British Comedy Samples Run Gamut

THIS WEEK’S MOVIES

British comedy ranges from the hilariously outrageous to the passably farcical to the miserable misfire. CBS/Fox gives Anglophiles a video taste of each this week--in the form of a hit movie and two cult TV shows.

The hit movie, “Nuns on the Run” ($89.98, PG-13), is the passably farcical example. Neither as good as you might expect from the presence of a Monty Python member (Eric Idle), nor as bad as Siskel and Ebert made out, this rather soft-headed but just-funny-enough comedy casts Idle and Robbie Coltrane as half-hearted apprentice gangsters who hide out in habits at a convent after double-crossing their bosses. Camille Coduri is likable as the sweet but very near-sighted woman who tries to help the pair.

The hilarious outrageous tape is “The Young Ones” ($19.98), a collection of three episodes from the truly anarchic British series that used to be repeated over and over on MTV. Brilliantly performed by members of England’s inventive Comic Strip group (from which Coltrane of “Nuns” also emerged), the series about three young men who share a very strange London house is hard to describe, but Monty Python-goes-punk will do for a starter. Well timed--just when we fans began to miss the series after thinking we were sick of the reruns--the 96-minute cassette contains “Oil,” “Flood” (the most surreal show) and “Boring” (possibly the best).

The miserable misfire label gets stuck on “Black Adder the Third, Part II” ($19.98), an 89-minute tape containing three episodes from a series (shown on A&E; cable) that tried to spoof the Middle Ages in Python style with an astounding lack of success, starring forever-mugging English comic Rowan Atkinson (no relation, thank goodness).