Something for the weekend: the original cast of Saturday Night Live.
Saturday Night Live's complete first season is out this month on DVD and you'd reasonably expect it to be a big nugget of TV gold. Broadcast in 1975, it includes sketches from nascent talents Chevy Chase, John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd, as well as guest appearances from stars like Paul Simon and Elliot Gould. Even after all these years, this virgin run of America's best-loved sketch show - responsible for launching almost every well-known US comedy actor, from Bill Murray to Eddie Murphy couldn't fail to entertain, could it? Well, after viewing a few discs, it becomes quite clear that, yes, it can.
Shot cabaret style in downtown New York, the reissues certainly conjure up a hip, baby-boomer ambience. Some uncomfortable gags about racial minorities and gays retain the same gutter whiff as other popular 70s NYC exports like the New York Dolls or Taxi Driver. Yet genuine belly laughs? They're a rarity.
Part of the problem is the figures pilloried: President Ford, pre-Guiliani Manhattan junkies and desperate, suburban divorcees have long since drifted from the forefront of popular imagination.
Other drawbacks belie the changing nature of TV. The show was experimental, with low funding, no rulebook and had a high weekly workload. Latter-day, better financed programming - including much of Saturday Night Live's more recent broadcasts - put these early shows in the shade.
OK, 80s spin-offs, like Caddyshack and The Blues Brothers are still great. Yet, anyone who caught Spies Like Us on TV the other weekend will know that even Dan Ackroyd and Chevy Chase have their off days too.
Recent SNL sketches, such as Natalie Portman's gangsta rap, Justin Timberlake's 'Dick in a Box' video or Kevin Spacey's spoofed Star Wars screen tests, have drawn thousands to Youtube. It remains to be seen whether an equal number will click onto this old footage, once uploaders have pulled out their favourite bits from the reissued discs and stuck them on the web. But I doubt it.
