Comedy Central’s TV Funhouse

DVD Review

Paramount Home Entertainment

Released: July 22, 2008

Comedy Central has been experimenting a bit by taking old TV shows aimed at kids, adding some adult flair to them, and showing them off in TV Funhouse. Paramount Home Entertainment has released this content in a new DVD set, which will prove to be quite funny for fans of this sort of entertainment.

TV Funhouse is hosted by Doug Dale, who shares his time with real life animals, as well as puppets.

There are truly some funny characters here, such as a very confident rooster called Jason, a fish called Rocky, a dog called Fogey, and others.

These puppet animals are called Anipals and usually go off on their own little adventures in each episode. Every episode has a theme as Doug, the host, makes each day a celebration day.

There are eight episodes in total, with everything from Western Day, to Christmas Day, to Caveman Day.

In each of the episodes, beyond the Anipal adventures, you also get some great cartoons such as Steadman, showing the superhero adventures of Oprah Winfey’s boy toy, among other things.

The show has its high points and its low point, as the premise of the show is top-notch. The execution on the other hand is not always there, making this a hit or miss for comedy fans.

The video transfer has been presented in 1.33:1 and features some pretty sharp and clear video. Color saturation is well-done, and the images are transferred over without any artifacts or anything of that nature.

The audio is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 and is a nice stereo mix, making use of the front channels and representing all of the sound effects well.

Paramount did a great job with the DVD release, as every single episode has an audio commentary with it from the creator/producers of the show, Robert Smigel, Dino Stamatopoulos, as well as host Doug Dale. The audio commentary makes for very funny stuff.

There are also a series of outtakes included in the release, with 7.5 minutes here of gags. An Anipals’ audio commentary is tacked on as well, with the puppets throwing in comments as they watch each episode.

Rounding out the extras are two segments with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog from the Conan O’Brien show, as well as a behind the scenes feature.

Overall, the comedy series did not fair so well as there will not be another season picked up. As stated, the premise here is absolutely great, but the execution is really hit or miss. Worth a rental still for fans of this type of Comedy Central entertainment.

Content: 6.0

TV Funhouse has a great premise to it, but the execution is not constant through each episode.

Video: 8.0

A nice video transfer with good colors, and no artifacts.

Audio: 7.5

The audio mix works well, sound effects are showcased nicely.

Special Features: 8.0

It is nice to see that the effort was put it to give this set some extras, as the audio commentaries are great!

Final Score: 7.9