Peter Richardson's mammoth contribution to British comedy.

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20483 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-07-04
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Box set, Full Screen, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 9
• Running time: 999 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
It hardly needs spelling out that The Comic Strip Presents… kick-started the careers of the bulk of our ‘alternative’ comedians. Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Planer, French and Saunders, Peter Richardson, Keith Allen--all started here.

The series is the very definition of a ‘mixed bag’. Each show was a separate story in its own right, and each one couldn’t be more different from the last--from the sixties pastiche ‘The Bullshitters’ to the arty ‘Les Dogs’ (starring Kate Bush, no less).

With 39 episodes to choose from, the overall quality of the episodes does vary somewhat. For every excellent ‘South Atlantic Raiders’ and ‘The Supergrass’, there’s a woeful ‘Spaghetti Hoops’. But The Comic Strip Presents… deserves its place in comic history by virtue of being different, by trying to create new and interesting work, and in doing so being truly groundbreaking.

When you take risks, you end up with gems such as the double header of ‘Bad News Tour’ and ‘More Bad News’, which follow a chronically bad rock group on the road. These two episodes alone are worth your attention, the interplay of the four leading players (Edmondson, Planer, Mayall and Richardson) a marvel to watch and with scenes that will make you keel over--Vim Fuego’s take on ‘Imagine/Imogen’ is pure gold.

Other highlights include ‘Five Go Mad In Dorset’, a wonderful take on Enid Blyton’s skewed and irreverant view of teenagers in Britain; ‘Mr Jolly Lives Next Door’, which sees Mayall and Edmondson, in a precursor to their days on ‘Bottom’, getting themselves in a sticky situation with Mr Jolly, played brilliantly by the late Peter Cook; and Strike!’, a Hollywood-esque take on the miners’ strike of 1984.

The Comic Strip Presents… pushed comedic boundaries and was never afraid to do things a little differently and this collection is a fine record of its prolific, always interesting, and often hilarious output.--Mark Oakley

Synopsis
Features the complete thirty-nine episodes from the ground-breaking comedy series. Episodes include: 'The Beat Generation', 'Five Go Mad In Dorset', 'Dirty Movie', 'The Strike', 'Consuela', 'Bad News', 'Funseekers', 'South Atlantic Raiders', 'Les Dogs', 'The Crying Game', 'Wild Turkey' and much more...

From the Director
Widely acknowledged as the founding fathers of alternative comedy, The Comic Strip Presents… launched the careers of some of our best-loved comedians including Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Rik Mayall, Alexei Sayle, Ade Edmondson, Peter Richardson, Keith Allen, Robbie Coltrane and Nigel Planer.

Approached by the artists, Channel 4 was convinced to take a chance and commission a TV series. Launched the same day as the Channel itself in November 1982, this political and social satire became an instant hit, changing the face of UK comedy forever.

Over 20 years after the first transmission, Channel 4 Video is, for the first time, bringing together all 39 episodes of the ground-breaking comedy in a 9–disc collectors box set. Classics include: Five Go Mad in Dorset – the parody of the Famous Five stories washed down with lashings of ginger beer, Golden Rose of Montreux winning Strike! – an over the top Hollywood pastiche about the 1984 miners strike, and Bad News – a send up of a touring rock band – the original Spinal Tap!

The 9th disc is loaded with an extensive array of extras for fans of this cult series with a running time of over two hours. Included is a brand new exclusive retrospective of the Comic Strip presents….comprising of interviews with Dawn French, Adrian Edmondson, Peter Richardson, Alexei Sayle, Nigel Planer, Pete Richens, Lenny Henry, Leslie Philips, Julie T Wallace, Gary Beadle and Phil Cornwell about their Comic Strip experiences. Julien Temple’s 1981 tongue in cheek look at what went on behind the scenes of the original stage show The Comic Strip, and cast interviews from 1998 make up disc 9.

Now, at long last, this uniquely successful comedy great is coming to DVD courtesy of Channel 4 DVD in a must-own collectors box set!

