Ernie Kovacs is really a funny guy, but there’s a chance you’ve never heard of him. My father had when I asked him, and I assume that most alive around that era were aware of Kovacs. I, however, had no idea who he was when I received the press release from Shout! Factory. Turns out, he’s a really funny guy.
Kovacs looks like the son of Groucho Marx, but his humor is far, far, far from conventional. In fact, it sometimes seems, especially in the episodes of the first part of the collection, that he’s just making it up as he goes along. There are a lot of errors, but Kovacs just goes along with it. And, surprisingly enough, even the mistakes are side-splittingly funny — sometimes reminiscent of Monty Python or some of Johnny Carson’s funniest moments.
Kovacs died too soon (in a car crash in 1962 at age 42), and that’s a shame. This set just proves that had he lived a while longer, he might have been a household name. We do get this set, though, which is a great tribute to Kovacs and his unique brand of humor that most comedy fans will appreciate.
The set is lavishly loaded with all kinds of special features, the best of which is a 44-page booklet that introduces newbies to who exactly Kovacs was. It provides a nice context to the zaniness of the series.
Is the set worth buying? Well, let me put it this way: if you love Monty Python and the like, you’ll get a lot of entertainment out of this six-disc set. What I saw, I loved, and I’ll probably watch again and again. Buy it on Amazon.
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