Sony and Their Many Monty Python and the Holy Grails

Quick!  What's the difference between the Collector's Edition, Special Edition, 40th Anniversary Edition and Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition of Monty Python and the Holy Grail?  It's a comedy classic and, apparently, money in the bank for Sony, who seemingly re-release this film on home video every year in a new edition.  And I bet even the people who worked on them couldn't keep them all straight.  Is the new blu-ray different than the old blu-ray?  Did some newer editions lose special features that were on previous editions?  Does the framing and picture quality change dramatically between them?  Are some editions actually exactly the same discs as others, simply released in new, gimmicky packaging?  The answers to all these questions are: yes, yes, yes and yes! And I've decided to get to the bottom of it all.

Update 7/1/18 - 8/10/26: Would you believe Sony has re-issued this film again since I wrote it?  To quote Sally Struthers: "sure, we all would."  But this last one's a bit more justified than usual, as we're kicking it up to a whole new generation of disc.  Previously, Sony had already given us a 4k restoration of the film, but only on 1080p discs.  Now we've got a fancy, new edition (limited edition steelbook BD/ UHD combo pack) on a genuine 4k format, with more extras and what-not.

Is Holy Grail the best Monty Python film?  The Pythons themselves have said that The Life of Brian seems to be their most celebrated film in their home country, and Grail is the most popular in America.  For me it's hard to settle on a single best.  They're all so fragmented, and there are segments in each of their films that that stand out as favorites.  Grail might suffer a bit more than the others in that their are lines and moments that are so iconic than a younger viewer approaching the films today may well have heard half the jokes out of context before even seeing the movie, so it can feel like corny, old material even though this is where it originated.  But there are certainly elements that keep it fresh and ageless, including terrific production values dedicated to presenting an authentic and dung-ridden medieval period, a fantastically frustrated straight man in via the performance of Graham Chapman as King Arthur, and the stylish score and animation.  So even if the humor doesn't always do it for you, it's still an undeniably impressive little movie.

So let's get into answering our thesis question: what're all these varying editions all about?  Well, I've found you can boil it down to to five different discs, starting with the original, barebones DVD from back in 1999.  There are more than five releases, even just limiting it to DVDs and blu-rays put out in the USA market; but only five editions where the content of the actual discs change.  So, first, let's just briefly talk about where they don't change:

*The 2003 Collector's Edition is the same 2-disc set as the 2001 Special Edition, except in limited packaging with a hard copy of the script and a collectible film cell.

*The 2005 And Now For Something Completely Hilarious collection features the same disc first disc as the 2001 Special Edition (and single discs of the other films), but lacking the second disc of special features.

*The 2008 Monty Python's Holy Trinity set, happily, fixes that by including both discs from the 2001 Special Edition, which also came with a book and T-shirt (as well as 2-disc sets of the other films).

*The 2015 Limited Edition Castle Catapult Gift Set just includes the same 40th Anniversary blu-ray disc, but with a whole, wacky playset.

So, that was all the editions that stayed the same.  Now, let's look at the differing editions.  First, there's the 1999 barebones DVD.  It's widescreen, but non-anamorphic.  Then there's the 2001 Special Edition, a 2-disc set which is now anamorphic.  The 2006 Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition, which not only has new special features unique to this edition, but boasts an updated transfer with a new aspect ratio.  Fourth is the first blu-ray release, which of course gave the film its HD debut in 2012.  And then there's the 2015 40th Anniversary Edition, which added new, additional special features (and sometimes a catapult).  And now there's the limited edition 50th Anniversary BD/ UHD steelbook combopack, which has both stayed the same (the BD half is just the 40th Anniversary disc again) and changed with a brand new 4k restoration on a proper Ultra 4k HD disc.

1) 1999 DVD; 2) 2001 DVD; 3) 2006 DVD; 4) 2012 BD;
5) 2015 BD; 6) 2025 BD; 7) 2025 1080p UHD; 8) 2025 2160p UHD.

