Lars von Trier's Kingdom: A Complicated History

Oh, boy. If you weren't collecting DVDs back in the early 2000s, you missed a lot of headache and over complication. Lars von Trier's The Kingdom (or Riget, originally) was and is one of the greatest, craziest television mini-series ever produced. It was released on a ton of different DVD editions in a ton of different countries, and they all had different things wrong with them, with each release fixing one or two issues, sometimes introducing another, and slowly inching our way to a respectable home edition. Forget double-dipping, we were quintuple-dipping! But we finally got there in the end.

Update 5/1/24: It's a big update for The Kingdom.  Trier has finally completed the trilogy, and now all three series have been compiled on blu from Mubi in one comprehensive set.

Until recently, there have really been two Kingdoms, Kingdom I and Kingdom II, a trilogy that went unfinished... due in large part to the passing of lead actor Ernst-Hugo Jaregard. The Kingdom was full of wild and wonderful characterizations, but Jaregard still managed to stand out as the greatest performance. But even without a perfectly satisfactory conclusion, The Kingdom is a hell of a ride. The "kingdom" of this story is a high-end Denmark hospital, which is not only haunted but staffed with such a colorful cast of characters, they manage to make the ghosts look pale by comparison. Captivating and endlessly entertaining, each Kingdom consisted of four, hour-long episodes... mostly.

Occasionally, the series was broken up into five episodes, depending on what country you ordered this from. And that's just one of the many screwy quirks that made the various DVD editions as almost as eccentric as the show itself. Unfortunately, I sold off a lot of my older copies as I upgraded them, so I can't present the ultimate library screenshot comparison. But it's really not that important, because so many of the older discs were so flawed and without lasting, redeeming qualities (meaning unique extras or something), there's really no reason to go back to them. Still, I did own them at one point, so I can briefly run down the deals for some of the important .

The first set of DVDs came from China. They were NTSC and had English subtitles, so they were the original go-to DVDs. Unfortunately, the subtitles were terrible. They had constant spelling errors, mis-translations, and would sometimes just go away, leaving entire monologues untranslated. They also cut two of Trier's closing monologues, where he would speak directly to the audience during the closing credits.

Then the PAL DVD came out from ICA Projects in the UK. That one I've actually still got, so we'll take a second look at it a little further down. But the basic story with this one is that it had better picture quality and subtitled Trier's monologues, plus it included Tranceformer, an excellent, hour-long documentary on Trier. BUT - and this is a big but - it's cut. Some sites report it as missing only a few seconds of graphic violence, but that's not true. It's missing a bunch of stuff, often completely innocuous material, which was probably just shaved for more commercial time. It's also the first release to edit the series into five episodes instead of four. And they only released The first Kingdom, so it left you hanging for Kingdom II anyway.

Seville released it next, in Canada. They still broke the show up into five episodes, but weren't missing all the footage the ICA Projects disc was. For a while, this was the best release. It had forced subtitles, no extras, and never got to Kingdom II. But at the time, you couldn't do better. Oh, and are you wondering how the show could have special monologues at the end of every episode, then be re-cut to include an extra episode and still somehow have a monologue for the end of each episode? They just repeated the closing from episode three on episode four and hoped nobody would notice it was the same thing twice. :/

Then, in 2003, Triers' own company, Zentropa Films, did it right. And that's the main DVD edition we're going to focus on here. There have been subsequent releases: Koch in the USA and Madman in Australia, which essentially mirror the Zentropa release. And in 2011, Second Sight reissued it in the UK, with all of the features and qualities of the Zentropa disc, plus Tranceformer.

And finally, Mubi has brought the series to HD, with a brand new, 7-disc set (four discs for The Kingdom I & II, and three for Kingdom: Exodus, which I'll swing back to later), in both the US and UK.  For years, I've known to be Mubi just a streaming platform that held a couple of interesting titles, like the new Kingdom, hostage behind their paywall.  But lately they've branched into physical media, and I'm excited to welcome them to the fold.  They've got all the episodes, uncut, with improved translations, and all the extras from the Zentropa set (except the music video).  One potentially controversial detail, though, they're re-framed everything to widescreen.

