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All good things must come to an end. And so it was with Monty
Python's Flying Circus. After four seasons of inspired
lunacy, the Pythons hung up their TV Spurs and became superheroes,
repeatedly saving the world from diabolical villains and menacing
threats from outer space. But fear not! Their pre-heroic exploits
are available to you on this gloriously remastered and utterly
complete DVD of the Complete Fourth Series featuring
such gems as Buy an Ant, The Batsmen of the Kalahari
and The Golden Age Of Ballooning. So don't delay! Take
this DVD home now or the next time an asteroid is approaching
your house, your Pythonic friends might be... busy. And remember...
It's not a balloon! It's an airship!...
The
fourth series of Monty Python's Flying Circus (or Monty
Python as it was original broadcast as - the Flying
Circus part of the title was dropped) features many more
classic moments and contains just six episodes on a single
disc.
John
Cleese had left the group at the end of Series
Three and his absence is felt - as would any
of the team if they'd been missing. It's not that Cleese was
holding everything together (personally I much prefer Michael
Palin and Terry Jones's working class man comedy) it's just
that he was an integral part of a well oiled machine. Take
away one of those parts and the whole thing doesn't work as
well as before.
That's
not to say that this series dips in anyway in quality. There
are a lot of great sketches, and some of the Python's greatest
moments are included in this collection. There was a noticeable
switch to longer episode stories than in previous years. In
Series Three there was only The Cycling Tour
that dared to veer from the normal run of episodes that were
sketches very loosely tied together by Terry Gilliam's animation.
In Series Four the team experiment more with ongoing
story based episodes.
Highlights
in this collection include:
The
Golden Age of Ballooning - which has the classic: "It's
not a balloon! It's an airship!" sketch.
Michael
Ellis: My personal favourite episode this series,
in which Eric Idol attempts to buy an ant from a large department
store. He is mistaken for Michael Ellis (we never do find
out who Michael Ellis is despite numerous references to him).
The clichéd endings conclusion is also a great touch
- and two fingers up to the Hollywood way of pigeonholing
everything.
Hamlet:
Which features the classic Queen Victoria Handicap Race
- and Jimmy Hill dressed as Queen Victoria.
Mr
Neutron: Graham Chapman is Mr Neutron - a man that can
cause the world to be destroyed at a moments notice. He spends
most of his time shopping and gardening, and when he falls
of the radar of the American's watching him - they go into
panic mode.
Again,
as I moaned on my review of Series Three, the biggest
disappoint for fans will be the total lack of any extras whatsoever.
There isn't even an audio commentary. This is a crying shame
a few nice extras would have made this a must own collection.
To be honest, if you already own these episodes on video,
there is little point in buying them again on DVD. The quality
is not that great and, as I've already mentioned, there are
no extras.
Darren Rea
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