Monday, March 5, 2007

TV PERFORMANCE: BEYOND THE FRINGE


A blurb from Acorn Media about Beyond The Fringe-where British satire was born: Before The Daily Show, before Saturday Night Live even before Monty Python there was Beyond The Fringe-the 1960s West End and Broadway hit revue that reinvented comedy.

This disc is a nice companion to the Not Only…But Always biopic in that this was the last performance that was videotaped in 1964 and for many years though “Lost” but was found in a vault owned by one of the producers! The video and audio quality is not all that great, but it is no fault of Acorn Media. The source material is lucky to be around. The show starred Peter Cook and Dudley Moore with Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett. Their comedy was pure satire and moved a great many performers to that type of comedy most famously done by Monty Python’s Flying Circus. What is very nice about this disc is that it has a feature in where you can jump a particular skit instead of watching it the whole way through and some interesting cast biographies and filmographies and the original playbill on DVD-Rom.

VIDEO

The video quality is not that bad! The performance was done on videotape and there are a few dropouts of picture and sound. The performance is 116 minutes long.

Audio

Was originally recorded in Mono. It is also Mono on this set.

Disc 1- 1. “Beyond The Fringe”-Performance

Extras

Disc 1: Jump to a Sketch feature
Cast Biographies- (Text Only)
Cast Filmographies- (Text Only)

Verdict

As I said, this makes a great bookend to the Cook and Moore biopic, again Acorn Media did a great job with this disc! I would recommend it!


Rating: ***!

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