Stars: Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith, Griff Rhys Jones, Pamela Stephenson

Director: Geoffrey Posner

Summary: The first eight episodes from the classic TV comedy series.

First broadcast in 1979, NOT THE NINE O'CLOCK NEWS was one of the initial wave of series that brought "alternative" comedy into the mainstream via British television in the early 1980s. With fewer rough edges than The Young Ones, it found an audience of six million viewers and launched the careers of its stars: Mel Smith, Griff Rhys Jones, Pamela Stephenson and Rowan Atkinson. This disc features over three hours of the best sketches.

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Volume One of Not the Nine O'Clock Newscomprises 98 minutes of early material from the sketch show that ran between 1979 and 1982. Starring Rowan Atkinson, Griff Rhys-Jones, Mel Smith and Pamela Stephenson and coscripted by Richard (Blackadder) Curtis among others, it wasn't especially ground-breaking by the standards of Monty Pythonor contemporary series such as The Young Ones, but it did provide some pretty blunt belly-laughs at the major social and political concerns of the era: Thatcher, Reagan, police brutality, the prospect of nuclear war. The latter makes for an excellent Question Timespoof, in which, with the four-minute warning having sounded, a panel of politicians continue bleating on their own agenda ("Three million people are going to die unemployed!").

Atkinson's stuff is among the best here, be it as a hideous young Tory, or as Gerald the Gorilla, now civilised to a fault by the captor who caught him in the wild. ("Wild? I was livid!") The much-repeated bit of him walking into a tree, however, doesn't work as he clearly anticipates the collision. While the musical elements look inevitably dated and a lengthy sketch on darts players boozing reaches the "Yeah, we get the point" mark long before it reaches its end, it's surprising how topical much of this material remains decades on--a sketch involving an agonising gay vicar springs to mind--while time hasn't eroded the quality of much of the writing.

On the DVD: Not the Nine O'Clock Newson disc comes with no extra features. --David Stubbs

Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Year:	1979
Release Date:	August 18, 2003
Runtime:	98 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	B B C D V D 1285
Keywords:	Not, News, Comedy, General, Nine, Best, Tv, O'clock, Vol
Genre:	Comedy