Futurama - Season 2 [1999]

In one of the best episodes, Bender is given a "feelings" chip in order to empathise with Leela after he flushes Nibbler down the toilet. Elsewhere, Fry falls in love with a Mermaid when the team discover the lost city of Atlanta, Fry and Bender end up going to war after they join the army to get a discount on gum, and John Goodman guest stars as Santa Claus, an eight-foot gun-toting robot. Brimful with blink-and-you'll-miss-them hip jokes (such as the sign for the Taco Bellevue hospital) and political and pop satire, Futurama isn't a stern warning of things to come but rather, as the programme-makers put it, "a brilliant, hilarious reflection of our own materially (ridiculously) over-developed but morally under-developed society."

On the DVD:Futurama's four-disc package presents the show in 4:3 with a Dolby Digital soundtrack. Among the many extras here are audio commentaries, storyboards, trailers, mock ads for "Soylent Chow" and "Human Rinds" and deleted scenes, including one from "Bender Gets Made" in which he seeks to evade the Robot Mafia by changing his identity. --David Stubbs

Customer reviews:

"Don't just lie there scratching your Axe-hole", 2008-08-11
A programme featuring lines like the above - what more needs to be said..?

Genius.

A stern warning of things to come..., 2008-03-10
Season four of Futurama maintains the quality of the first season, while futher exploring the universe it is set in. All the sci-fi cliques are mocked, especially the dark and dystopian elements of the genre. For example, in the episode "Mother's Day" the world's robots stage a violent rebellion and it turns out that the cluddly industrialist, Mom, keeps the robot remote control in her bra.
The mixture of dark sci-fi, weird aliens, very human robots and sharp gags make for a unusual but strangely believeable cartoon.

As a fan of Terry Gilliam, a highlight of this season was the episode "How Hermes Requistioned his Groove Back", a tale of ridiculous bureaucracy that is a reference to the flim "Brazil". Only the writers of Futurama would end a homage to such a disturbing dystopian sci-fi with the charcters braking into a catchy Jamaican tune...