Futurama: Season 2

RRP £39.99 Lowest New Price £16.22

Parental Guidance 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Release date: Monday 11th of November 2002 Format: Box set, Full Screen, PAL, Number of discs: 4 Region code: 2 Running time: 437 minutes Language: English (Subtitled) Language: French (Subtitled) Language: Italian (Subtitled) Language: English (Original Language)

RRP: £39.99
Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

Matt Groening's second series of the 31st century sci-fi sitcom Futurama maintained the high scripting standards of the first as well bringing improved digital animation. Couch potato Fry now seems thoroughly reconciled to his new existence, transported 10 centuries hence to "New New York" and working for Professor Farnsworth's delivery service. He's surrounded by a cast of freaks, including the bitchily cute Amy (with whom he has a romantic brush) and Hermes, the West Indian bureaucrat. Most sympathetic is the one-eyed Leela (voiced by Katey Sagal). Like Lisa Simpson, she is brilliant but unappreciated; she finds solace in her pet Nibbler, a tiny creature with a voracious, carnivorous appetite. By contrast, Bender, the robot, is programmed with every human vice, a sort of metal Homer Simpson with a malevolent streak.

In one of the best episodes, Bender is given a "feelings" chip in order to empathise with Leela after he flushes Nibbler down the toilet. Elsewhere, Fry falls in love with a Mermaid when the team discover the lost city of Atlanta, Fry and Bender end up going to war after they join the army to get a discount on gum, and John Goodman guest stars as Santa Claus, an eight-foot gun-toting robot. Brimful with blink-and-you'll-miss-them hip jokes (such as the sign for the Taco Bellevue hospital) and political and pop satire, Futurama isn't a stern warning of things to come but rather, as the programme-makers put it, "a brilliant, hilarious reflection of our own materially (ridiculously) over-developed but morally under-developed society."

On the DVD: Futurama's four-disc package presents the show in 4:3 with a Dolby Digital soundtrack. Among the many extras here are audio commentaries, storyboards, trailers, mock ads for "Soylent Chow" and "Human Rinds" and deleted scenes, including one from "Bender Gets Made" in which he seeks to evade the Robot Mafia by changing his identity. --David Stubbs

---

Editorial
Special Features

Commentaries
Deleted scenes
Alien Alphabet
Disc One
I second that Emotion
Brannigan, Begin again
A head in the Polls
Xmas Story
Why must I be a Crustacean in love

Disc Two
The lesser of Two Evils
Put your head on my shoulder
Raging Bender
A Bicyclops built for two
Clone of my own

Disc Three
How Hermes Requisitioned his grove back
The Deep South
Bender Gets made
Mother's Day
The Problem with Popplers

Disc Four
Anthology of interest
War is the H-Word
The Honking
The Cryonic Woman

---

Editorial
Synopsis

This collection presents the entire second season of Matt Groening's Futurama in all its absurd, sci-fi glory. The perilous adventures of the Planetary Express team--including Fry (voiced by Billy West), Leela (voiced by Katey Sagal), and Bender (voiced by John Di Maggio)--continue, largely due to their own incompetence. Episodes include "I Second That Emotion," "A Head in the Polls," "Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love

---

"Don't just lie there scratching your Axe-hole"
Review date: 2008-08-11 Rating: 10 out of 10

A programme featuring lines like the above - what more needs to be said..?

Genius.

---