Upright Citizens Brigade – The Complete First
Season + The Complete Second Season (DVD-Video)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C+ Episodes: C+
After a
series of serious police dramas in the 1960s and 1970s from the U.K. and the
U.S., the spoofs have been all over the place.
They had a particular style with self-important graphics (big black
letters) and music to match. If you can
imagine DEVO doing a spoof, adding Science Fiction elements, Orwellian elements
and making a comedy out of all of it, than you would definitely get something
like Upright Citizens Brigade.
Paramount
is reissuing the long out of print first set (1998) and launching the second
(1999) for the first time, the show boasts future stars Amy Poehler (one of the
few bright lights these days on Saturday
Night Live), Matt Besser (Reno 911),
Matt Walsh (The Daily Show with John
Stewart) and Ian Roberts (Arrested
Development). The best part of the
show is how they send up the suburbs, but each half-hour is set totally against
common sense and is off the wall.
To its
advantage, when it’s funny, it’s funny.
When it is not, it is because the jokes can become limited. Also, the show is not as subversive as it
would first seam, but that is not always a bad thing. Each two DVD set (in slender cases, boxed)
offers 10 half-hour shows (each an entire season) and there is more than enough
in both sets to make all worth a look.
You might even become a fan.
The 1.33
X 1 full frame image is shot in analog NTSC video and celebrates all the cheapness
it can, which is part of the joke of the show to begin with. These are good transfers considering the
source and the Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is as simple as it is efficient. The combination is just fine. Extras include audio commentary on select
shows in both sets (one is done live with an audience on the second set),
original pilot and live versions of a few songs in the first set, and audience
Q&A 7 early live performances on set two.
- Nicholas Sheffo
