Peter and Lois Griffin have three kids: angst-ridden 16-year-old Meg, who only really wants to be noticed; 13-year-old Chris, a sweet-natured slacker; and one-year-old Stewie, a diabolically clever baby who's already bent on world domination. Last but not least, there's Brian, the family's talking dog, who likes his Martinis as dry as his dog food. In Season 7 Chris and Meg steal President Bush's underwear, Peter travels through time, Lois is elected Mayor, Brian moves out and, in the 100th episode, the unthinkable happens. After years of diabolical plotting, Stewie delivers on his most prized threat and kills Lois, and then he goes on to finally achieves total world domination...

WARNING - CONTAINS SPOILERS!

The biggest problem with this collection is that the episodes are all over the place. Somewhere along the line 20th Century Fox in the UK took the decision to repackage the shows in a bizarre collection of "season releases" of their own making. In reality the episodes collected here are mainly from the show's fifth and sixth seasons. There's also no Blue Harvest episode here - I assume someone thinks fans should buy that episode separately. In the running order it's the first episode of the show's sixth season (being placed between Meet the Quagmires and Movin' Out (Brian's Song). The last three episodes in this collection are run out of order and the final four episode of the show's sixth season are missing. What a mess.

This box set contains 12 episode spread across two discs (with a third disc housing the extras). Highlights include:

Meet the Quagmires: With the help of Death, Peter gets to go back in time to 1984 for one day. However he messes things up when, instead of going out with Lois on their first date, he parties with Cleveland and ends up dating Molly Ringwald. When he gets back to his own time, Peter discovers he's married to Ringwald and Lois is married to Quagmire (the couple now have three kids that look like Chris, Meg and Stewie but they all have Quagmire's chin). This is one of the show's best episodes to date. The rest of the episode pays homage to Back to the Future as Peter tries to fix his mistake.

Stewie Kills Lois: Lois and Peter go on a cruise, but Stewie is upset when they leave him behind. After an argument with Brian, Stewie decides that it's time to put up, or shut up - he must finally follow through with his plan to kill Lois.

Lois Kills Stewie: Not surprisingly Lois isn't dead - for the last year she's been living another life with no memory of the Griffin family. Now her memory has returned, she's back to make sure Stewie pays for trying to kill her. The title is a little misleading as Lois doesn't in fact kill Stewie... The ending is also wonderfully tongue in cheek - taking the Mickey out of so many other shows that have been there before.

McStroke: When Peter rescues a burger bar manager from his burning restaurant, the man offers him free burgers for life. The first thing Peter does is head down to the restaurant and consume 30 burgers - after which he has a stroke. Angry that he could have been disabled for life, Peter sets out to sue the burger company.

Extras include audio commentaries for every episode; Deleted Scenes (19 min, 06 sec of gags that never made the final episodes); Animatic Episodes (three full episode animatics with audio commentary); Family Guy 100th Episode Special (20 min, 49 sec worth of clips introduced by the show's creator Seth MacFarlane. This is also padded out with a collection of spoof focus group interviews where people slate the show); Family Guy Live! - Just of Laughs (1 hr, 11 mins, 31 sec live table reading for the episode Airport '07 which was included in the Season Six DVD box set (but is actually from the show's fifth season... Do you see how confusing this is?!); Peter Shin Draws Lois (4 min, 10 sec quick tutorial on how to draw Lois); The Making of the 100th Episode (24 min, 32 sec featurette that examines every aspect of the 100th episode's creation); Favourite Scenes (11 min, 35 sec worth of clips as the crew all choose their favourite gags from the show); and I'm Huge (and the Babes Go Wild) Music Video (2 min, 49 sec worth of clips set to music).

Fans of Family Guy will love this collection of episodes - it's just a shame that these were not released in the original US season order.

8

Darren Rea