DVD Josh

Just curious...

MasterofDVD

Considering the age of the series I think it looks very good.

The outside of the case says something about now being able to see all the scratches and dust if all it's digital glory.....so right there you know it's gonna be far from pristine.

I'm sure there has to be reviews of the series out there somewhere.

unbeeleebable

It is very "watchable" considering the age.

Mr. Salty

It's certainly the best this show has looked, although there are compression artifacts occassionally. These were pretty early DVDs and it shows. Most of the discs are DVD-5s and only contain three or four episodes each. If they were redone today there would be a lot fewer discs.

Still, it's hard not to recommend these for any Python fan.

Mutley Hyde

There are no subtitles or closed captions, are there?

And before anyone jumps me for not being able to catch British accents, I am hard of hearing and many of the sketches the Pythons just go too damned fast for me to keep up. I'm still trying to piece together dialogue from one joke when they've gone on to several others.

Anyway, this is my beef with A&E, and it's a big friggin' beef too, that they don't do subs or closed captions on most of their stuff. It really pisses me off, because every mega-set I buy (and I have several) has to be a damned bitter-sweet experience.

Grrr.

darkside

Yes, there are subtitles (for the hearing impared as it shows when there is laughter, etc) on the Monty Python set. As noted above it looks about as good as a thirty year old TV show can.

I use the subtitles on some segments because I occasionaly can't follow some of the quick dialog or accents.

Toonview

When I popped the first disc in I was amazed by how beautiful the first episode looked. Seriously, I had to remind myself how old it is, it looked as contemporary as anything on tv today. Well, except everyone dressed oddly

mythmaker18

The episodes look okay, but my main complaint (and it's a pretty big one) is that some episodes are edited, despite the fact that the previous Paramount VHS releases were uncut! One example is the "Summarise Proust" sketch where, when Graham is naming his hobbies, the line "and masturbation" is silenced! Clearly, the people at A&E (or the BBC Archives) didn't know what they were doing and just took the first ones off the shelf.

Let's hope the rumoured upcoming R2 set from BBC Video will be complete.

darkside

"and masturbation" was silenced in the original broadcast so maybe A&E is trying to show them as they originally aired.

Mutley Hyde

Awesome!

Bummer!

Still worth buying though. Thanks darkside.

Buford T Pusser

Get it! Got it? Good!

Josh-da-man

I thought the picture looked kind of skunky, myself.

But it's probably looks as good as it ever will because the picture quality is limited to the quality of the source materials.

Dan Average

I've heard rumblings that the BBC is planning to release the complete series in R2 next year. (Right now the only TV Python available in the UK is a couple of "best of" discs.) You may want to wait a bit to see what they might bring to the table. That said I'm pretty content with the A&E set.

Josh-da-man

The A&E set isn't bad, but it takes up a hell of a lot space. The material is spread out over 14 DVDs in standard keepcases, when the whole thing easily could've been released onto 7 discs in smaller packaging. A nice little box with seven slimline cases would've been lovely, but A&E seems to like their stuff BIG. Hell, even their recent release of "Neverwhere" came in two bloody seperate keepcases when it could've just been stuck in a double.

Movie_Man

Like Darkside mentioned, this is the way it originally aired because the BBC censors didn't like that word. However, I do believe this issue is addressed in the extras on the disc, so it's not like they're keeping it a secret. They even mention what a poor edit job was done, and how it really makes no sense in the context of the sketch. Like it's ok to talk about killing young children, but you can't say masturbation.

ThatGuamGuy

Here's a list of all [hopefully] the changes and censorship stuff on the new set. Note that most of these are due to censoring of the original material, or music rights.

DISC ONE, Episode One ("Whither Canada?")
- Minor music changes to the Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson sketch introduction (from the IMDb: "Both are based on the same theme from the fourth movement of Beethoven's Fourth Symphony, but while the TV version features an excerpt from the recapitulation, the DVD version has an excerpt from the exposition."
- Early versions of the set, apparently, cut the "Wacky Queen" sketch. I've had the set for more than two years, though, and mine was corrected when I got it.

