It's long been an ambition of mine to watch all four series of Monty Python's Flying Circus. I bought a complete series box set in Hong Kong about 20 years ago, but I only got as far as the second series.
I tried to play them on my PC recently but they're Region 1 and I couldn't get them to work.
Happily though the entire series has been restored, upscaled and digitally remastered for BluRay, and I have the first series in this format now.
It looks great. It doesn't look high definition and nor could it - there's a limit to what you can do with material mostly captured to videotape about 50 years ago. But it's comfortably better than the broadcast quality of the time and certainly better than my old NTSC DVDs.
There are in all 45 episodes so I should get through them by the end of the year, though I'm not going to commit to one per day.
Earlier this evening I watched the first one, "Whither Canada?".
God knows what the TV viewers of October 1969 made of it, but I loved it. Very solid start. As usual there's a surreal running gag running through most of it and sometimes the sketches are cleverly segued together. A piece about Picasso painting while riding a bike is possibly stretched a bit too far.
The very best bit is an animation created by Terry Gilliam from early 20th century monochrome photographs. Genius.
1:02 Sex and Violence
Another good one, though there are one or two moments that are just surreal for its own sake; daft without being particularly funny. The sketch about the working class playwright who's upset that his son wants to be a coal miner is in this one, a borderline classic though not one of my own favourites. I loved Cleese and Palin as two exuberant Frenchmen giving a bizarre presentation about flying sheep.
Carol Cleveland makes her first appearance as the occasional eye candy in the marraige guidance counsellor sketch. There's a piece about Queen Victoria and Gladstone that misses the mark. Lukewarm at best.
Not quite as good as the first one.
1:03 How to Recognise Different Types of Trees from Quite a Long Way Away
Some excessive daftness - I don't know if it's just aged badly, but to me a bloke in a suit of armour holding a rubber chicken for its own sake isn't particularly funny.
But on the whole - very good. I especially liked the classic Bicycle Repairman sketch, surely one of the all-time classics.
But even better is the restaurant sketch, another perennial favourite. Genius.
The old "nudge, nudge" sketch - appropriated a year or two later to sell Breakaway bars - is in this one as well. Say no more.
1:04 Owl-Stretching Time
A strong one. There's an overlong and not-particularly-funny sketch about Terry Jones attempting repeatedly to get changed on the beach, filmed in silent movie style (although it's in colour). But apart from that it's a strong one. This one has the brilliant self-defence against fruit sketch, with Cleese in a fantastic performance as a delightfully manic sergeant-major.
I bet Eric Idle insisted that this little piece he wrote for himself was rehearsed a few times.
(https://i.ibb.co/xs4pmNF/python-tongue.jpg)
I hate it when people don't trim their guitar strings properly.
1:05 Man's Crisis of Identity in the Latter Half of the 20th Century
I was a bit unconvinced by this one initially but it picks up strongly in the second half, firstly with the excellent customs officer sketch, then with the brilliant job interview sketch.
But it starts off with a very silly sketch about a service for depressed cats that plays a bit like a Gilliam animation, with stop-start camera work and trickery. My dad would probably have claimed that this was "too daft to laugh at" and he might have been right for once. The actual Gilliam animation is brilliant.
I was confused by the silly job interview sketch because I was sure I'd seen it before, with Tim Brooke-Taylor playing the part of the interviewee instead of Graham Chapman. And I had, it was in a broadcast filmed a few months earlier called How To Irritate People (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Irritate_People).
Quote from: Slim on July 22, 2023, 11:16:15 PM1:04 Owl-Stretching Time
A strong one. There's an overlong and not-particularly-funny sketch about Terry Jones attempting repeatedly to get changed on the beach, filmed in silent movie style (although it's in colour). But apart from that it's a strong one. This one has the brilliant self-defence against fruit sketch, with Cleese in a fantastic performance as a delightfully manic sergeant-major.
I bet Eric Idle insisted that this little piece he wrote for himself was rehearsed a few times.
(https://i.ibb.co/xs4pmNF/python-tongue.jpg)
I hate it when people don't trim their guitar strings properly.
The bed-spread is 'of its time'. We had the same style. He could be nursing a boner under there - I would be, especially the year that was recorded 😆
I preferred the movies to be honest. In those days like many homes we had one TV. Friends used to rave about Python so I would sometimes plead my case for a chance to watch the odd episode. It was never going to be my parents' cup of tea but I found myself unable to defend it much of the time. A few classic moments here and there, but much of it tedious forced filler.
