Do Not Adjust Your Set volume 4
Do Not Adjust Your Set
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Comedy, L (Coarse Language), UR
Innovative and influential, and originally envisaged as children’s show, Do Not Adjust Your Set was a madcap early-evening comedy sketch show that quickly acquired a cult following with Swinging Sixties adults, who rushed home from work to see it. Written by and starring Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Eric Idle, with great performances and additional material by David Jason and Denise Coffey, it also provided an early showcase for the hilarious animations of Terry Gilliam, and the brilliantly bizarre musical antics of the legendary Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. The final three episodes collected here all sit outside the first series as presented in our previous volumes. First up is a 'Special Edition' originally broadcast months after the initial run, which offers an intriguing mixture of new material and newly shot reprises of sketches from the series. Here we see slicker new versions of the ‘Travelling Kettle’ sketch and the ‘Stool Pigeon’ sketch, while the Bonzos perform their most famous song, ‘I’m the Urban Spaceman’, alongside an elaborate spaceship prop. This is followed by Do Not Adjust Your Stocking; the first episode made for a new TV company (Thames Television) is a Christmas special featuring Terry Gilliam's stunning yuletide animation, The Christmas Card. Finally we have the sole surviving episode (#2) from series two, which showcases Thames' enhanced production values - the sketches move fast, are neatly shot, slickly written and in some cases very amusing indeed (especially the sketch featuring Palin’s airline passenger upsetting businessman Jones).