So, yeah, it's interesting to see how this film's come along over the years.  The original 1999 DVD is a non-anamorphic 1.76:1.  It's also a bit murkier, definitely softer, with detail smoothed away.  The 2001 special edition brightened the image - though they pushed it a bit red - made it anamorphic and definitely brought in more detail.  It's got a little dead space in the overscan issues, which it would've gotten away with in its time, presenting the film in the widest of all its aspect ratios: 1.81:1.  Don't be impressed by that, though, because it was accomplished by trimming the most off of all four sides, making it actually the most cropped edition.  The 2006 edition corrects that, bringing us to a taller 1.67:1 aspect ratio.  It doesn't add much more clarity, but does restore more picture around the edges, particularly vertically.  Coming to the HD blus, the aspect stops shifting around; it's 1.67:1 from 2006 'till 2025.  But the color palette is more natural (look at the historian's skin tones), and it's definitely clearer.  Even the best, 2006 DVD looks pretty soft.  It's pleasingly sharper now on the BDs, which are for all intents and purposes identical, with detail as clear as it's likely to ever be, and grain now highly visible and distinct.  Technically, the 2006 and 2014/ 2025 blus must be different encodes, but you can match each granular pixel between the two's screenshots.

And all that brings us to the 2026 UHD.  It actually has two versions on it.  Their new 4k restoration and the "Near-Theatrical Version Of the Film," which is the theatrical cut minus the "Get On With It" deleted scene removed.  The latter is only in 1080p, but it is the new 4k restoration.  If you compare it to the 40th Anniversary edition, you can see, for example, the highlights in the Black Knight scene filled in now, where they were blown out before.  The framing is 1.66:1, just a pixel or two's worth of difference from the older blus.  The color timing, brightness levels are essentially unchanged.  But if you compare the 4k remaster to any other version, even the 1080p version on the same disc, it's evident how much better rendered detail and film grain is.  What looks like a big pixelated line running up the historian's forehead, for example, is now properly displayed as rounded grain.  In short, it's not a huge revelation - both because the previous transfers were well done and the fact that the original film is already a bit rough and not always perfectly in focus - but it is this film finally displayed in proper 4k HDR with Dolby Vision.

Audio-wise, the original DVD just had the mono track in Dolby 2.0 with optional English, Spanish and French subtitles.  The 2001 special edition introduced a new 5.1 mix as well as a French mono dub to those options, plus joke subs "For People Who Don't Like The Film," which just plays text from Shakespeare's Henry IV pt 2.  The 2006 Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition keeps all of that, and adds additional language options, specifically a Portuguese 5.1 mix and Chinese, Portuguese and Thai subtitles.  Then both of the blu-rays bumps the audio to lossless DTS-HD and adds even more audio options: a Japanese 5.1 mix as well as Japanese, Korean and Mandarin subtitles.

This new edition really goes all out in the audio department.  It still has the 5.1 mix in DTS-HD, plus French, German, Italian and Spanish 5.1 dubs, also in DTS-HD.  But it also has a new remixed Dolby Atmos track and, for us purists, the original mono in 2.0, also lossless.  And yes, it has a slew of foreign subtitle options, plus optional English ones, both HoH and pure.  And it still has the Henry IV ones.  Though this is for the theatrical cut.  The "Near-Theatrical" cut only has the English 5.1 in DTS-HD and optional subtitles.  And the blu-ray version, of course, is unchanged, as it's the same 40th Anniversary disc as before.

Now let's really dive deep and take a look at the special features.  We start off easy: the 1999 DVD only has a handful of bonus trailers, not even the Holy Grail trailer.   Then the 2001 Special Edition comes with almost all of the extras that have been on any and every subsequent edition: two audio commentaries, one by directors Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, and one by the remaining Pythons: John Cleese, Michael Palin and Eric Idle.  Both of these maybe get a little cheesy at times, but are mostly both informative and entertaining, and I doubt any Python fan would want to skip them.  There's a really fun documentary called Quest for the Holy Grail Locations, where Palin and Jones tour the old filming locations, and there's a nice, 13-minute behind-the-scenes featurette made for British television.  There's a couple trailers, stills galleries, a trivia track and weblink kinda stuff... and then, if you thought those Henry IV subtitles were a bit silly, buckle in.  Sony has packed all these DVD and blu-ray editions with a plethora of silly, gag extras, that do little to add to the film experience, but are just jokes in and of themselves.