1:06 It's the Arts
Very, very good. The non-illegal robbery sketch. The brilliant Wizzo Chocolates sketch, that was on one of the albums that came out in the '70s. Perhaps best of all, the film mogul sketch.
Not all of it is the same high standard, but it's all good. There's a sketch about a German with a very long name - both Cleese and Chapman repeat it, in very convincing German accents, a couple of times. Must have taken weeks of rehearsal.
I was amused by Eric Idle's theatre-going Red Indian. I wonder if the BBC would show this now?
(https://i.ibb.co/HXFc4k9/idleredindian.jpg)
Quote from: The Picnic Wasp on July 25, 2023, 12:47:00 PMI preferred the movies to be honest. In those days like many homes we had one TV. Friends used to rave about Python so I would sometimes plead my case for a chance to watch the odd episode. It was never going to be my parents' cup of tea but I found myself unable to defend it much of the time. A few classic moments here and there, but much of it tedious forced filler.
The films were always second best to me. Much as I like
Life of Brian and (especially)
Holy Grail, the very best of Python is contained within their TV work.
The first Python film was actually a refilmed compilation of sketches from the first two series. I watched it once, some time in the '80s I think. Must have been on TV. Doesn't have quite the same energy of the TV show although the production values are (a bit) higher. Better sets and camera work.
Haven't seen anything tedious so far, but if I do I'll let you know.
Monty Python's Flying Circus is easily and by quite some distance the greatest comedy ever to be shown on television. None of the sketch shows that were influenced by it (Not The Nine o'Clock News, Little Britain, The Fast Show, Fry & Laurie, Mitchell & Webb et al) come close, athough some are very good.
Quote from: Slim on July 28, 2023, 08:29:28 AMQuote from: The Picnic Wasp on July 25, 2023, 12:47:00 PMI preferred the movies to be honest. In those days like many homes we had one TV. Friends used to rave about Python so I would sometimes plead my case for a chance to watch the odd episode. It was never going to be my parents' cup of tea but I found myself unable to defend it much of the time. A few classic moments here and there, but much of it tedious forced filler.
The films were always second best to me. Much as I like Life of Brian and (especially) Holy Grail, the very best of Python is contained within their TV work.
The first Python film was actually a refilmed compilation of sketches from the first two series. I watched it once, some time in the '80s I think. Must have been on TV. Doesn't have quite the same energy of the TV show although the production values are (a bit) higher. Better sets and camera work.
Haven't seen anything tedious so far, but if I do I'll let you know.
Monty Python's Flying Circus is easily and by quite some distance the greatest comedy ever to be shown on television. None of the sketch shows that were influenced by it (Not The Nine o'Clock News, Little Britain, The Fast Show, Fry & Laurie, Mitchell & Webb et al) come close, athough some are very good.
Totally agree that they created something amazing, almost a new genre, and comedy was never the same again. But much of it was Marmite. Even Spike, who had funny bones, churned out a lot of very unfunny stuff. Comedy is just like music, personal taste. It can be commented on but should never be judged. I once told an acquaintance I didn't like The Cure. He never treated me nicely again afterwards. Strangely, I do appreciate them now. Taste evolves.
1:07 You're No Fun Anymore
Mostly taken up by a 23 minute piece - too long to be called a sketch - which is essentially a parody of science-fiction. This unusual tale features aliens in blancmange form turning people into Scotsmen - complete with ginger beard and kilt.
It's very, very silly but a lot of fun. There's a joke about Scotland being the worst tennis-playing nation on Earth, and even a reference to the First Scotsman to Win Wimbledon that Andy Murray has ruined for us now.
It's not great I admit. Actually I think kids might enjoy it more than adults. But I did like it. It has such a bizarre plot that I could only admire the imagination that went into it.
Graham Chapman has a scene in which he gets up close and personal with a very cute young blonde woman. You might be tempted to think he wrote that one for himself, but he wouldn't have enjoyed it as much as most young men.
The best part of this one is probably a sketch before the sci-fi piece, with Palin as an inexperienced accountant.
