Monty Python's Personal Bests Collection [DVD] [2006]

Each member of the Monty Python team gets to choose their own favourite moments from the series, except of course for Graham Chapman, who is no longer with us, and has his best bits chosen by the rest of the team. The trouble with this of course is that their favourite moments aren't necessarily yours, and you may find yourself wishing for different moments. I, for instance, was disappointed not to see the chocolate sketch, with Terry Jones as the wonderfully unctuous chocolate manufacturer with his revolting selection of chocolates ("crunchy frog" etc). And it was unsatisfactory to get just a fragment of the Spanish Inquistion, when I was hoping to see the whole thing. And there is a certain amount of tiresome repetion. I like the fish-slapping sketch as well as the next person,b ut was it really necessary to have it three times in this set?

Also, the frameworks in which the sketches are presented are mostly not very funny (John Cleese's one, in particular, is quite spectacularly un-funny). The best of the five is Terry Gillingham's, which apart from a short prlogue, is entirely made up of animation from the series, with no tiresome links. The one about Graham Chapman is quite interesting, but less talk and more sketches would still have been welcome.

My advice to anyone thinking of purchasing this set would be to spend your money on the complete Python series, and give this one a miss.

If you don't already have DVD's of the TV series this is as good a way as any to get a great (and very large) selection of the best of Python. All the classics are here: Lumberjack, Upper Class Twit of the year, Nudge Nudge, Cheese Shop and Dead Parrott to name but five.

Theres quite a few good extras, including some new introductions by the surviving members and a tribute to the late Graham Chapman. This is on 6 DVD's and if you like Python you won't be disappointed by this set.

The idea of releasing the Python team's personal favourite (or, in the case of the late Graham Chapman, what the rest imagine might have been his personal favourite) sketches wasn't such a bad idea, I suppose, but who is responsible for the crude editing and occasional butchery? The classic barber sketch - intro to no less than the Lumberjack Song - is incomplete, missing its first few minutes. Elsewhere, jokes have been blatantly snipped out (such as Dr. Tom Jack being the author of 'Hello Sailor' - the audience now laughs for no reason) and in the John Cleese selection, the booklet lists the very gruesome and hilariously sick 'Sam Peckinpah's Salad Days' among the contents, but it's nowhere to be found on the disc. A clue - on my copy, the cardboard box has a 15 sticker, but each disc has only a 12. Perhaps 'Salad Days' had to be cut to make the cert. Pity nobody told the company that did the packaging.

There are also repetitions, notably 'Cheese Shop' and 'Fish Slapping Dance' - both classic moments, I grant you, but both of them are on more than one disc. Couldn't they have co-ordinated with each other to avoid things like that, and made room for other stuff?

What I don't understand is, why don't the Pythons just release the complete Monty Python on DVD, in say four box sets, one for each season? I know that not every sketch was immortal, but who cares? Being able to watch each individual show, we would tend to rediscover some brilliant little moment we'd forgotten about, instead of just watching things we know all too well for the nth time (and incidentally, why no 'Four Yorkshiremen'? Because they didn't have the rights to the Hollywood Bowl footage?)

The Pythons themselves acquired these recordings, I seem to remember reading somewhere that they bought them off the BBC, so I'd like them to give me a decent reason why they don't just publish the entire run of the most brilliantly unpredictable TV comedy show ever. Better than, than chopping up their legacy in this careless fashion, for all the good sportsmanship of their little intros and linking bits (funny, but not necessary).

There is one great disc, the Terry Gilliam one - an hour of nothing but Gilliam's mind-bending animation, surely some of the most radical and alarming cartoons ever created. But that alone isn't worth the price of the whole box.

Please, lads, can't we just have the whole thing?