1) 2002 ICA Projects DVD; 2) 2003 Zentropa DVD; 3) 2024 Mubi BD.

So starting with the DVDs, the first thing you might notice is that even though ICA fixed the horrendous subtitles of the old Chinese discs, Zentropa still wound up producing still alternate translations. Both discs are slightly windowboxed, non-anamorphic 1.41:1 transfers (specifically, they're non-anamorphic full-frame 3:4 with slight letterboxing to matting them further down). The Kingdom II, which is only available in the Zentropa set, is given a slightly taller 1:34.1 frame. The Kingdom was intentionally given a funky, grainy look, so it's never going to look anywhere near pristine, but improved picture of the ICA disc has been pretty well duplicated on the Zentropa disc. Image quality-wise, they're about the same, except ICA's has a lower contrast, less saturated and more washed out look.

So, I had the opportunity to ask the head of remastering the first two seasons about the new framing on blu-ray.com, and he had this to say, "The original seasons were shot on super 16mm celluloid film which is closer to the 16:9 AR with 1.66:1. It was then cropped to fit the 4:3 AR of TVs. The remastered has more footage on the sides and a slight crop in top and bottom." And yup, that bears out.  In the shots above, we can see a bit more on the sides, with a little less along the top in the first set, and less along the bottom in the second.  It's nice that they took time to carefully re-frame things.  I still wish they hadn't taken the liberty to get all revisionist and change the AR, but I can't honestly say it bothers me that much.  And it's worth noting that the restoration was done by Zentropa, not Mubi themselves, which at least adds a little legitimacy to any creative adjustments made for these new transfers.

What will jump out at you much more distinctly than the aspect ratio when you first fire up one of the blu-rays is the grain.  Wow, is this grainy!  Makes sense for 16mm, and it's safe to assume the DVDs smoothed it all away just by virtue of being unable to render it all.  But when you zoom in close, there is a very pixelated look to the grain, suggesting some sharpening or other tinkering, which could be the result of the new remastering or something Trier did to the footage in the 90s.  I don't know, but it's not just natural film grain.  Looks like some edge enhancement, too, or the unsharpen tool; like they worked a lot to "fix" this footage.  But they also appear to have recovered actual, additional detail (look way down the hall), so for the most part you could call it a success.

Apart from that, the saturation looks more like the Zentropa than the faded ICA, with some of the original colors popping back up (i.e. the garbage bag in the second set of shots appearing the most visibly blue).  A welcome fix is to the video tape-y color separation.  Note the green haloing in the lights (and other spots) in the second set of shots.  That's been cleaned up.  In brief, I think most viewers will find it a much less soft, frustrating viewing on their modern sets, but they'll be saying, "WOW, is this grainy!"

And now, 25 years after The Kingdom II ended, we have the final chapter: Kingdom: Exodus - a move likely inspired at least somewhat by Twin Peaks: The Return.  Fans will be happy that this gives a satisfying conclusion, presumably close to what we would've gotten in the 90s, but with some accommodations for the leap forward in time.  Sadly, of course, some actors couldn't return, but many do, and we get some newer, younger doctors added to the mix.  Alexander Skarsgård drops by to play the son of his father's character, while the most exciting new cast member is surely Willem Dafoe.  I don't want to spoil any of the many surprises, so I'll just quickly say that this really is the third and final chapter, not just some new material tacked on.  And aside from Trier taking a few grumpy/ easy jabs at wokeism and a couple corny little comic misfires, it's great and everything fans have been hoping for.

2024 Mubi BD.

Exodus maintains the color-drained sepia look of the original series, as well as 1.78:1 aspect ratio if you're going with the blu-rays all the way through the run.  In fact, the new episodes start with the same bleach pit opening as the 90s episodes.  That's probably part of why they re-framed the old series to 1.78, to make all the Kingdoms feel of a piece.  Still, you'll immediately notice that Exodus isn't nearly as grainy as the previous series, and what grain is here looks like actual film grain.  Detail is now much clearer, so the new shows still have a distinct look.  You can tell they're starting with a much higher def image.

The audio situation is the same across all three Kingdoms.  ICA's subtitles are burnt in, but Zentropa's are optional, and they offer a plethora of language choice, including: Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Swedish and the English.  Mubi has the original audio in both 2.0 and 5.1 DTS-HD, with removable English subtitles.

Extras-wise, the ICA disc just has the Tranceformer documentary, but it's pretty darn good, and it's not on the Zentropa disc. That's actually the reason I've held on my ICA DVDs while I sold my other old sets. The doc was also included on Criterion's DVD of Elements of Crime, however; so if you've got that there's no reason to bother with the ICA anymore. And, as I said, Second Sight included it on their 2011 release.

But Zentropa introduced a bevy of Kingdom-specific extras. First, Trier provides an audio commentary, along with co-writer Niels Vorsel and editor Molly Stensgard. They don't tackle the entire 8+ hours, but they do sections of each episode, which can be directly accessed from the Special Features menu. It's not in English, but there are English subtitles for the commentary audio. There's also a 25 minute Behind the Scenes featurette, a second 40 minute one entitled In Lars von Trier's Kingdom, a collection of "outrageous" television commercials directed by Trier and starring Jaregard, a music video for the show's main theme, bloopers from that music video, and a collection of trailers for Trier's other films.

Mubi basically retains all the Zentropa extras, except for the music video and its bloopers, without adding anything new.  It's disappointing they couldn't have gotten any interviews or anything for Exodus.  But at least they include a full-color 24-page booklet with a new Trier interview talking about the new series.  You should definitely read it; as it answers a lot of questions (not in-story but about the thinking behind everything), and it's as satisfying as you could hope for outside of a proper video piece on disc.  They also throw in six art cards of Exodus images, and the whole thing is packaged in an impressive, fold-out digipack and outer slipbox.

The Kingdom is a fantastic series, and fortunately, the horrible state it was in on DVD has been corrected. The missing footage, broken subtitles, screwy-five episode format, etc were cleaned up in Zentropa's 4-disc set, and all subsequent DVDs have used their improved set-up, down to the extras. And then Mubi gave us HD remasters and, of course, Exodus, which is of course absolutely essential. You might, if you're a real stickler, want to hang onto one of the DVD sets (but nothing from before 2002!) for the sake of the original 4:3 aspect ratio.  But I'm completely happy with the new set and think the upsides more than make up for the arguable downsides.

The Definitive Tales From the Darkside

"Man lives in the sunlit world of what he believes to be reality.  But there is, unseen by most, an underworld, a place that is just as real, but not as brightly lit... a dark side."  So spoke the syndicated narration of the notorious horror series Tales From the Darkside every school night after I was supposed to be in bed.  Curiously, however, the words are never uttered in its subsequent, official feature film, 1990's Tales From the Darkside: The Movie.

Update 9/7/20 - 11/30/23: Three years feels a little fast for a double-dip of the same movie from the same movie, but what the heck?  Scream Factory has now updated Tales with to UHD with an all new scan, so let's see how it looks.

Like the show, this film is a horror anthology, very much in the vein of Creepshow.  That's because it's George Romero and co again, still working with Stephen King.  In fact, the Tales series was originally conceived as a Creepshow show, but they dropped the IP and comic book angle due to rights conflicts.  In fact, I'd say this is an even better unofficial follow-up than the proper Creepshow 2.  This time it's three stories, plus a wraparound (deflatingly titled "The Wraparound").  The writing, production values, style, music and cast are all on fire this time around.  The highlight is definitely Romero's adaptation of a King short story where Buster Pointdexter is surprisingly effective as a hitman hired to kill Darkside alum William Hickey's cat.  But the opener, a clever mummy story very much in the EC vein starring Christian Slater (who got his start in an episode of Tales), Steve Buscemi and Julianne Moore, is almost as great.  The weakest link is a the last story, which tries and fails to invest you in a flat and very 80s love story, playing like Scorsese's New York Stories segment minus all the drama.  But even that one's got a super cool, life-size animatronic monster and a charming supporting appearance by Robert Klein.  This worst segment could be a lot of movies' best.

Tales From the Darkside: The Movie debuted on DVD from Paramount in 2001.  It's been reissued a few times over the years (there was the burning book cover in 2006 and a 3-disc triple feature with Graveyard Shift and April Fool's Day in 2007), but it's always been the same disc.  Which was actually pretty fine: anamorphic widescreen with an audio commentary by George Romero and director John Harrison.  But it's been calling out for an HD upgrade for a long time, and preferably a more substantial special edition to boot, and Scream Factory finally answered the call in the summer of 2020 with their new collector's edition - the film's long-awaited blu-ray debut.  And now, in 2023, they've already updated it to a new BD/ UHD combo pack with a fresh scan and everything, so even the two 1080p blus should be different.

1) 2001 US Paramount DVD; 2) 2020 US Scream Factory BD;
3) 2023 US Scream Factory BD; 4) 2023 US Scream Factory UHD.

Despite the many years between editions, this isn't that huge a leap in image quality.  Again, for 2001 standards (and despite it's ugly cover), Paramount's DVD was pretty alright.  It's anamorphic but not interlaced.  And Scream's new disc seems to be using an old master, presumably the same old master, so we're not getting any fresh 2 or 4k revelations here.  But that's not to say we haven't gained any ground.  Scream properly mattes the film to 1.85:1, which Paramount had lazily just left at 1.78:1 (or, 1.77:1 strictly speaking, due to a little pillar-boxing on the left-hand side in the overscan area), and the brights are pulled down just a smidgen, making the contrast appear a little more natural.  And we are still talking about the basic step from SD to HD, so compression noise is cleared up (you really see it around Julianne's hair!), edges are cleaner and grain is at least somewhat accounted for.  It's disappointing Scream didn't spring for a new transfer, but it's still definite progress.

Oh look!  Now they have sprung for a new transfer.  I can kinda see why they didn't bother in 2019, since that transfer doesn't look so different from what we have now in 4k.  Like we don't suddenly see a whole bunch of picture information we couldn't before, and the 1.85:1 composition is virtually identical (closely examine the bottom edge, and you'll see it's shifted very slightly).  But there's no denying this is an improvement.  Even when just comparing the two blu-rays, the new one really captures and renders all the grain, which was much spottier in 2019.  The colors look a little more natural, if muted, on the new blu, but they come to life on the UHD.  It's not exactly an explosion of saturation, but even subtle colors like the books on the shelf way behind Moore are more vivid now.  More obvious, though, is detail that had previously been washed out in the brights, like the lampshade in the first set of shots, has been recovered on the new 2023 transfer.

And here's another nice advantage with SF's new edition.  The DVD features a new 5.1 remix that makes a lot of changes to the regular mix (which Harrison made himself and is quite happy with).  So that's cool.  But unfortunately, Paramount forced the choice on us by eliminating the original theatrical stereo track.  But both of Scream's editions includes both, naturally bumping them up to lossless DTS-HD in the process.  All four discs also include optional English subtitles.

Again, Paramount's DVD wasn't completely unsatisfying in terms of special features either.  Besides your basic trailer and chapter insert, they provided an audio commentary with Romero and Harrison.  It starts a little slow, and at first you might be worried this is going to be one of those dry tracks with a lot of dead air.  But soon enough they get into it, become much more conversational, and the insights don't stop until the final credit.

Thankfully, Scream Factory has held onto that commentary (and the trailer).  But they've also come up with a whole bunch more.  The jewel in this crown is a new, feature length documentary from Red Shirt, that talks to pretty much all the major players in the crew (the director, producer, DP, set designer, all three KNB guys, the stunt man who played the monster and the stars of the final segment, James Remar & Rae Dawn Chong).  It's arbitrarily broken up into six segments with no "Play All" option, but that's a tiny nitpick of a thorough and absorbing exploration of this film's origins and production.  Also included is a new audio commentary with producer David R. Kappes, but perhaps should have been an on-camera interview rather than a commentary, since they rarely focus on what's happening on-screen.  Finally, there's a fun collection of behind-the-scenes footage captured by KNB on VHS, a couple stills galleries, radio spots, TV spots, reversible artwork and a slipcover.

Scream's 2023 hangs onto all of that and adds a new audio commentary by podcasters Emily Higgins and Billy Dunham, which I can't say I got much out of.  They mostly just point out all of the things they like, and they liked everything.  Even so, they managed to have consistent gaps of dead air in the back half of the film.  So no real value added there.  But this release does come in a much better slipcover using the classic artwork, so that's a plus.

But before I leave you, I'd also like to talk about the original Tales From the Darkside... the TV series, which ran from 1983-1988.  It was originally released on DVD by Paramount season by season from 2008-2010, eventually combined into a boxed set in 2010.  Paramount's since reissued the full series as a budget set in 2016, but apart from some funky casing (the disc trays don't actually connect to the outer shell, they just float inside it), it's the same 12 discs with the same extras, original disc labels and everything.

As you'd expect from an anthology series, it's uneven.  Some big name directors (Romero, Bob Balaban, Tom Savini) and writers (Stephen King, Clive Barker, Robert Bloch) touch some episodes, but not many others.  The show is surprisingly packed with stars... some stalwart character actors doing their normal runs though 80s television, some rising stars before they were famous, some industry friends, and some flashy "big gets."  The production values are consistently low, though.  Most episodes consist of two to four characters in a single, one-room set, and outside of a few showpiece episodes, even with the good ones, you can feel the crew was just pounding these episodes out at a breakneck pace.  Some episodes go for a scary, horror atmosphere, others are quite silly; you never know what you'll get week to week, ranging from a delightful surprise to something pretty rough and tedious.  Kareem Abdul Jamar could be playing a wacky genie or a young woman could be tormented by a small monster in Fritz Weaver's creepy boarding house.  In general this series wound up playing like a lower budget Twilight Zone than anything, with no particular genre but replete with the big twist endings.

2020 US Paramount/ CBS DVD.

Where to start?  Well, the show's meant to be fullscreen of course, though at 1.30:1, it's probably a smidgen too skinny.  The real problem is that these are clearly ancient masters.  They're problematically interlaced, though the non-interlaced frames are so noisy they barely look any better.  I've seen it suggested that you can't expect much better, since these episodes were shot on video, but there's plenty of print damage on hand to betray this series' filmic origins, so a restoration could do wonders.  If I had to guess, though, the shows were likely edited on tape, which means restoring the whole series would be a major endeavor, which would explain why we haven't been given anything new or improved since the old VHS days.  But as it is, the quality seems below CBS and Paramount's standards even for an old television show.

The audio's alright, though.  A fairly clean and easily listenable Dolby Digital mono track in 2.0.  There are no subtitle options, of course, but there are a few extras.

For starters, we get a George Romero commentary over the pilot.  It's good... during the portions of the show he speaks.  Romero's audio regularly starts and stops, as if the plan was for him to just comment over clips from the episode and make that a featurette.  That would make sense also because, in season two, there's a featurette just like that, where he comments over clips of another episode.  It makes for a bit of a frustrating listening experience, but it's still a treat to get to hear Romero reminisce about his show, even if the presentation is borked.  The season 2 one winds up only running five minutes, but at least it's a lot tighter.  The only other extra consists of two episodes of another anthology (no, not Monsters) made by the same team... an untitled series that never aired.  These episodes are pretty good, with slightly higher production values.  They're not better than the best episodes of TFtD, but they could play in the top 20% or so, and it's a nice treat to see them preserved here (in the same quality as Tales).

So there was no question that Scream's new UHD is now the definitive edition of The Movie, which is a real expectation-exceeding affair.  2020 to 2023 is a short time for a double-dip, but it was sort of asking for a new scan, so I can't say this wasn't welcome, especially since we're moving up to a higher gen release anyway.  And the new commentary didn't do much for me, but hey, more is still better than less.  As for the series, there's no difference between the new and old DVD sets, except that the new budget edition's price makes the show, despite its flaws in content and home video presentation, hard to resist.  Both are easy recommendations from me.  And remember... "The dark side is always there, waiting for us to enter, waiting to enter us.  Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight."

Terry Gilliam Week Day #5: Monty Python's Flying Circus

Monty Python's Flying Circus is, of course, the original BBC sketch comedy series that ran for four seasons, from 1969-1974.  Each season is ran for 13 episodes, except the final one, when John Cleese left, and it ran for an abridged 6 episodes.  It was first released on DVD here in the United States in 1999, in a rather massive "14-Pack DVD Mega Set" from A&E Home Video.  Those DVDs, also available in individual seasons, are really the only versions we've had on DVD.  Yes, in 2005, A&E released their "16-Ton Megaset"[left], but that's actually the exact same set of 14 discs (albeit in new, slimmer cases) just with two additional bonus discs of extras live performances and television specials.  And also yes, in 2008, A&E released a 21-disc "Complete Monty Python Collector's Edition," but that's just the "16-Ton Megaset" in a newer box, with five more bonus discs, including two retrospective documentaries and the six Personal Best greatest hits specials.  But the actual series' discs have been the same for twenty years, until 2019, when Network restored the full series in HD and released it in their 7-disc "Norwegian Blu-ray Edition."  That set has also been broken down into individual seasons and repackaged in a slimmer 2020 standard edition, but the disc content is all the same.  The only difference on-disc distinction is that the "Norwegian" set was released in the United Kingdom as 50i BD discs, but they also created North American 60i BD discs.  For the record, I have the 60 frame-rate discs, which is what we'll being screenshots of here.

A brief, restored scene from season 4, only on the BD.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about Network's restorations is that they're not just restoring the picture and audio quality for HD, they're actually restoring lost footage.  I would refer you to movie-censorship.com's reliably thorough break-down of every difference, episode by episode.  But in brief, there are instances of gags that were censored, or bits that were trimmed or removed seemingly for pacing.  It runs the gamut from a brief, alternate shot or word to an entire sketch that have been put back into the episodes.  Less compelling, but still interesting: each episode also tends to run 30 seconds longer because they've included the pre-broadcast intros, not meant to be aired, but which include some interesting behind-the-scenes audio over shots of a clock counting down the final seconds.  The BDs are also full of supplemental outtakes and other excised material, sometimes with subtitles where the audio was missing.  So this is the series really uncut for the first time, and with more unseen footage in the extras.

1999 A&E DVD top; 2019 Network BD bottom.

Network's booklet explains that the show, "was produced on 2" Quad tape... The basis for this restoration were the earliest generation tapes - or direct copies of them... Once restored, the programme then was up-scaled to High Definition."  As you can see, the framing is the same, but the AR has been corrected from a too tall 1.29:1 to 1.32:1.  There's not really any new detail pulled out of the image, but the interlacing lines are considerably slimmer in HD, giving a more coherent, natural picture.  And the black levels are subtly deepened, making everything look a little less muddy and washed out.  This is the tape portion of the series, which is most of the show but not all of it.

1999 A&E DVD top; 2019 Network BD bottom.

Some segments, mostly exteriors, were shot in 16mm.  The improvements in these sections get much more distinct.  Again, the blacks are deepened and the AR is adjusted, but as you can see above, there is much more clarity.  The image is sharper, and there really is fine detail to see (just look at the grass in the foreground) that was a soft haze before.  It's much more satisfying, and feels like the kind of upgrade you expect jumping from DVD to Blu.  And then there's Terry Gilliam's animated sequences.

1999 A&E DVD top; 2019 Network BD bottom.

Of these, we're told, "there was more 16mm footage available on negative (as well as print) and these were scanned in HD, graded and restored before being dropped into the episode timeline to replace the archive transfers used for the original broadcast."  This is where the most stark difference lays, wow!  The color correction is probably what grabs you first, but the distinct boost in clarity and the cleaned up damage are not far behind.  Compression smudging is replaced with fine lines.  You know, with the video portions of the show, there's a bit of a "well, this is the best it's going to ever look" side to the new transfers.  The film portions are better; but the animations really look gorgeous now.