---

Customer Reviews

HEAVILY EDITED !! Don't erase your old tapes !!
This would have been the DVD-release of the decade to me...
until I compared some of the episodes to my old tapes.
I haven't checked the old Channel 4 films yet, but a lot of the later episodes
have been heavily edited and messed around with. Many longer scenes are shortened,
but worse: some of the funniest dialogue is missing!!
I could only check a few shows and discovered these cuts:

SOUTH ATLANTIC RAIDERS 1 - about 2 minutes cut: a lot of the dialogue in Max' house is cut,
including the classic "My cousin's just been let out of a Lancashire cotton mill and the
Southern air and the Chateau Mignon 54 has rather gone to his Northern head";
the airport & prison escape scenes are shorter; some very funny dialogue between Billy
and Stan dressed as his mother is cut)

SOUTH ATLANTIC RAIDERS 2 - about 5 minutes (!!!) cut, too many cuts to mention, the worst are:
the whole intro sequence before the titles; most part of the flashback scenes when Stan tells the story;
some great gags in the airplane; a very funny scene, when Cathy wants to be alone with Stan and Billy
doesn't really get it; the whole dialogue between Stan & Frances, when he tells her he was wrong & loves her;
Cathy & the dead General (she originally says "Sieg heil, my darling!"); the whole scene when Billy
seems to be shot; the monologue from the Newsreporter is shortened; ...
To make matters even worse, the remaining pieces of the episode are messed around with.
The scene where Cathy goes to Frances with an axe is placed after Stan has arrived at the cottage,
which makes it look like a very stupid continuity error. Has the editor been totally drunk??!!

WILD TURKEY - 1 min. cut: the whole intro, where Ruby Wax writes Xmas cards;
the dancing scene ("have you kissed a turkey before?"); when the turkey leaves,
they hug & kiss ("I wish you were a turkey, Sue!") - you can clearly see the sloppy cut!

FOUR MEN IN A CAR - 1 min. cut: dialogue between Jennifer & Peter; the scene where Rik
tries to steal the motorbike is shorter.

GREGORY: DIARY OF A NUTCASE - I don't have an original to compare, but you can see a very sloppy cut!

Shame on the publisher for this unneccessary butchering !!!

classic!
Oh man, this is quite a marathon, I purchased this when it first came out back in 2005 and it has taken me a quite while to sit down to view them all.

Sure the film quality isnt clean and crisp but who really cares, does that matter? Take into consideration the films at your local box office, a fair few are rubbish right? well, you dont sit there and say "sure, that film was bad, but wow, what picture clarity!" no you dont, so please dont bag this wonderful show. Peter Richardson is a God and there's a stack of jems in this treasure box of laughter. Sure, ok, there is the odd dud but nonetheless great viewing.

I am old enough to remember all the classics from Five Go Mad right up to Mr Jolly Lives Next Door and More Bad News but sadly I never got to view anything pass a certain date as they never aired the latter shows in NZ. Watching all the shows I never saw from the late 80s through to just a few years ago was fantastic and there are some really great moments, such as Robbie Coltrane playing Charles Bronson in GLC, starring as the mighty tour de force ramboesque Ken Livingstone, or Adrian Edmundsen as John Major in Red Nose of Courage. Brilliant. Plus The Bullshitters returning to form in Detectives On The Edge Of A Nervous Breakdown!

The total list of shows are:
DISC 1. Five Go Mad In Dorset / War / The Beat Generation / Bad News Tour / Summer School / Five Go Mad On Mescalin.
DISC 2. Dirty Movie / Susie / A Fistful Of Travelers' Cheques / Gino - Full Story and Pics / Eddie Monsoon - A Life?
DISC 3. Slags / The Bullshitters / The Supergrass (feature movie) / Consuela
DISC 4. Private Enterprise / The Strike / More Bad News / Mr Jolly Lives Next Door
DISC 5. The Yob / Didn't You Kill My Brother / Funseekers
DISC 6. South Atlantic Raiders / South Atlantic Raiders Pt II / GLC / Spaghetti Hoops / Oxford
DISC 7. Les Dogs / Red Nose Of Courage / The Crying Game / Wild Turkey / Detectives On The Edge Of A Nervous Breakdown / Space Virgins From The Planet Sex
DISC 8. Queen Of The Wild Frontier / Gregory - Diary Of A Nutcase / Demonella / Jealousy / Four Men In a Car / Four Men In a Plane
DISC 9. The Comic Strip Presents - A Retrospective / First Laugh on Four Pt 1 / First Laugh on Four Pt 2 / The Comic Strip (Julien Temple)

Cheap and Cheerful - In the best possible sense!
Thirty quid (at time of writing) for THIRTY-NINE episodes of ball-bouncingly classic comedy?!!! That's under 80p per show! A bargain sir!

The ones I have seen before have stood the test of time. And the ones I missed as a kid have been worth the wait. Buy it now! (My only niggle is the packaging: Fancy fold-out petals of cardboard and plastic which I guarantee will come to pieces, just like the Complete Blackadder set. But hey, at this price, you can afford to buy replacement jewel-cases and still be laughing till the final frame.)

I particularly like the animated menus which feature choice quotable-in-the-pub dialogue snippets. eg: "Pop music is not important. Fifty boxes of toilet rolls are!"