Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6295 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-10-16
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 5
• Running time: 693 minutes

Synopsis
Four of the much-loved comic's best shows: Up Pompeii, Further Up Pompeii, Then Churchill Said to Me and The Best of Frankie Howerd, which contains sketches from An Evening With Frankie Howerd and Royal Variety Performances, and chatshow appearances with the likes of Michael Parkinson and Terry Wogan.

Customer Reviews

This box set has all the BBC Up Pompeii episodes ever made, along with two other DVD's
The Frankie Howerd Collection, a rather vague title and not a thing written on the front of the box to spell out what it contains. For years I had been waiting for Up Pompeii to come out on DVD and it had been here all along.

The Box set has the pilot episode made for the comedy playhouse, both series one and two in full, and the one off episode 'Further up Pompeii' which was made about a year later, not to be confused with the dissapointing 1991 Further up pompeii, which wasn't made by the BBC but ITV.

Along with The Complete BBC Collection of Up Pompeii, it has the 'Best of Frankie Howerd' which is available seperately; a worthwhile DVD with snippets of all Frankies best sketches and TV appearances over the years, and the last DVD is 'And Churchill Said to Me' another series Frankie did for BBC TV.

All in all this is a great collection of Frankies best stuff all in one Box set but lousy marketing by the BBC, they should have made it more apparent just what was in it.

Fantastic!
"Up Pompeii!" is one of the best sitcoms ever made. It is undoubtably Frankie's masterpiece. It is also one of the best things Talbot Rothwell (Carry on films) ever wrote. What I think is amazing is that ALL the episodes are hilarious! If you like films like "Carry on up the Khyper" and "Carry on Cleo" then you will love this. Buy it and see the comic genius of Frankie Howerd.

Classic Brit Humor At It's Best!
There's something about the British sensibility regarding humor that really appeals to so many of us Yanks. Maybe it's the extremely tongue-in-cheek wickedness that seems to be lacking in most, if not all, our own comedic efforts on television. Not to say there hasn't been some successful efforts, but we here in The States rarely can compare to the sly wink-wink, nod-nod type of naughtiness that the Brits seems to get away with so wonderfully.

Likely, for us Americans, much of it has to do with that wicked naughtiness so often said in those classic United Kingdom accents, the James Mason type of upper crust, the classic Cockney or The Beatles Liverpool. Or perhaps all those Scots and Irish dialects we're all so familiar with. From greats like Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, Sean Connery, Peter O'Toole or Tom Jones to the Python and Are You Being Served? gangs to the definitive Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple ladies to The Last Of The Summer Wine, Mr. Bean/Thin Blue Line/Black Adder, Heartbeat or Little Britain, we Americans (and undoubtedly others across the globe) have been enthralled with the voices of the U.K. for decades, even centuries.

The list of great United Kingdom authors, musical performers, actors and comedians and their written, audio and visual efforts is endless and so much appreciated by so many outside the bounderies of the U.K.

Frankie Howerd's work is right up there with my vision of classic British humor at it's peak best. This collection is one I highly encourage my fellow Americans (and all others) for excellent classic British Isles humor. I've seen Mr. Howerd a few times in small roles in major films before, but never had the pleasure of watching Up Pompeii before. I was absolutely delighted and will be looking forward to buying the films from that line as well. I was also taken with Then Churchill Said To Me. The Brits seems to make war time of those WW1 & WW2 times so funny, pithy and surreally heartwarming. America, too, has a number of items that match the British comedic take on war time such as the M*A*S*H efforts (film and TV show) and Clint Eastwood's Kelly's Heroes, McHale's Navy or Jack Lemmon's The Wackiest Ship In The Navy, all great. But there truly is something about the classic Birtish stiff upper lip thing combined with rapier wit regarding war that really appeals. To me Frankie Howerd did the job in TCSTM perfectly.

I have yet to get to the last disc as after finishing up with TCSTM the other day I received in a 11 disc DVD collection of my own country's Our Gang/Little Rascals shorts and have been catching up on these which I've not seen since my childhood in the early '60s. If you U.K. folks have never seen those I would urge you to pony up and buy a collection. Great stuff!

In the meantime, I will be ordering up the further Up series adventures done in major cinematic form, as well as collecting his other filmed works including his first, The Runaway Bus.

Frankie Howerd was one of Britain's comedic greats!