Farrah Forever!

Movies on DVD? That's so 2002. This year, 'tis the season to give the gift of canceled sitcoms, forgotten TV miniseries, and premium cable shows you previously couldn't afford. Here are some of 2003's boxed-set highlights and must-haves.

The BBC Ultimate Comedy Megapack (BBC, $562.82)

For the Britcom fan in your life, a gift of this newly released set could have a tear-inducing effect on par with a diamond from Tiffany & Co. The 10 discs cover 10 BBC favorites: Absolutely Fabulous, Black Adder, Father Ted, Fawlty Towers, Red Dwarf, The Young Ones, Coupling, Keeping Up Appearances, French & Saunders, and Yes, Minister. There's enough material to keep you laughing at bumbling Basil Fawlty and friends till Memorial Day. It's just a sampling, though; so for the true Britcom fanatic, you might consider one of the BBC's full sets, such as Black Adder: The Complete Collection ($119.98) or The Young Ones: Every Stoopid Episode ($59.98). KATIE MILLBAUER

Yeah, sure, we all appreciate the comedic and social progress that The Mary Tyler Moore Show represented for TV in the '70s, but somewhere in our secret souls, we're still more grateful for this compilation. C'monFarrah Fawcett-Majors? I rest my case. ABC's tribute to jiggly escapism was the ultimate guilty pleasure, and its debut year1976, when the detective trio consisted of Farrah, Jaclyn Smith, and Kate Jacksonwas easily its most fun. You get the pilot and 22 episodes, including the quintessential "Angels in Chains," which finds the ladies posing as both jailbirds and hookers, with appearances from future Love Boat star Lauren Tewes, future Oscar-winner Kim Basinger, and cult-film actress Mary Woronov (Death Race 2000)who, as a sadistic prison warden, has the Angels sprayed clean. STEVE WIECKING

If it seems redundant to watch music videos on your own rather than to encounter them on MTV, well, it probably is. But this collection works because creators Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham, and Michel Gondry are fanatically attentive to detail and don't stint on extras. Jonze's Volume 1 functions as a catalog of mid-'90s pop cool, with clips from Weezer ("Buddy Holly" and "Undone") to Fatboy Slim ("Weapon of Choice," in which Christopher Walken dances up a storm) and, best of all, the Notorious B.I.G.'s posthumous "Sky's the Limit," an homage to the 1976 kid-gangster flick Bugsy Malone. The artists' commentary is also interesting, though the Beasties sure do mumble a lot for a bunch of loudmouths. Cunningham's Volume 2 is the shortestonly one side of the DVD is put to use as opposed to Jonze's and Gondry's twobut it's also the freakiest, from the limb-losing dude in Leftfield's "Africa Shox" to the robots making out to Bj�s "All Is Full of Love" to a pair of extremely creepy Aphex Twin clips, "Come to Daddy" and "Windowlicker." Gondry's Volume 3 brings us up to date with a slew of recent videos from the White Stripes, working backward to the obscure Oui Oui. Each volume also comes with an excellent 52-page book containing lengthy interviews with each director, making the series a bargain in more ways than one. MICHAELANGELO MATOS

That the Mr. Show tour and DVDs are popular five years after HBO canceled David Cross and Bob Odenkirk's sketch comedy series is testament to the show's strength. This two-disc set includes all 10 episodes of the season that brought the world "Druggachusetts," a psychedelic Krofft Brothers parody; "The Evil Genius Telethon," in which Bob and David pilfer money from benevolent viewers; "Fuzz: The Musical," a behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of a COPS-style musical; and the hilarious "East Coast-West Coast Ventriloquist Feud," which parodies the gangsta rap wars. Essential stocking stuffer: last year's book Mr. Show: What Happened?! (Squaresville Productions, $22.95), a tell-all and episode guide. K.M.

Once upon a time, yelling snarky comments at the movie screen was an art practiced mostly by boors, midnight-movie aficionados, or people with Tourette's. That changed with a little two-hour comedy program from Minneapolis called Mystery Science Theater 3000, in which first Joel Hodgson, then Michael Nelson, and their robot pals, Tom Servo (made from the remnants of a gumball machine) and Crow T. Robot (a gold-painted bowling pin mouth with a hockey-mask head and Ping-Pong-ball eyes), crack a steady stream of laconic jokes while watching unspeakably bad movies. This pair of four-DVD sets covers various stages of MST3K's history, including the well-deserved pummelings of such cinematic gems as The Sidehackers, The Unearthly, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, and Space Mutinynot to mention the worst Hamlet ever committed to celluloid. M.M.

I hate to say it, but we all know it's true: The British are funnier than we are, especially when it comes to sitcoms. The Office crosses (inadvertently, I'm sure) Office Space and The Larry Sanders Show with The Mary Tyler Moore Show and ends up surpassing them all (and how) in characterization, satire, and plain old wit. (Extra bonus: no fake, annoying laugh track.) The series premiered on BBC America early this year, quickly becoming the same stateside smash it's been in the U.K. since '01. I once spent a whole weekend in bed giggling in hysterics while watching bootleg tapes of the entire series, which involves a hilariously realistic 9-to-5 crew at a paper manufacturing company. But the DVDsand we hope more seasons will soon followare well worth the price. Co-director, co-writer, and star Ricky Gervais plays the principal character, David Brent, whose dry, clueless, overbearing persona is the best we've seen on TV since, well, TV. LAURA CASSIDY