From the comedic duo that was kind enough to bring you the cult classic BBC comedy series The Young Ones comes their follow up series, Bottom in which Rik Mayell and Ade Edmondson play Richie Richard and Eddie Hitler respectively. The two of them are essentially a pair of lay-abouts sponging off of the government and spending most of their time scheming up ways to score with women, win some extra cash, and basically just get by without doing anything more than absolutely necessary.

The show ran for three seasons on the BBC from 1991 to 1995 and not only did Mayell and Edmondson star in the series, but they shared writing duties on it as well. Plenty of pop culture references and totally off the wall humor make Bottom on par with The Young Ones as one of, if not the, funniest sitcom to come out of England since John Cleese did Fawlty Towers back in the 1970s.

This new DVD set compiles every episode of the series and lays it out simply enough with one season per disc, and the episodes are laid out as follows:

The two main leads perfectly capture the bizarre characterizations and situations that the pair continuously finds themselves in, and their talent for comedic timing, absurd facial expressions, and of course, fart jokes, make Bottom consistently funny, even if it's sometimes for all the wrong reasons. Sometimes though, some of the more subtle jokes reach heights of near brilliance and transcend the toilet humor that is so prevalent on the surface.

Some of the episodes take a more political slant and lampoon things like the British government that was in power at the time, social changes occurring during the early 90s, and topical newsworthy issues such as drugs and sexually transmitted diseases. But rather than preach to us about the dangers of such things, the two leads gleefully indulge, and all the better for the viewer, as it always results in some seriously funny, if not disastrous, results.

Video:

Bottom is, like most television shows, fullframe and for the most part, this is a very nice picture. Colors are nice and accurate without any real print damage or compression problems to speak of and blacks are nice and deep. There are some moderate edge enhancement issues in a few episodes but they don't away too much from the experience and overall everything looks really good here.