DISC SIX, Episode Nineteen ("It's A Living")
- During an animation, a Prince's death was originally attributed to "cancer". After the first broadcast, this was changed to "gangrene". The "cancer" version of the same joke is available in 'And Now For Something Completely Different'. There is apparently no circulating version of this episode with "cancer" intact.

DISC EIGHT, Episode Twenty-Four ("How Not To Be Seen")
- An animation, "Cartoon Religions, Ltd.", used to go on longer. We saw a telephone repairman up a pole, pulled out to see a bunch of poles, shaped like crosses, then we saw Jesus and two other men crucified. The ground opened up, Satan popped his head out, and said, "Did somebody call?" Gilliam attributes the cut to John Cleese, Cleese attributes it to the BBC censors. Apparently, it aired once, received complaints, and then somebody cut it (I'd say it's likely that Cleese approved it and angered Gilliam).

DISC TEN, Episode Thirty ("Blood, Devastation, War, Horror, and Death")
- During the "Funny Bus Conductor" sketch, a small bit of Chapman singing a song from 'West Side Story' is cut.

DISC TEN, Episode Thirty-One ("The All-England Summarize Proust Competition")
- The word 'masturbation' is cut (more specifically, the audio drops out) from the line, "Strangling animals, masturbation, and golf." The BBC cut the line thirty years ago pre-airing, but has shown it corrected since (though Comedy Central's '90's airings of the episode were censored). This is a very-heavily documented and discussed edit, though, so there's no need to get into it here.

DISC ELEVEN, Episode Thirty-Three ("Salad Days")
- Due to a glitch in either the source given to A&E or the transfer process (it was not the BBC master, since this glitch has never been spotted anywhere other than the R1 DVDs), a line was mangled in the "Biggles Dictates A Letter" sketch. The full, proper line is, "Don't call me seņor! I'm not a Spanish person! You must* call me Mister Biggles, or Group Captain Biggles, or Mary Biggles if I'm dressed as my wife. But never seņor!"
[* = possibly 'may', though scripts seem to say 'must'.]

DISC TWELVE, Episode Thirty-Eight ("A Book At Bedtime")
- The BBC cut the opening (pre-credits) sketch, "A Party Political Broadcast (Choreographed)" aka "A Party Political Broadcast on Behalf of the Conservative and Unionist Party" as of 1979 re-runs, and never restored it.
- [this is the really, really bad one] The original ending of this episode was a minute or two of Eric Idle describing upcoming BBC shows, with the BBC logo underneath (commonly referred to by fans as "Dads Doctors and Other Interesting Shows"). Unfortunately, this was not explained to whoever did the transfer. The person doing the transfer thought the footage was actual BBC ads, and fades out very early in the 'sketch'.

There are plenty of sites around with the scripts to these cut sketches, so here's just one:
http://www.ibras.dk/montypython/episode38.htm

I agree with people reccommending the set, though if they ever correct season 3, I'd buy that too.

Whoever was criticizing the subtitles sight unseen, for shame. They're actually quite good. I've used them to understand lines I never understood before. The extras on the discs are scant at best, the chapters are occassionally off, and the transfers are only "as good as can be expected"... why pick on the subtitles?

mythmaker18

I would never give A&E that much credit. There are too many other edits for this to have been intentionally left that way. As someone else mentioned, the joke makes no sense with the word silenced.

Most likely, the BBC sent them whatever tapes they had handy and whoever did the transfers probably didn't know that the complete version exists (or perhaps didn't even notice the edit).

mythmaker18

As far as I know, this change has appeared on every home video version of the episode and it may not have aired in its original form since original transmission.

There is an interesting story behind this. Apparently, it did air once (on original transmission), but the BBC got responses from disgruntled viewers, so the BBC pulled an "I Claudius" and wiped the offending bit from their master tape of the episode.

This material seemed lost forever, but the material was recently discovered (along with an extended version of the Conquistador Coffee sketch) in the vaults of the Australian Censor's office, but only as black-and-white film prints.