The film starts with a bluff, fake educational short called Dentists On the Job, as if you got the wrong disc or something, which plays for about two minutes before the real movie begins.  Michael Palin also does a spoof educational short on how to use coconuts as horse hoof sounds like they do in the movie.  There's a fake location scouting film where Gilliam and Palin narrate some old travelogue footage as if it was their real experiences.  There's a few short clips of the Japanese dub presented as extracts, clips from the musical numbers presented as sing-a-longs, and a pretty amusing Lego rendition of the Camelot scene.  It's more fun than the big budget Lego movies they release theatrically now, if you ask me, because except for the animated faces and fire effects, it's all real stop-motion photography of actual Lego pieces, not CGI cartoons in the Lego style.

a featurette only available on the 2006 Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition DVD

So then we come to the Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition.  Now, in 2006, the main reason to upgrade to this version would've been the updated transfer with the corrected aspect ratio.  But that can be tough to sell to the general public, so they had to spice things up with some new features.  But they also didn't have a whole lot to add, so there are a few new things here, but they're pretty thin.  First of all, everything from the previous special edition is carried over.  And it came packaged with a third disc - a CD of the soundtrack album.  But in terms of new, on-disc content there's: a new trailer, that starts out very serious and dramatically before revealing that it's for this silly movie, a little trivia question game and most substantially, a seven minute featurette called A Taste of Spamalot.  Obviously promoting the Broadway show, it features clips of songs from the films (not the full songs) set to Gilliam inspired cut-out animation.  Interestingly, these exclusives remained exclusive to this release, and were not included on subsequent releases, i.e. the blu-rays.

The 2012 blu-ray did include all the other special edition stuff, however, and added two decidedly better extras to the mix.  There's almost twenty minutes of extended scenes and outtakes with an intro by Terry Jones, and then about thirteen minutes of animation outtakes and unused clips, with an introduction and narration by Terry Gilliam.  Also, disappointingly, they lost the original trailer, which sucks because it had some unique jokes that are only in the trailer.  ANd the film no longer has the Dentists On the Job fake-out clip.  Oh, and it touts another big exclusive called "The Holy Book of Days Second Screen."  It's a direct connection to a website full of behind-the-scenes videos or something, but it doesn't seem to actually function.  If you go to the website, it directs you to a link in the App Store; but the app isn't actually in the App Store, despite their claim.  Their help page says the option to sync it up to the blu-ray is no longer available (I'm not convinced it ever really was), but the whole thing seems to no longer exist in any capacity, except for a false promising landing page.  So it boils down to being just a dead, useless weblink.

And now we come to the latest release, the 40th Anniversary Edition.  They've done away with "The Holy Book of Days Second Screen," naturally, but this disc includes an insert directing you to that same landing page with a link to the non-existent app.  Oh well.  Stupid tease.  Anyway, it includes all the content from the 2012 blu except for that, and adds a bit more.  First of all, they brought the trailer back, which is nice.  I assume the 2012's dropping of it was an oversight.  But really what the 40th Anniversary Edition brings to the table, what justifies its existence since it's otherwise the same transfer and same collection of features, is a new half-hour featurette.  It gives us two festival Q&As with the Pythons from Holy Grail screenings, one of which is hosted by John Oliver.  It's okay.  They tell a lot of the same anecdotes they tell in the commentaries and other extras, and they clown around a bit, but nothing especially funny.  It's certainly worth the watch if you've got the disc, but not worth double-dipping for.

this man likes the movie...

Speaking of special features not worth double-dipping for, we come to the 50th Anniversary edition.  First of all, it duplicates everything from the 40th disc (remember, it actually has the exact 40th Anniversary disc as part of the set), and still no Holy Book of Days Second Screen.  They've basically added one new featurette to the 4k disc, called 'Tis But a Tribute, which is exactly what it sounds like.  A bunch of celebrities (including David Cross, Paul Feig and a surprising number of people I didn't recognize even when they put their names on screen) offer brief testimonials to how much they like this movie and quote some favorite lines.  It's about fifteen minutes long and all shot on webcams.  I'm not really disappointed, because the existing documentaries and commentaries are already all this movie needs.  This is just one quick little extra thing you can watch if you get the new release, but nothing to go out of your way to buy the set just to watch.

