Do Not Adjust Your Set volume 4
BFI Restorations
•
Comedy, L (Coarse Language), UR
Innovative and influential, and originally envisaged as children’s show, Do Not Adjust Your Set was a madcap early-evening comedy sketch show that quickly acquired a cult following with Swinging Sixties adults, who rushed home from work to see it. Written by and starring Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Eric Idle, with great performances and additional material by David Jason and Denise Coffey, it also provided an early showcase for the hilarious animations of Terry Gilliam, and the brilliantly bizarre musical antics of the legendary Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. The final three episodes collected here all sit outside the first series as presented in our previous volumes. First up is a 'Special Edition' originally broadcast months after the initial run, which offers an intriguing mixture of new material and newly shot reprises of sketches from the series. Here we see slicker new versions of the ‘Travelling Kettle’ sketch and the ‘Stool Pigeon’ sketch, while the Bonzos perform their most famous song, ‘I’m the Urban Spaceman’, alongside an elaborate spaceship prop. This is followed by Do Not Adjust Your Stocking; the first episode made for a new TV company (Thames Television) is a Christmas special featuring Terry Gilliam's stunning yuletide animation, The Christmas Card. Finally we have the sole surviving episode (#2) from series two, which showcases Thames' enhanced production values - the sketches move fast, are neatly shot, slickly written and in some cases very amusing indeed (especially the sketch featuring Palin’s airline passenger upsetting businessman Jones).
Up Next in BFI Restorations
-
The Passion of Remembrance
The men disaffected by the turbulence of the 1980s place themselves at the forefront of black liberation, embodying their authoritative traditional gender roles to dictate a vision for the future. Feminist Maggie Baptiste and her friend Gary (Chance), a gay black man, are youthful advocates who r...
-
Friendship's Death
Friendship (Tilda Swinton) has been sent to Earth on a peace mission. Heading for MIT, she inadvertently lands in Amman, Jordan during the 1970 ‘Black September’ war and is ushered to safety by journalist Sullivan (Bill Paterson). Holed up in a hotel as the conflict rages outside, the pair enter ...
-
Rynox
The influence of Fritz Lang is unmistakeable on Powell’s earliest extant film – a thriller crafted with real visual style, despite its limited budget. The twisty plot concerns businessman F.X. Benedik (Rome), who has been receiving threats from a mysterious stranger. When Benedik is murdered,...