Do you like your bust-a-gut, rolling-around-on-the-floor, so-funny-it-hurts alternative British comedy? No? Piss off then! Still here? Good. Because Severin has just delivered up a heaping helping of tasty treats in blu-ray disc form (WARNING: DO NOT EAT BLU-RAY) that is guaranteed to give you the guffaws at least a time or two throughout the three seasons and specials included.

The Comic Strip Presents… was at the genesis of the alternative comedy movement of the early ’80s in Great Britain and was spawned by a group of comedians performing their acts on stage in a strip club (an example of the kind of show they would perform can be seen in the Julien Temple-directed original short film The Comic Strip, included as an extra here). This is where we would be introduced to the more cerebral yet still highly absurd and at times downright zany stylings of Peter Richardson (the one constant member throughout The Comic Strip’s run leading up to the present), Adrian Edmondson & Rik Mayall (both of whom would star in the influential sitcom The Young Ones at roughly the same time that The Comic Strip Presents… premiered as well as going on to star in the sitcom Bottom as well), Nigel Planer (who would join Edmondson and Mayall in The Young Ones as Neil the hippie) and Dawn French & Jennifer Saunders (who would have their own well-known show French & Saunders as well with Saunders going on to also star in Absolutely Fabulous). We would also see frequent collaborators like Alexei Sayle, Keith Allen and Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid in the Harry Potter films among many other things). What would spawn out of this bubbling pool of comedic talent was a series of stand-alone mini-films (and in some cases even full-length films) in a kind of anthology format with each episode acting as a kind of satire, homage or parody to a different style. Also unlike most other comedy programs of the day, The Comic Strip Presents would include no laugh track and be shot on film (I would guess mostly 16mm with a few in 35mm from the look of them). The first “film” would premiere on UK’s Channel 4, a newly minted station focused on serving left-of-mainstream minority demographics, on its open day of programming and the series would prove to be a long-lasting influence on Great Britain’s comedy scene.

Series 1 opens with “Five Go Mad in Dorset”, a hilarious send-up of the popular, classic British children’s book series The Famous Five (for you folks in the US, it was very much in the same vein as The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew with kids running afoul of smugglers and escaped convicts and having adventures), exploiting the preposterous plot turns and rampant sexism that these old stories were full of (it’s sequel “Five Go Mad on Mescalin” in series 2 is also really damned funny). Other highlights of series 1 include the famous “Bad News Tour”, a mockumentary about a dunderheaded glam rock band (actually released a year before This is Spinal Tap!) and “The Beat Generation”, a great satire of weirdo beat poets who get together in a villa over a weekend, shot quite nicely in black & white, aping the style of British New Wave films of the ’50s and early ’60s.

Series 2 (included with series 1 on the first disc) keeps up the quality with the aforementioned “Five Go Mad” sequel as well as several others including “Dirty Movie”, a ridiculous and wacky almost Looney Tunes-esque plot involving a man trying to get into a theater to see a dirty movie while the cops are trying to break into the theater at the same time. This season also includes the syrupy melodrama parody “Susie” starring Dawn French as a flaky sex-crazed woman who constantly has affairs while her husband stays at home with their baby, the really funny spaghetti western parody “A Fistful of Travellers’ Cheques” and the post-nuke neon haze of “Slags” that plays out like a cross between Streets of Fire and West Side Story. Really good stuff!

Series 3 (on disc 2) stretches the format beyond 30-minute episodes and has some of the best episodes in the whole set kicking off in grand style with “The Strike”, a brilliant Hollywood satire that takes the UK Miners’ Strike of 1984-85 and casts Al Pacino as union leader Arthur Scargill, turning it into a 1930s over-the-top action thriller. It follows this up with “More Bad News”, bringing back the idiots in Bad News for a reunion album and an “iconic” performance at the massive Donington rock festival and giving us another hilarious blast of mockumentary shenanigans. Next up is another of The Comic Strip’s most well-known films, “Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door” which basically takes guys that highly resemble Mayall and Edmonson’s completely mental Dangerous Brothers characters and places them in the center of an extremely madcap and zany crime caper farce which involves bland television personality Nicholas Parsons (think Lawrence Welk or Bob Barker) being brutally murdered by Mr. Jolly (played by famous comedian Peter Cook) and directed by the critically acclaimed Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters, My Beautiful Laundrette) who had previously directed two of their specials (also included on the 3rd disc). Horror fans will get a kick out of the episode “The Yob”, a spot-on parody of Cronenberg’s The Fly involving a pretentious music video director who is slowly transformed into a crazed street hooligan.

This set also includes five specials on disc 3 that aired in-between the proper seasons (although contrary to the stated claim of the set, it is missing two Channel 4-produced specials: Eat the Rich and Sex Actually, making it The ALMOST Complete Comic Strip Presents… Channel 4 Films). Some of these specials are also among my favorites in the set. We have the hilarious parody of ’70s cop and spy shows “The Bullshitters” and the fantastic parody of Hitchcock’s/Du Maurier’s Rebecca “Consuela, (or, The New Mrs Saunders)”, both also directed by Stephen Frears. Another of my favorites was “Five Men in a Car”, released in 1998 on Channel 4 after The Comic Strip had moved to BBC2 for several years (hence another reason why this isn’t a Complete The Comic Strip Presents set… I imagine those BBC rights ain’t cheap). “Five Men in a Car” may have been the most I laughed in this whole set with it’s escalating grotesque and ridiculous scenarios. It’s a claustrophobic dark humor masterpiece. It’s sequel “Five Men in a Plane” is pretty funny as well but not on the same level.

Now I’m sad to say this review isn’t going to be all sunshine and roses. We come now to the technical specs section and this is where I think Severin really dropped the ball. The transfers here are mostly SD upscales and do not look great at all. Some episodes fare worse than others but in general the image is over-saturated with grain and has quite a few blemishes in places. At times it also appears blurry, almost out of focus. It’s really a shame knowing that these were actually shot on film, unlike a lot of British television programming. It could be that they were edited on tape, but there’s no way to know since the set doesn’t include an explanation or disclaimer stating the reasons why it looks so bad. The audio on the other hand actually sound quite clean and clear and would make a nice companion to a proper set of transfers.

Now talking extra features? It’s Severin, so naturally they are STACKED. In addition to the early short film that introduced them, this thing features TWO full-length 90+ minute documentaries on The Comic Strip. While they have some overlap in content, there is actually enough original content between the two to justify watching both if you really dig these guys. We also get a bunch of Bad News-related extras including “Bad News: The Whole Sordid Story” which is kind of structured like a VH1 Behind the Music special on Bad News. We also get the hilariously awful Bad News music video covering Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody”, surprisingly directed by Brian May. This comes with a Behind the Scenes making of the Bohemian Rhapsody video too. Plus we get “More Bad News Tour Stories” which has some additional behind-the-scenes anecdotes Bad News. Top it all off with a Bad News Photo Gallery and a trailer and you’ve got a humdinger of an extras package!

To sum all this business up, would I like to have better transfers? Sure. Would I like to have ALL of The Comic Strip Presents including the two extra BBC2 seasons and the additional films and specials they produced? Absolutely. But am I utterly delighted by this hilarious barrage of crazy comedy? That is a very big DEFINITELY.