It’s hard to fathom just how controversial The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was in its day. Their brand of political satire, pointed barbs on topical events and political figures with a gentle delivery, was consistently censored by the network, which yanked the show (a ratings hit consistently in the top twenty) for its refusal to buckle under pressure. This four-disc set, which collects 11 stand-out episodes of its third and final season supplemented with new introductions by Tom and Dick Smothers and interviews with writers and performers, goes some way to reminding us of its audacity, especially as they call out the network and its censors in sketches and stage repartee.

The video quality is surprisingly good for this show, which (from what I can see) was shot on video rather than film and thus more prone to degradation with age, but video and audio quality aside, this is an amazing piece of social history. They open the third season with the song “We’re Still Here” that border on a taunt of CBS censors and are rewarded with part of that very episode – a Harry Belafonte performance set to footage of the Democratic Convention riots and campus protests – cut from the broadcast. The sequence has been restored for the DVD. Throughout the shows they make reference to censorship and takes jabs at political figures and discomforting issues, and were rewarded with more censorship (one entire episode was yanked – it’s in the set) and finally cancellation. “We weren’t canceled,” Dick Smothers corrects in one of the new interviews. “We were fired.” And so they were, taken off the air with the show in the top twenty. Apart from the great political satire, the shows feature great musical performances (The Ike and Tina Turner Revue spot is worth the set by itself, and Dion’s performance of “Abraham, Martin and John” is devastating) and comedy bits, including Pat Paulsen’s presidential campaign. The one-hour tongue-in-cheek 1968 TV special Pat Paulsen for President, narrated by Henry Fonda, is one of many supplements.

In his audio introduction to this collection, Tommy Smothers worries that the shows are too slow, the comedy too dated, the politics no longer relevant. He needn’t worry. 40 year later, the political satire of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” is still sharp and the humor as cheeky as ever, while their folk-song spots and trademark byplay underplays the edge of the material.

The review is featured in the TV section of my MSN DVD column.
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