Snuff Box: The Complete Series

Okay, everyone gather 'round; it's time we all just came to our senses, fessed up and admitted the innate superiority of British comedy. That doesn't mean we can't work together. Aired in 2006 as a six-episode stopgap on BBC 3, to fill the holes of successfully migrating Brit-coms, Snuff Box is a sort of Amer-Anglo meeting of the minds, combining the formidable talents of Matt Berry and Rich Fulcher, melding British refinement and repression with American psychosis and salaciousness. Fans of The Mighty Boosh will recognize Berry and Fulcher as Dixon Bainbridge and Bob Fossil, respectively, and the pair managed to parlay their Boosh success into the often bizarre and intermittently brilliant Snuff Box, which, sadly, was too good to last and only aired once. Snuff Box takes Boosh's surreal sensibility and weds it to American shock value, and the result is a fascinating two-man show that revels in its strange world with profane glee. Berry (who has since made his mark on The IT Crowd) and Fulcher (who recently stole the show in Jon Benjamin Has a Van, as the perverse and pathetic consumer advocate Edward Sheath) essentially play black comedy versions of themselves. Berry is suave, erudite, drunk and a total asshole. Fulcher is loud, stupid, naive and oblivious. Each episode has a loosely framed narrative (for example, in episode one, Berry tries to find out the identity of Fulcher's dead mother), yet jumps into unrelated sketches, with Berry and Fulcher playing nearly every character at a moment's notice. Snuff Box takes a while to get rolling, but once you realize the game it plays, it becomes sheer comedy heaven. While the show employs classic English and American stereotypes, Berry and Fulcher manage to turn them inside out via their skewed worldview. Snuff Box is daring and consistently surprising, and while rooted in the "two geniuses acting goofy and saying naughty things" tradition of Derek & Clive, Bottom, Little Britain and The Mighty Boosh, is completely unlike anything else that's come before. The DVD package features a nice sampling of special features, including "Take Control of Your Body," where a bunch of American comedians and comedy nerds talk about how much they like the show, a walking tour of the shooting locations with Berry and Fulcher, some insight into the musical score, behind-the-scenes clips, outtakes and three hilarious episode commentaries from Berry and Fulcher.