Product Details

• Format: Box set, Color, DVD, Full Screen, Special Edition, Subtitled, NTSC
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 9
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: BBC Warner
• DVD Release Date: September 9, 2008
• Run Time: 1340 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0019MFY36
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,804 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #1 in	Movies & TV > Television > Funny Families > Keeping Up Appearances
  #22 in	Movies & TV > Television > BBC > Gift Sets
  #74 in	Movies & TV > Television > British Television

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced "bouquet") goes to incredible lengths in her quest for perfection. Hers is a spick-and-span house. Her downtrodden husband Richard acts as chauffeur in their immaculately kept car. Their permanently absent son has a superior name Sheridan. Even the empty milk bottles sparkle on the doorstep after their obligatory rinse in the dishwasher. Hyacinth delights in her "candlelit suppers" but her guests live in fear of receiving her invitations. Next-door neighbor Liz is so nervous that she is guaranteed to break or spill something. Her brother Emmet hides every time he sees Hyacinth. And the Buckets' distinguished friend the Major and the vicar and his wife all do their best to keep out of her way. In marked contrast to Hyacinth's meticulously ordered life however the rest of her family are as common as muck. They live together in a rundown house that looks like a junkyard. Sister Daisy and her husband Onslow are out-and-out slobs. Her other sister Rose is an aging tart. And her elderly father is a lecherous drunk given to cycling stark-naked down by the canal chasing the milkwoman. Whatever Hyacinth does her family can always be guaranteed to show her up. Can she ever live down the disgrace?Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/BBC UPC: 883929025411 Manufacturer No: 1000039729

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What you really want to know..., July 11, 2008

By	Howie (Arkansas) - See all my reviews

This official name of this re-release is "Keeping up Appearances: The Full Bouquet Special Edition". Based on images of the set it appears to be in either slim-pack cases or a digi-pack design. This set contains the same 8 disks as the original "Full Bouquet" set along with the special "Keeping up Appearances: Life Lessons from Onslow" added as the 9th disk. The Onslow special is available separately so you don't need to double-dip for this title if you already own the first set.

Here are the Special Features (which are the same as on the original release):
Outtakes
"Four Women" profile of Patricia Routledge
The Kitty Monologues
Second Chance Shorts: Exclusive UK commercial featuring Hyacinth and Elizabeth
Pebble Mill interview with Patricia Routledge and Clive Swift
The Memoirs of Hyacinth Bucket
"Extra Footage" interviews from the cast
Comedy Connection
Children in Need
Cast Biographies

This is a wonderful series from the BBC about everyone's favorite social climber, Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced "bouquet"). Her house is spick-and-span. Richard, her long-suffering and hen-pecked husband, keeps the car in immaculate condition (under Hyacinth's every-watchful eye). The empty milk bottles sparkle on the doorstep after their obligatory rinse in the dishwasher. To Hyacinth's horror and shame, most of her family is dead common, living together in a rundown house that looks like a junkyard. Sister Daisy and her husband, Onslow, are out-and-out slobs while another other sister, Rose, is an aging tart, and Daddy is not quite "all there". At least she is proud of her 3rd sister, Violet, the one "with the Mercedes, a sauna, and room for a pony" although Violet's husband is a cross-dresser and somewhat of an embarrassment to Hyacinth. However, she loves them all, and never fails to rush to their assistance when they need her help. Often it is Daddy that has got into an embarrassing situation which Hyacinth (or Richard) has to always solve.

Highly recommended!

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "The Bucket residence, the lady of the house speaking!", June 1, 2008

By	E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Why is it that the best British sitcoms have incredibly annoying lead characters?

First there was John Cleese as a mad hotelier, and Rowan Atkinson as the entire offensively sarcastic Blackadder dynasty. Now, there is Patricia Routledge as a social-climber with affected manners and a piercing voice. And with the aid of talented supporting actors and some gloriously madcap scripts, this sitcom becomes almost pure comic bliss.

Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced "Bouquet," ss) is the local social climber, and a terror to all who know her -- she views herself as the doyenne of good taste, artistry, morals, decorum, and class, and her perpetually-in-debt son Sheridan as being the next Einstein.

She kisses up to the wealthy and aristocratic, and anyone who is closely associated with them, unaware of how much her self-promotion scares them and occasionally offends. Her weary husband Richard (Clive Swift) and nervy neighbor Elizabeth (Josephine Tewson) dread whatever she has next, especially when Elizabeth's sharp-tongued brother Emmett moves in.

She adores her sister Violet, who married a wealthy, unfaithful transvestite and has "a swimming pool, Mercedes, and room for a pony." But she'll do anything to hide her impoverished family members: her wacked-out father, sloppy romantic Daisy (Judy Cornwell) and skanky Rose (Mary Millar), who has a new boyfriend for every episode. Not to mention Daisy's couch potato hubby Onslow (Geoffrey Hughes).

The series opens with Hyacinth trying to hide the fact that "dear Daddy" was hurt while bicycling naked after the milk lady. And when she makes an effort to befriend the handsome new vicar (the "dishy vicar" as Rose calls him), her family shows up in full crazy mode, announcing that dear Daddy has been kidnapped by a gypsy.

From there on, she must tackle dozens of other problems: athlete's foot, mad cruises on the QE2 (with Onslow and Daisy), inadvertent theft of a Rolls Royce, riverside picnics gone awry, suicide attempts, estate sales, country retreats, anniversaries, nautical disasters, musicals, barbecues, raunchy Majors, Richard's ill-fated stint as a filmmaker, Christmas kisses, and Rose's decision to become a nun in a miniskirt. "It's all right," she announces as she drunkenly smooches the vicar. "I'm going to be a nun!"

This one also includes the later-produced "Life Lessons From Onslow," a funny little clip show in which Onslow finds himself teaching a university course, illustrated by various clips from the series. God help those students.

"Keeping Up Appearances" is in the grand tradition of really embarrassing British sitcoms, usually with at least one person who makes everyone else insane. And there's no excessive need to get Hyacinth out of her various dilemmas -- the writers just crank up the humiliation and craziness, and let it climax as the show finally ends.

Sure, there are some dud episodes -- the amusement park one with all the old people is full of one-note jokes. Sorry, but old ladies throwing up is not funny more than once. Most of the time, however, the writing is spot-on, from Rose's affairs with married men ("You swore you'd be faithful... and then... I catch you sneaking back to your wife!") to Hyacinth's efforts to hide her family (singing so people won't hear Violet's brawl with her husband).

Routledge is the star of this series, no doubt about it -- she makes Hyacinth a magnificently awful character. She is frighteningly annoying, but she's also completely oblivious. Not only is she unaware that other people see her as an upholstered harpy, but she's unaware that her son is gay, her hubby is the walking dead, and that when people hide from her it's not a cute little joke.

Swift is a great counterpoint, as the weary husband who has stopping trying to fight Hyacinth, and only hopes that he can find a few reprieves at work. Tewson and the perpetually grimacing David Griffin are excellent as her neighbors, and Judy Cornwell and Geoffrey Hughes as Hyacinth's distinctly unaristocratic sister and brother-in-law.

Social appearances, family and madcap misunderstandings are the heart of "Keeping Up Appearances." Snobbery has never been so funny.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hilariously Hyacinth, January 12, 2009

By	Katherine Maki (Thunder Bay, Ont..) - See all my reviews

What a super collection! Pure delight! With these episodes, one can watch any one at any time, as the episodes do not depend upon previous ones for their story line. I have one caveat for purchasers wanting the full spectrum; if you buy this set, do not buy "Deck the Halls with Hyacinth"; this (very funny) Christmas DVD is included! Or...do buy it and give it to a friend!