Father Ted – The Definitive Collection (BBC DVD)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: C     Episodes: C+

 

 

Unless they are solving murders, you would never see a U.S. TV show about a priest or pastor, though there have been many in England.  Father Ted was a hit TV Britcom as recently as the mid-1990s and for whatever reasons (like no Christo-Extremism on the level of such things in the U.S. starting in the 1950s) clicked with the public overseas.  BBC DVD has issued the show in several versions, but now, they have collected all the previous discs and combined them in a nice 5-DVD box (with DigiPak pages) dubbed The Definitive Collection.

 

The show is amusing, though I never found it to be hilarious, though not exactly the U.K. equivalent of “fuddy duddy television” either.  The title character (Dermot Morgan) has to deal with the day in, day out happenings at his parish and they can be amusing, down to an older priest who is not all there.  Nothing is done in mean-spiritedness and oddly, the opening sometimes feels like a spoof of Green Acres.  That should give you an idea of the tone and spirit (no pun intended) of the show.  If it sounds like your kind of series, this is the set to get.  Pass otherwise.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image in all the seasons has more digititis than a recent such show should, but is this way and is likely from digital copies of the PAL masters that were done a while ago or not done properly.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is mono-like in all cases, even when it seems to start to have some good separation, but it is still better than the picture.  Extras include interviews with the creators in two parts, a sound effects gallery, several “Tedfests” and audio commentaries on select shows.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo