Full Bottom: Not Another Half-Arsed DVD Set!
British comedians Rik Mayall and Adrian "Ade" Edmondson vaulted to fame inThe Young Ones, a high-energy but decidedly lowbrow TV show about clashing roommates. Mayall and Edmondson went on to createBottom, playing Richie Richards (Mayall) and Eddie Hitler (Edmondson), two hapless dimwits floundering through life at the bottom of the social scale.Bottomprovides plenty of the spastic slapstick and cartoon violence ofThe Young Ones, but the characters have greater dimension--even, possibly, a hint of soulfulness, which is always squashed at the first opportunity--and the dialogue has flights of loony wit ("You poor, sad, deformed urban pustule," declares Richie when Eddie resists going camping). Richie is a middle-aged virgin, high-strung, frustrated, yet possessed of eternal hope, while Eddie is phlegmatic and utterly without curiosity or ambition. They abuse, cheat, and steal from each other, yet seem inseparable. Many episodes feature no other characters; in one, they spend the entire half-hour trapped in a carriage at the top of a ferris wheel. It may seem peculiar to say this about a show in which two men have a contest to see who can put more custard in their underpants, but Richie and Eddie bear a striking resemblance to Vladmir and Estragon in Samuel Beckett's classic playWaiting for Godot. Without jobs or any real hope of a better life, they fritter their time in their grimy apartment trying to amuse themselves aimlessly, never succeeding in any of their schemes to get laid or make money. Fear not; any existential implications take a back seat to eye-poking and iron-skillet-head-smacking that the Three Stooges would admire.Full Bottomincludes the entirety of the threeBottomseries, 18 episodes in all.--Bret Fetzer