FUTURAMA MONSTER ROBOT MANIAC FUN COLLECTION

Scifind.co.uk rating - 3 - out of 5.

Reviewed By: Paul Mount

If you’d rather not splash out on the full boxsets of Matt Groening’s underrated FUTURAMA series here’s a chance to bone up on four classic episodes - Groening’s own favourites from the four series - on this handy little collection. FUTURAMA took a while to find its feet and there are some marvellous episodes scattered throughout the series entire run so ‘best of’ selections are entirely subjective and whilst the four episodes here may not be necessarily what you or I might chose as the best of the show, they’re a fun bunch and are ultimately quite representative of the series as a whole - which is probably one of the purposes in issuing this collection. Like these?? Now buy the boxets…

So here we have ‘Hell is Other Robots’ where series star Bender runs into his old high school buddy Fender and they both become addicted to ‘jacking on’ (ahem) - getting high on electricity. A spaceship accident causes Bender to join the Robotology cult which leads him to a trip to Robot Hell. ‘Anthology of Interest 1’ sees Professor Farnsworth test out his machine-controlling Finglonger machine but the best episodes here are undoubtedly ‘Roswell That ends Well’ (no prizes for guessing what happens in this one) and the marvellous ‘The Sting’ where the crew fly off to collect honey from giant space bees. This one is particularly memorable with some wonderful animation, a nice line in humour and some genuine pathos! A nice collection for newcomers to the series.

THE DISC: Unlike the similar SIMPSONS four-episode sets the FUTURAMA collection boasts intros from crew and cast, commentaries and animatic footage. Superb picture and sound quality, naturally.

FUTURAMA MONSTER ROBOT MANIAC FUN COLLECTION is released on 30th May 2005 in the UK.