Father Ted – The Definitive Collection (BBC DVD)
Picture:
C Sound: C+ Extras: C Episodes: C+
Unless
they are solving murders, you would never see a U.S. TV show about a priest or
pastor, though there have been many in England.
Father Ted was a hit TV
Britcom as recently as the mid-1990s and for whatever reasons (like no
Christo-Extremism on the level of such things in the U.S. starting in the
1950s) clicked with the public overseas.
BBC DVD has issued the show in several versions, but now, they have
collected all the previous discs and combined them in a nice 5-DVD box (with
DigiPak pages) dubbed The Definitive
Collection.
The show
is amusing, though I never found it to be hilarious, though not exactly the
U.K. equivalent of “fuddy duddy television” either. The title character (Dermot Morgan) has to
deal with the day in, day out happenings at his parish and they can be amusing,
down to an older priest who is not all there.
Nothing is done in mean-spiritedness and oddly, the opening sometimes
feels like a spoof of Green Acres. That should give you an idea of the tone and
spirit (no pun intended) of the show. If
it sounds like your kind of series, this is the set to get. Pass otherwise.
The 1.33
X 1 image in all the seasons has more digititis than a recent such show should,
but is this way and is likely from digital copies of the PAL masters that were
done a while ago or not done properly. The
Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is mono-like in all cases, even when it seems to start
to have some good separation, but it is still better than the picture. Extras include interviews with the creators
in two parts, a sound effects gallery, several “Tedfests” and audio
commentaries on select shows.
- Nicholas Sheffo
