The Secret Policeman's Biggest Ball

This is the fourth "Secret Policeman" DVD I have seen and I certainly could see a downward spiral in the quality over the years. Whereas in earlier incarnations there were a few duds, this DVD is mostly duds. The bottom line is that the performers aren't at their best and too many of the sketches were re-treads--and the originals were better. Plus, there seemed to be more jokes aimed at Brits in this one---with many references that this American couldn't quite get. Plus, many of the better performers in previous years were gone. If you are a Monty Python fan, you'll have to content yourself with just John Cleese and Michael Palin. Rowan Atkinson is likewise not present. In one of their last performances together you do get to see Peter Cook and Dudley Moore with some rather limp material. Highlights for me included a couple nice bits by Lenny Henry and a violent skip involving shooting an apple off a guy's head. But even these didn't make it worth slogging through the rest, as too often it was just painfully dull. My advice is see the earlier episodes first and if you must, try this one.

In a desperate attempt to regain credibility after the rock star heavy earnestness (and a costly failure of a live concert) that dogged the Amnesty benefit franchise - they knee-jerk it back to its earliest form in '89: Mostly revue sketches with only a brief bit of music. This leanness serves it very well and there's a snappy subversion throughout that's aged nicely (the truncated parrot sketch and poor John Williams being shooed off-stage by Jennifer Saunders). It's heartening to see Pete & Dud together corpsing again and the younger performers like Lenny Henry & Ade Edmondson bring some sharpness to retreads of older sketches. It's much safer than previous entries for certain but it serves as a solid bookend to the first decade or so of the format before they dump the name and change it up in the 90's.