame roll and sound dropout "At Last The 1948 Show" suffers from in places, but Oh, what a cheap show it was.
The cast of the show was: Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, David Jason, Denise Coffey and the 1967-ish lineup of The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.
One rather sad issue is that the musicians' contract at the time called for (I believe) a new backing track to be recorded but the vocals to be performed live. This is problematical since Viv Stanshall is not at his best in some of the showcased tunes, especially my beloved "Look Out There's A Monster Coming". The Bonzos are often left looking perplexed by the bizarre situations they are put in by the script, and today's viewers may not understand the blackface number is a parody of a show that was current at the time DNAYS was first broadcast that would not get airtime today.
The whole thing is saved for me by David Jason and Denise Coffey as the arch rivals "Captain Fantastic" and "Mrs Black".
Yes, you'll see some wonderful sketches that were so good I remembered them all these years. You'll also see some clunkers. And everything was aimed somewhere around the 12 year old age demographic. You are duly warned.
There *is* a rather neat, if short, custom version of the Bonzo's "The Intro and the Outro" which a collector would find worthwhile I think.
And you may recognize stuff that made it into the later show, Monty Python's Flying Circus. The last episode, for example, is clearly the inspiration behind "Election Special".
This set is series 1. I don't know what happened to series 2, and why it isn't in the same set. You do get a couple of interviews on disc 2, one with Terry Jones and one with Tim Brooke-Taylor (little known in the USA but a mainstay of great comedy in the UK). Perplexingly, both interviews mainly concern the missing discs from the USA set - the ones containing "At Last The 1948 Show".
Worth what I paid. Four stars only because of the obvious idiocy of irrelevant interviews and splitting the set.
Movie Review: A pre-Monty Python TV Series!
Summary: 4 Stars
"At Last the 1948 Show " + "Do Not Adjust Your Set" = "Monty Python's Flying Circus". Really.
There are skits on these DVD sets that are as funny as those by Monty Python.
I have read since the 1970s that British viewers of Monty Python recognized the cast from earlier TV series such as these. Pythons John Cleese and Graham Chapman (along with Marty Feldman!) starred in "At Last the 1948 Show" (with a few small parts by Eric Idle). Pythons Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin starred in "Do Not Adjust Your Set".
"At Last the 1948 Show" was, as seen on these DVDs, very much an on-stage skit program with lots of dialog. In contrast "Do Not Adjust Your Set" had a lot more outdoor location scenes and special effects for more of a visual gag-type program.
"Monty Python's Flying Circus" was the next step in a growing community of comedians in the U. K. Surely this is what British viewers must have thought, at least some. Here in the U. S. the initial exposure of Monty Python came with no advance warning. It was a delightful shock. In fact most of everything Monty Python had released by the mid-1970s (TV series, movies, books, records, live stage show) was dumped on the American market at about the same time. It was pretty amazing. We just didn't get to work-up to Monty Python by first viewing TV series such as "At Last the 1948 Show" and "Do Not Adjust Your Set".
After the years of reading about the numerous pre-Python TV series it is nice to finally see some.
It might be worth noting that the picture and sound quality of the shows (particularly in the case of "At Last the 1948 Show") were probably a bit clearer than seen on these DVDs. I am very sure that what are seen here are cinescopes of the original programs. Cinescopes were made by placing a film camera directly at a TV monitor and filming live or video tape TV programs directly off of a TV screen. Once made the films were permanent. The original video tapes of these programs very likely no longer exist as British TV and radio producers were notorious for reusing video and audio tape through the 1970s leaving no archive copy of many TV and radio programs unless they happened to be cinescoped, often for broadcast in other countries like Australia, for instance. Many fondly remembered British TV shows originally recorded on video tape are long gone. When shows like these finally turn up in any form, fans can be thankful, as I am.
Movie Review: Adjust Your Expectations
Summary: 4 Stars
I will assume most Americans are seeing these shows for the first time, and the few who even knew it existed probably always heard that DNAYS was a kind of prototypical version of Monty Python. It's written by and features three of the Python members, but it really is more of a broad and silly show aimed at children. (The later episodes on the set begin to show more fully-developed sketch ideas - so perhaps the second season of DNAYS, which featured Terry Gilliam's animations - and which are NOT presented here - better represent the show).
Still, DNAYS is fascinating - like discovering a hidden gem from someone else's past. The best bits throughout this volume are probably the crazy songs by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band (good enough to make you want to look up one of their CD hit collections). It's also nice to finally see David Jason (a legend in the U.K., but a virtual unknown in the States) - who is quite good at physical comedy, and Denise Coffey - a likeable actress with a great comic presence. Their `Captain Fantastic' vignettes are probably the most memorable part of the show.
The future-Pythons (Idle, Jones, and Palin) are predictably good, especially Idle - who shows a gift for musical comedy with great pop lead vocals on the song that ends Episode 7.
Don't expect Monty Python - but do expect to be fascinated.