Victor Borge was a unique talent, a genuinely gifted Danish pianist and maestro who became a sensation in the United States in the mid-1950s, thanks to his clever and classy one-man show, "Comedy In Music" (pick up the CD recording of that show if you can track it down; the humor is absolutely timeless). Borge spent the next three-plus decades doing TV specials and touring, right up until his death (at age 91) in 2000.

In his later years, specials of his performances (both new and old) became quite popular on public television, and six of those specials are collected in the Victor Borge: Classic Collection set. It is billed as the "100th Anniversary Edition," marking the upcoming centennial of Borge's birth.

Let's be plain here: there are a great many laughs in this set. Its problem is that there are almost as many redundancies. These six specials are culled from a limited amount of surviving footage, so over the course of the six-plus hours, we not only hear much of the same material repeatedly in different performances, but we see several of the same clips, over and over again--some as many as three or four times.

Disc One is probably the best. "The Best of Victor Borge: Acts One and Two" (1:30:37) is an extended concert performance film first released in 1990; it captures the aging, but still sharp and funny, maestro in concert before an appreciative (and noticeably elderly) audience. Borge's signature mix of silly stand-up and classical music is well represented, and many of his most famous bits are performed (for the first of many times in the set): his explanation of "Inflationary Language," his demonstration of "Phoenetic Punctuation," a duet with opera singer Marilyn Mulvey (reminiscent of Harpo Marx's similar operatic pairing in Monkey Business), the "Timid Page-Turner" bit (performed with his son), and a frenetic, tightly choreographed two-man piano pairing with Sahan Arzuni. Borge also does some "straight playing" (no jokes) in the second half (or "Act"), and is quite the skilled pianist. In addition to that interlude, there are huge laughs to be found on this disc; in fact, I would recommend picking it up on its own and skipping the rest of the set.

Disc Two is the compilation "The Legendary Victor Borge" (1:08:34), hosted by legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman. The repetition of the set begins to become apparent here, as five of the bits from the first concert are seen again, albeit all but one of them are in different performances (though the variations are minor). These are mixed in with older clips of Borge (mostly from his 1950s television specials); many are quite funny, at least this first time.

Disc Three is "Victor Borge's Funniest Moments" (1:15:19), and it is the biggest rip-off in the batch--or, if it is not, than disc two is. Here's why: They both contain the exact same clips, just reordered and this time without the Perlman introductions. I counted literally two clips on disc three that were not on disc two--and one of them, the "Salieri Opera" bit, was performed on Disc One. I understand the desire to fill up a box set, but you shouldn't do it by putting in two discs that render each other obsolete.

Disc Four is a definite improvement. "Victor Borge: Then and Now" (1:24:28) is another performance video, this one apparently from the mid-1990s, of Borge on-stage at the Fox Theatre in Detroit. That's the good news; there are some new comedy bits, as well as some very fine straight-up, music-only performances (including a rendition of Debussy's "Clair de Lune" that is just plain lovely). The bad news is that Borge also introduces some old clips that are shown to the live audience on screens and, therefore, to the home viewers as well, and many of them are maddeningly familiar. We see Borge with Fozzie Bear on The Muppet Show for the third time; his early TV bit (with a young Mike Wallace) where he plays Liszt gets its third play as well. There's enough new material on disc four to recommend it, though it's a good deal more enjoyable if you've skipped discs two and three.

Disc Five is labeled "Lost Episodes of Victor Borge Volume One" (42:15) on the packaging, though the opening graphic of the program calls it "The Classic Victor Borge I". Whatever it's called, it consists of a full mid-1950s "Comedy and Music" variety special, in which Borge performs and showcases some guest performers. It's a lively and enjoyably retro special, with most of the material new to the set (though a few pieces of it are extracted into the compilation discs). Borge is funny and charming here, and his vintage spots for sponsor Pontiac are kitschy fun.

The set wraps up with Disc Six, "Lost Episodes of Victor Borge Volume Two" (53:01). The first half of the program consists of a TV special taped during Borge's Carnegie Hall performance, again the early-to-mid 1950s. Borge's in fine form here, and some inventive camerawork (including some nice shots of the hall and a terrific overhead shot of Borge and a colleague dueting on a pair of grand pianos) helps liven things up. The back half of the disc consists of more clips from his other 1950s specials; there's some funny new material here, though I must mention that the Wallace-Liszt interview makes its fourth appearance in the set.

Video:

Picture quality, for the most part, is passable to poor. Disc One looks particularly bad, with the expected chroma noise, comet trails, ghosting, and general softness of an analog video recording. Many of the older TV clips fare worse, since they appear to have been transferred from kinescope film and are quite dirty and rough. In all cases, the poor video quality can be mostly blamed on the source materials, though not much effort appears to have been put into clean-up.

Audio is occasionally shoddy is well. All of the discs have a 2.0 stereo mix, which pretty much does the job, though some of the older recordings have some muffled sound, and disc one has (in spots anyway) an audible hiss in the track. Again, par for the course with source materials this old.

There are no extras to be found on any of these discs, though the set's builders use the same ugly menu on almost all of the discs which, amusingly, offers a "Features" menu that is actually a scene selection menu.

I'm a big Victor Borge fan. His wit, improvisational acumen, and inspired, Marx Brothers-style silliness are unmatched, and his genuine skill at the piano provides a nice balance in his performances. That said, the redundancies of the Victor Borge: Classic Collection, in light of its hefty price tag, keep it from being a set I can recommend; long-time fans and those looking for an introduction to the "Great Dane" would be better-served to pick out a couple of the stronger discs (I'd point you towards discs one and four) and slap 'em on the Netflix que. Rent It.

Jason lives in New York. He holds an MA in Cultural Reporting and Criticism from NYU.