The original, uncensored version of this sketch was retained by the BBC and repeated, uncensored in 1979, and has been issued uncut on video and TV in England and the USA since then, so there's really no good excuse for this one!

A UK source tells me that, although there's a huge jump in the R1 DVD, this like was intact in the recent past (maybe a fault on the tape supplied to A&E).

This was cut for the 1979 repeats and has never been seen again (perhaps out of fear of being sued by a politician).

Agreed, another bad edit!

Also, no one has confirmed edits of episodes 4.3 and 4.6. Apparently, some copies of these two episodes are longer than others.

Hopefully, the rumoured 35th Anniversary set to come in R2 will be cleaned up and fully uncut.

ThatGuamGuy

That is interesting. I only know of the sketch from the book 'Monty Python: In Their Own Words' (not sure that's even the exact title), and I didn't remember it being clear what had happened, and I remembered some debate about whether it had even aired. Makes sense that it seems like the BBC basically let Python do whatever they wanted, but would cut stuff if too many people complained after the first viewing.

That'd be sweet. I bet Gilliam could re-colorize it or, even if not, it'd be a good extra.

I guess I misspoke when I said the BBC hadn't ever aired it, but when Comedy Central was showing them a few years back, they used to cut the word 'masturbation'; I assumed that the BBC was circulating the censored version, even though I knew it had aired in America uncensored. I'm going to go back and correct my original post, though.

Was there somebody it could have been perceived to be about? Or were they just being sissies? I thought I had read that it had been cut earlier than that, but I'll take your word for it.

And that's not just the difference between PAL and NTSC? I have no idea on 4.3, because that's the only episode I had never seen before I got the DVDs. 4.6 I could see being a problem because the last minute or two goes on for a while (like the edit I noted above in 3.12). Do you know the two different lengths? My DVDs are 4.3 = 30:11 (more than a minute longer than any other 4th season) and 4.6 = 28:13

mythmaker18

I don't know, I've never knowingly seen the different edits of the episodes.

I think what my info. source meant is that "alternate cuts" of both episodes exist. Perhaps one is the "as-transmitted" edit and the other is a pre-transmission edit that was perhaps shortened to fall within the approx. 30 mins. running time, or it could be a "slash-print" (i.e. 73 edit), a sort of rough-cut.

I think it all has to do with some scenes being a bit longer and others using alternate takes/camera angles, etc. Would be interesing to put the "unbroadcast" portions of this as an extra on the upcoming R2 "series 4" disc.

If the BBC puts forth any effort at all, I'd say it is quite likely the cut bit from "cartoon religions" and the extended "Conquistador Coffee" will turn up as extras.

Hope they get the Doctor Who Restoration Team to do some cleanup work on this release and a Python expert to research which copies of each episode should be used so we're guaranteed a truly "uncut" set! I'd be perfectly willing to replace my A&E set if this happens (despite the R2 being in PAL).

Dan Average

I suspect the real reason is that there was an election in 1979 and the BBC was hyper-paranoid that somebody might tune in and think they were watching an actual campaign broadcast. Which is a pretty unlikely possibility but then the BBC has done a lot of stupid things.

Since the series was originally shot in PAL I would personally consider PAL a preferable choice. Of course I bought the A&E set because at the time that option wasn't available (and it still isn't). If the rumors of a BBC release do come true I would hope it's something extraordinary because it sure has taken them long enough.

mythmaker18

Yes, that is a likely reason as well.



PAL would not be preferable if you're in an NTSC country (like me) and do not have a multi-standard TV (most of us do not). Why? Although many DVD players have the capability of converting a PAL disc into an NTSC signal, it does not give as good of a conversion as you would get from buying a disc in a shop that has gone through a professional, broadcast-standard converter. One example would be comparing the NTSC picture on Dr. Who DVDs from R1 and R2. Put simply, the R1 disc will look truer on an NTSC set than the R2 one, because it got a professional conversion at the authoring facility.