1999 A&E DVD top; 2019 Network BD bottom.

And while we're still going from 1.29 to 1.32 (you wouldn't expect the AR to shift around mid-episode, would you?), you'll notice the animated sequences are zoomed further out, revealing more image around all four sides on the BD.  This is cool, but maybe a bit of a mistake on Network's part.  Notice, for instance, in this set of shots that we see below the edge of the foreground animated statue.  It reminds me of Arrow's Creepshow 2 blu, which revealed edges that should have been cropped/ matted out.  But considering how beautiful they are here, I sure wouldn't trade these restorations for what was on the DVDs!

Both discs just offer the original English mono track in 2.0, but of course it's lossless on the BDs' LPCM.  Both discs also offer optional English subtitles, the timing of which has been slightly adjusted on the BDs, and Network also throws in French, German, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish.

Live At the Hollywood Bowl

As for extras, A&E's 1999 set is surprisingly light for a "Mega Set."  Each disc just has two or three short clips on them, which are basically just sketches taken from the episodes - in other words entirely redundant.  But they do include a few live ones, which are taken from their 1982 Live At the Hollywood Bowl special, which was a fun way to see alternate versions of the same sketches.  But these became redundant, too, in 2005 when the entire Hollywood Bowl special was included in the 16 Ton set.  The video quality's a little rough, but it's a nice treat.  There's also an hour-long Live At Aspen special, which is an on-stage reunion chat with Robert Klein, Parrot Sketch Not Included: 20 Years of Python, which is a made-for-television greatest hits clip show (as in what you've already got in full on discs 1-14) hosted by Steve Martin, and best of all, one of the famous German episodes of Fliegender Zirkus.  There were two total, made to air in Germany, and yes, entirely produced in German language with mostly all new content.  English subtitles are burnt in.

the German episode

As I mentioned before, The Complete Collector's Edition has all of that and adds the six Personal Bests specials I've mentioned before.  These are just more greatest hits clips shows, so not too valuable, each focused on a different Python.  They at least include brief, new wrap-around segments; but as a whole, they're pretty worthless if you've already got the full series, which you do when you own this box.  But they also add two feature-length documentaries, Before the Flying Circus and Monty Python Conquers America.  Before is better, but both are pretty darn good and well worth the time of any Python fan.

So it's a shame Network doesn't have any of that stuff.  None of the specials, documentaries or even the German episodes.  And if you were hoping they'd bring in the Pythons for commentaries and new interviews and stuff, nope.  Actually, this set is surprisingly light on extras, mostly just including the outtakes and left overs they restored that weren't actually cut back into the episodes.  Not that there isn't anything else.  There are a few vintage goodies, including a BBC interview with the Pythons from the 70s, a short behind-the-scenes film, an old interview with Python producer Ian McNaughton and a featurette with Gilliam on the restoration work.  These are great, but it all feels awfully light considering these Network sets sold for roughly $200, and so much was dropped from the DVDs.  It's especially disappointing they didn't restore the German episodes along with the rest of the series.

But they sure delivered on swag.  The Norwegian set comes in a wild, fold-out box with a lid that houses four digipacks in slipboxes, one for each season.   Each season also includes a massive 176-page book (yes, four 176-page books total), with written histories and extensive details on every sketch.  Unfortunately, the books added so much weight, they wound up destroying most of the fancy boxes in shipping; but if you managed to get one undemolished, they were pretty sweet.  They also included another mini-booklet that lists the details and extras of each series set and includes the transfer notes.

I heard Network lost money on these sets, due to the packaging fiasco and fans being underwhelmed by the lack of special features.  But hopefully they're still recouping, what with the standard editions and anywhere else they can license their restorations in future.  Because theirs is unquestionably the definitive way to watch Monty Python's Flying Circus now.  They did great work, which is why it's so frustrating they didn't get to the German episodes, too - they've rendered the DVDs and any other editions quite obsolete.  You should definitely double-dip for these.  But you'll want to hang onto whatever DVD bonus discs you have, too.