This two-disc set doesn't collect the best of Not the 9 O'Clock News per se, but, more accurately, eight extremely funny episodes of this 1979 British sketch comedy series that launched the careers of Rowan Atkinson (Blackadder, Mr. Bean), Pamela Stevenson (later wasted on Saturday Night Live), and Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones (Alas Smith & Jones). Between a squashed hedgehog and a dead parrot, comparisons with Monty Python's Flying Circus are inevitable. Not the 9 O'Clock News is more aggressively paced, with a riot of sketches, fun-with-real-video segments, non-sequitur bits, visual gags, and musical spoofs. It was also more topical, so it has perhaps not aged as well as Python. But one doesn't have to be familiar with the British politicians and personalities being pilloried (sorry, Britt Eckland) or the television game and talk shows being spoofed to enjoy the commitment of the performances and the savvy and sometimes savage writing. In the first episode, talk show panelists respond to news that Russian bombs are 4 ｽ minutes from England, prompting a leftist to decry "the appalling record of this conservative government... that three million people will die unemployed." The silly bits are the most lasting, including footage of a golf tournament repurposed as the "Pro Am Silly Pants Tournament" and Atkinson and Smith as an urbane gorilla and his trainer ("He was completely wild." "Wild? I was absolutely livid"). This marks 9 O'Clock's DVD debut, and that's good news for British comedy fans. --Donald Liebenson