So this new 50th Anniversary edition is a pretty satisfying, essentially definitive release.  The only content you're missing out on across all the past editions, really, is that little Spamalot featurette and Dentists On the Job.  It would be nice to see all that mysterious "Holy Book of Days" content put on a bonus disc so we can actually just watch like regular people, without trying to sync our blu-ray players up to our ipads or whatever other ridiculous broken idea they had.  And maybe a new featurette with more legit Spamalot content, like a little footage of the Broadway show and interviews with the cast.  They could even go back and recover that little animated featurette...  I mean, a 60th Anniversary is coming.

But in the meantime, we now have all the Python films in 4k; and.this 50th Anniversary Edition steelbook is really all any fan could need.

Update Megaweek, Day 1: Terry Jones' Monty Python's Life of Brian

Like many of us, I've been revisiting the work of Python/ director Terry Jones since we lost him last week.  So let's do something in his memory and take a look at one of his most beloved films... one that has an interesting history on home video, but could also really use a shot in the arm in 2020: Monty Python's Life of Brian.

Update 4/22/26: Shot received!  Guys, I've been putting off the next Update Week for a while, and the backlog's only built up.  So welcome to the Update Megaweek, which is basically like any previous year's Update Week doubled.  Like always, I've got the most current UHDs and some of the oldest DVDs, from the most requested titles to discs I'm sure nobody but me will ever care about.  And to kick it off, I've got the brand new and very badly needed 4k restoration of The Life of Brian from Criterion.  And, at the same time, I've updated my page on The Dentist movies to include Trimark's original Dentist 2 DVD.

1979's Life of Brian is Monty Python's second film... or third, if you want to count And Now For Something Completely Different, but that's really just a compilation of the best skits from their series for the US market before their TV could be seen in the states.  I've read that Holy Grail is the Pythons' most popular film in America and Brian is in the UK.  For their part, the Pythons themselves seem pretty unified that this is their favorite, in large part because it's the film that has the most to say besides just being silly.

Not that it isn't silly, of course.  The premise is that, a baby was born just across from Jesus Christ, and he keeps getting mistaken for a messiah despite not being one.  The Pythons play almost all the major characters, including Graham Chapman as the titular Brian, Terry Jones as his mum, Michael Palin as Pontius Pilate, Terry Jones as Simon the naked holy man, John Cleese as Reg, leader of The Peoples' Front of Judea and Graham Chapman as Biggus Dickus.  This film has more of a cohesive narrative than the other Python films, although you might say that's immaterial so long as it's packed with great comic moments, which Brian absolutely is.  We get a few animated sequences from Terry Gilliam, though not so many as we'd seen in previous Python efforts, taking more on the role of the physical production and art design.  The locations, shot in Tunisia, where they were able to make use of the sets from 1977's Jesus Of Nazareth, are truly impressive and lend the outrageous comedy a remarkably credible backdrop.  And Eric Idle closes out the whole thing with what became his most famous and popular song, "Always Look On the Bright Side of Life."

Life of Brian debuted on DVD in 1999, with a widescreen but non-anamorphic, barebones DVD from Anchor Bay.  Very shortly afterwards, like just a few months later in 1999, Criterion reissued it as a now anamorphic special edition.  And that was the whole deal until it came time for an HD upgrade.  In 2008, Sony released their Immaculate Edition blu-ray, and that's been the sole go-to release until now, with the same edition essentially replicated in every region around the world.  But no more.  Now in 2026, Brian's back in Criterion's hands: restored in 4k and released on a proper UHD (there's also a 1080p BD option, natch) for 2026.  As they put it in their booklet, it's now presented "in all its holy glory."

1) 1999 AB DVD; 2) 1999 Criterion DVD; 3) 2008 Sony BD; 4) 2026 Criterion UHD.

