Pleasure at Her Majesty's

This is THE best thing to happen in the history of all time! Being able to watch Alan Bennet, Peter Cook, and Jonathan Miller perform together is bloody amazing!

I am unfortunately too young to remember beyond the fringe and have never seen any footage of it as it was mostly all lost back in the 60's, but this DVD gave me the chance to see the 3 of them perform together, and even though Dudley Moore isn't there Terry Jones makes a GREAT replacement and the Shakespearean sketch works fabulously.

It was also great to see Barry Humphreys do his wonderful Edna Everidge performance before he became tainted by ally McBeal.

The only (and I mean ONLY) down side was Bill Oddie who I hate but I do love the funky Gibbon song and Tim Brooke Taylor and the one with the chuffs are fab so it balances itself out.

All in all this is a fabulous watch and well worth buying.

Usually I would give something like this a 10/10. I dock it two for a couple of reasons. First, I was never much for the Dame Edna character by Barry Humphries. Didn't find it too funny. Second, the fact that some of the sketches were chopped up really bothered me. In particular, Peter Cook's "Sitting on the Bench" miner sketch had about half of it cut out. Bothersome...you can see it in the "Beyond the Fringe" DVD in full, though. Other than that, there are moments of unparalleled hilarity. The courtroom sketch is a mish mash of Monty Python's courtroom sketched rolled up into one. And the result is marvelous, with Peter Cook as the defendant. "Dead Parrot" is also a real treat, with Michael Palin cracking up in the middle of the sketch...pure classic. Eleanor Bron's sketch is great. The rendition of "So That's the Way You Like It" was great. It seemed as if Terry Jones was made for that sketch. However, the best part of this whole video is Peter Cook's "Not An Asp" sketch. Once again, he gets the foil (John Fortune) to "corpse." He even corpses a bit himself. He is god, old Cookie... All in all, a great video, probably too short, the backstage bits are great, though. Great stuff, watch more British comedy!!!

Gets more and more enjoyable the further into the future we hurtle (RIP TBT most recently) although I take the points about the annoyance of breaking up the sketches and not everything being included. I like seeing behind the scenes with these talented and funny people. Nowadays we'd have the whole show filmed, from all the angles, and all the backstage bits as endless dvd extras, but this was the 70s (and a new type of event) so we have to understand the gaps.

Apparently, The Goodies also performed 'Funky Gibbon' in Stone Age-style fake fur outfits during a lull in this event. I have indeed seen a photo of them adopting 'gibbon' poses in said outfits - it looks staged for publicity rather than taken during the show. I'd love to find the source.

There are some very funny bits in this video, which I just picked up recently to add to the Python collection. Most notably, the Pope meets Michaelangelo sketch, the Peter Cook sketch, and one where a guy moves his fingers around (not sure who he was). But some of the stuff is incredibly dated - the stupid song about a monkey and the over-used "guy dressed as a woman - isn't this funny" sketch was goes too-long. Also, I wondered where Python member ERIC IDLE was... How many more times do we need the parrot sketch and the lumberjack song - they are great, but for a python fan it's a rental not something to buy like I did. 6 1/2 of/10.

"Why in God's name did you paint THREE Christs?" "Well the fat one in the middle balances out the two skinny ones, doesn't he?"

The version I saw of this show was much longer than the one mentioned here and in the other reviews. It was 106 minutes and it had quite a few problems that prevent it from being a must-see for fans of British comedy. Part of the problem might just be because in restoring the missing footage, a lot of uninteresting material (especially pre-show preparations) was included. So, instead of a straight filming of the live comedy show (which I'd hoped for), it's more like a documentary of the show. Another problem is no captions or closed captions on the DVD. British audiences may have less need of captioning (as they can probably understand the accents more readily) but this is not the only reason I would have loved captioning--it is because the sound quality is often quite poor and even a Brit might appreciate captions. Finally, the biggest problem is because it is a documentary and not a straight recording of the show, too often the comedy routines are abbreviated or cut in half (inserting irrelevant backstage banter and scenes into the middle of a funny skit--thus ruining the flow). The bottom line it that this is also a pretty lousy looking documentary--seeming random and slapped together.

So is it worth seeing despite these serious problems? Well, it depends on you. If you love British comedy and can accept the show with all its limitations, yes...watch it. There are some very funny skits (my favorite was the scene with the Pope and the painting of the Second to Last Supper). But, if you aren't that familiar with Monty Python, Peter Cooke (who's very good here), the Goodies and the rest, don't bother--you won't appreciate them as much because they simply aren't at their best.