The Bounder – A Tale Of The Unexpected (Set Two)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+    Extras: D     Episodes: B-

 

 

Peter Bowles is back as Howard Booth, a conman just getting out of prison for a financial scandal, in the British comedy series The Bounder.  BFS Entertainment has issued a second satisfying set of shows from 1983 where Booth continues to be staying “temporarily” with his sister Mary (Rosalind Ayres), but her husband Trevor (George Cole) rightly thinks he is a crackpot.  Add a neighbor (Isla Blair) Howard tries to seduce, despite her not knowing the truth about him, made worse by her losing a fortune in that scandal, and you can see where the madness is “bound” to come from in this two DVD set, featuring seven half-hour shows.  They are:

 

A Tale Of The Unexpected

Matchmaker

Raffles

Love me, Love My Dog

Third Party

A Genuine Simpson

Unreasonable Behaviour

 

 

Though I was not falling out of my chair, each show is constantly amusing and smart, with the same team of writer Eric Chappell (who wrote these shows) and Vernon Lawrence (produced and directed) back again.  They should be given credit for knowing what to do with an exceptional cast and especially exceptional talent like lead Bowles.  Like some other British comedies we have looked at recently, the comedy is held back and then taken from there.  I am not always a fan of that approach, but this is one of the cases where it works.

 

The 1.33 X 1 full screen image comes from the PAL tapings of the show, which look better than the transfers for the previous set for whatever reason.  There is just more clarity and some better color consistency versus the previous set, reviewed elsewhere on this site.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono sound is the original sound from the show and is not bad either, a bit clearer than that previous set.  Only Disc Two has extras, again very limited to just brief biography/filmography text.  Hope something else surfaces for the third set.  I said it before and it continues to be true.  If you like British TV comedy in particular, this is a must-see show.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo