The Red Green Show is certainly... different. Quirky, as the characters might describe themselves. To its credit, it's different from other comedies I've seen, and while it didn't consistently hit my funny bone, it's certainly an original.

The show is without a doubt difficult to describe. You see, the host is this older guy named Red Green (Steve Smith), who potters around a hunting lodge up in Canada with his geeky nephew Harold (Patrick McKenna), getting himself into all sorts of misadventures, usually involving handyman schemes gone awry. But it's not a typical "situation comedy," because while Red and his buddies are fictional characters, they're also consciously part of the television program, which has regular segments like a talk show.

Never having watched any Red Green episodes before, I found taking the plunge into the show to be a bit of a disconcerting experience. The program has a unique structure that at first seems to be thrown together haphazardly: only after watching a few episodes did I get a sense of how the show typically ran. Given that each disc has a mix of episodes from different seasons of the show, there has apparently been a great deal of continuity in running the same types of segments over the course of the show. After an introductory segment that gives the general theme of the episode (often involving some hijinks by the often-mentioned but unseen "guys at the lodge," like setting up a volunteer fire department), we get various intermediary skits before finishing up the "plot" (such as it is).

Some of the recurring skits are "Handyman's Corner," where Red Green creates some implausible creation using various bits and pieces lying around (bonus points if he uses the handyman's secret weapon, duct tape); "Adventures with Bill," with the hapless Bill doing something ridiculous and most likely disastrous; "Ask the Experts," which brings various of Red's outrageous buddies on to answer questions from readers. Filling things out are guitar-and-song routines from Red and Harold, "The Possum Lodge Word Game," poetry by Red, and miscellaneous other recurring skits involving others of Red's friends.

The humor is an odd mix of slapstick and dry wit, which I found to be a bit hit or miss but others will probably find right on target. I enjoyed Red's one-liners the most, and found myself slightly puzzled by much of the goofier material, but all in all the episodes were mildly entertaining... and the fact that they're certainly different from other comedy shows I've seen gives them something in their favor.

Red Green Stuffed and Mounted Six Pack contains six DVDs, each of which was also released separately as Red Green Stuffed and Mounted 1 through 6. In total, 48 half-hour episodes are included in the set, all chosen as "best of" episodes by Steve Smith: it's enough Red Green to keep even the most die-hard fan busy for quite some time.

The DVD

Video

All the episodes of the Red Green Show are presented in their original 1.33:1 aspect ratio. The image quality isn't terrible, and it's fairly in keeping with the general theme of the show: grungy and not too well cared for. The image is fairly blurry, with colors looking OK but occasionally a bit oversaturated; there's nothing dramatically wrong with the image, but it's nothing to write home about, either, especially since this isn't a particularly old show. One indication that the transfer falls short of what it could have been is in the image quality of the short introductions to each episode by star Steve Smith: these are nicely crisp, clean, and sharp, the way I'd like to have seen the episodes themselves.

Audio

I debated whether to give an average or slightly below average mark for the Dolby 2.0 soundtrack of the Red Green Show, and finally decided on average. Possibly because each disc's episodes are an assortment drawn from different seasons of the show, we get some variation in overall sound quality. Some episodes have fairly poor sound, with the dialogue muffled and unclear, which makes it difficult to appreciate the largely verbal humor of the show. Others are satisfactory, though there's nothing really outstanding about the sound even on the best of them.

Extras

Red Green Stuffed and Mounted Six Pack consists of six individual DVDs in keepcases, packaged in a glossy paper slipcase. The packaging is made to look like a case of beer, and to go with that theme, a Red Green beer coaster is included.

The episodes come with brief introductions by Steve Smith, who plays Red Green; though the content of the introductions isn't always particularly illuminating, occasionally a few interesting facts surface. Fans of the show will probably enjoy these more than casual viewers. There are also short text blurbs on some of the fictional characters at the Lodge.

Final thoughts

Well... the Red Green Show is one of those programs that can perhaps best be summed up as "the kind of thing you'll like, if you like that kind of thing." If you've already caught the show on television, you'll know what it's like and you'll know whether you like it: if you do, the Stuffed and Mounted Six Pack will certainly give you all the Red Green you need for your collection. The transfer isn't great, but for a show like this, perfect image quality isn't particularly essential anyway.  If you haven't come across this oddball Canadian comedy, it might be worth checking out, but not with such a large batch all at once. I'd recommend picking up one of the individual volumes first, probably as a rental. If you like it, there's more where it came from.