The second volume of The Very Best of Steptoe and Son contains five excellent episodes from the classic sitcom scripted by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, who created Steptoe when Tony Hancock dispensed with their services in the early 1960s. The story of the acerbic but hopelessly pretentious Harold, would-be man about town longing in vain to escape from his rag-and-bone yard existence and his "dirty old man" of a father, is one of Britain's greatest sitcoms. Its underlying sadness somehow makes it all the funnier. "The Bath" is in black and white and features a wonderfully disgusting sequence of old man Albert retrieving pickled onions from his bathwater and putting them back in the jar. The other four episodes are from the 1970s and in colour: "Séance in a Wet Rag and Bone Yard" features a young Patricia Routledge as a bogus medium. "Porn Yesterday" has Harold outraged to discover that the young Albert once starred in a "What the Butler Saw" feature. "And So to Bed" has Harold buying a waterbed to impress a new "bird" and having his romantic hopes literally punctured by his old man. The wonderful "Upstairs Downstairs, Upstairs, Downstairs" has the put-upon Harold getting the better of his dad for once when he discovers that the "perpendicular ponce" is feigning a back injury to keep Harold at his beck and call and plans an excruciating revenge--a bed bath. There's only one shortcoming: completists would prefer these old episodes to be issued chronologically and in full rather than in selective "Best of" compilations.
On the DVD: The Very Best of Steptoe and Son episodes are presented in the format in which they were originally shown and all hold up well without any great efforts at enhancement. There are no extras. --David Stubbs