So yeah, Anchor Bay's DVD is a pale, low res 1.84:1 image floating in a sea of non-anamorphic dead space.  I'm actually surprised it's not interlaced; it almost looks like it should be interlaced.  Criterion's DVD, then, is a still pretty pale, properly anamorphic 1.78:1 (despite claiming 1.85:1 on the case), with just the tiniest slivers of dead space in the overscan area.  You can see it includes more picture around all four sides, but particularly the bottom, no doubt due to its lifted 16x9 mattes.  Sony then mattes their blu back down to 1.85:1, losing a little along the sides with it.  It's also, thankfully, no longer so pale, though it looks like some of that's due to some artificial contrast boosting and a side effect of edge enhancement.  It's certainly the best of the three, but it's also clearly an old master that looks like maybe it was never even made to hold up on blu.  I mean, it's a 2008 blu, so what can you expect?  But even by those standards, it looks like detail is light and they tried to make up for that with some unfortunate tinkering.  It's not terribly terrible, I suppose... the grain is mostly, if gingerly, visible, and the haloing isn't super heavy.  But this is a film ready for a remaster if I've ever seen one.

Oh, thank goodness.  Criterion has gone back to the original 35mm camera negative (and, according to the booklet, "for some sections, a 35mm interpositive").  Grain is finally here and looking right.  And as you can see above, this film finally looks like film.  And look at that guard standing against the pillar in the second set of shots.  His skin looks weirdly splotchy on the blu, but now on the UHD, it's like his complexion cleared up.  Deeper blacks makes the contrast more appealing without actually crushing any detail in the shadows.  Highlights aren't blown out; and yes, that crappy edge enhancement haloing is gone.  Film damage has been cleaned up, too (note that dirt spot above the donkey in the sky of the first set of shots is finally gone).  In every way, this is the upgrade we've been asking for.

Audio-wise, both DVDs give us your basic mono track, with only Criterion offering optional subtitles.  Sony brings a whole bunch of language options, including French and Hungarian dubs and English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, Thai (whew!) and Turkish subs.  But they've ditched the original mono track and now only give us 5.1 remixes, in both TrueHD and LPCM.

So that's another win in 2026.  We've got the original audio mix restored and in HD (DTS-HD) for the first time.  If you still want Sony's 5.1 remix, that's here, too, also in DTS-HD.  And, of course, there are optional English subtitles.

Anchor Bay just had the trailer, but Criterion packed their edition pretty nicely.   We start out with two audio commentaries, one by Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and Eric Idle, and the other by John Cleese and Michael Palin.  Both provide a good mix of insight and laughs.  Then there's a collection of deleted scenes, one of which solves a small mystery that's always followed the film, and all of which have optional commentary.  And there's an excellent, vintage hour-long documentary, simply called The Pythons.  It's a BBC-made feature ostensibly on the Pythons overall, but it interviews the cast while they're on the set of Brian, so the film winds up being as much about the film as the rest of their career.  They also have the trailer, four radio spots, and an insert with notes by critic George Perry.

The Pythons.

The Pythons is interlaced and pretty fuzzy, presumably just taken from broadcast, which I guess is why Sony dropped it from their Immaculate Edition.  Because they've carried over all of the other Criterion extras.  And to their credit, they've come up with some new goodies as well, the best of which is a new, hour-long retrospective, The Story of Brian.  It's also quite well made, and fairly different from The Pythons.  It's great to have the new one, but I still miss the old one (which, for one major advantage, had access to Graham Chapman).  Some of the other extras are nice to have, but not so exciting.  There's an entire script read-through by the Pythons, which sounds neat, but it's awfully long and essentially all the same material as the film.  To be quite honest, I can't say I listened to the whole thing.  Besides that, they've added a photo gallery and a couple unrelated bonus trailers.

And now, happily, Criterion has brought us the best of both worlds.  Both the previously exclusive docs, and all the previous extras, are gathered together on Criterion's new 2-disc set.  And they've even recovered something new: Michael Palin's behind-the-scenes 8mm footage.  It's just over 13 minutes and silent but narrated by Palin.  And we get a 10-page, fold-out insert with notes by Bilge Ebiri (apparently George Perry can suck it, because Criterion didn't keep his).

So this is easily, easily, the new definitive edition: a substantial upgrade with all the features united, and even something new to sweeten the deal.  In fact, I'd go further than calling it definitive and say it's the only one worth having in your collection.

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.