1:08 Full Frontal Nudity
Easily the best one so far. Consistently very funny from start to finish and contains two out-and-out classic Python moments in the Dead Parrot sketch and Hell's Grannies. Actually though my own favourite piece in this one is the sketch about the couple attempting to buy a mattress in a department store. Delightfully bonkers.
1:09 The Ant, An Introduction
Not as good as the last one but does contain a couple of very memorable Python moments - perhaps most notably the brilliant psychopath barber sketch, which segues into the lumberjack sketch. A bravura performance from Palin in the former especially. But the mountaineering expedition sketch is genius, as well.
Eric Idle appears very briefly as a Red Indian in one of the sketches, though he isn't browned up this time.
Cleese gets to grope Carol Cleveland's left breast in one sketch. I suspect he wrote that bit himself, because there's a breast-groping scene in a Fawlty Towers episode as well.
1:10: Untitled
For some reason this one doesn't have an episode title, usually shown during the closing credits. Not the best one so far but a good one. I must admit though I didn't remember ever seeing some of it. But there are some old favourites - the chartered accountant who wants to become a lion tamer, the pet shop sketch that's in essence the same form as the parrot sketch and the (yet to come) cheeseshop sketch - with Palin as a shop assistant and Cleese as the officious customer.
The sketch about the First Man to Jump the English Channel really benefits from the BluRay treatment, recorded as it was on film. Makes the next sketch a little jarring at first in terms of the video quality (videotape of course). I think that one made it onto one of the LPs.
Graham Chapman has a recurring part as a TV presenter, who refers to himself as an "old queen", and is called a "fairy" by Eric Idle's character. I assume he wrote it himself. It was common knowledge among the Pythons that Graham was gay, as Michael Palin records in his diaries, which I bought years ago.
1:11 The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Goes to the Bathroom
It's not a great one. I liked it, but it's in the lower tier of the first series. Possibly the weakest of all of them. As usual there's a theme that runs through the whole show and in this one, it's undertakers. There's a long and not brilliantly funny sketch involving a group of undertakers carrying a coffin up a hill in what looks like Yorkshire, that appears in instalments.
Eric Idle appears as a man from West Hartlepool in one scene, although he doesn't attempt the accent. But then - neither do I, usually.
And speaking of the North East - there's a really odd moment when a TV presenter, also played by Eric interviews a footballer, played by John - about a football match played at the "Stadium of Light, Jarrow".
Sunderland's Stadium of Light was built about six miles from Jarrow in the 1990s. It's claimed (I've just googled this) that the inspiration for the name came from coal mining, and pit lamps. As far as I can tell no stadium of any kind was ever called the Stadium of Light before this.
Could someone have nicked the name from this old Python episode?
There's some eye candy again, including a rather weak sketch in which Carol Cleveland presents a history documentary dressed in lingerie, with the voice of a male historian (supposedly AJP Taylor but not really) dubbed on.
Quote from: Slim on August 26, 2023, 10:54:09 PMAs far as I' can tell no stadium of any kind was ever called the Stadium of Light before this.
Benfica's - Estádio da Luz.
I noticed that Carol Cleveland appeared on a repeat episode of First Dates tonight. Initially screened last year when she was 78. She looks amazing for her age.
My Python-athon seemed to have lost momentum a bit so I'm glad to have got it back on the rails (sorry about the mixed metaphor) with ..
1:12: The Naked Ant
This is about average, maybe a bit above average for the first series.
In the dark days before VHS recorders, streaming video and obscure Freeview channels showing repeats all the time, if you wanted a bit of Python fun that didn't involve re-enacting sketches from memory with your mates at school, you had to buy one of the LPs. And one of the most memorable sketches on the the first Python album is presented in this episode in original form: North Minehead By-Election. This is a clever tale that imagines that Hitler, Von Ribbentrop and Himmler are staying at a boarding house in North Minehead and making a comeback, starting with a by-election campaign in Somerset.
Very funny. There's an awful lot of Nazi imagery in this one which makes me think that it may never have been shown in some territories. I recall that Kiss album covers had to have the double-S modified to look a bit less like SS insignia, when they were sold in West Germany. If I remember correctly Airfix kits sold there didn't include the swastika transfer.
I was a little shocked to hear a female character played by Terry Jones comment that Mr Hilter (as he has chosen to be known as a clever obfuscation) is "right about the coons". Different times, eh?
Considering how touchy they were about an episode of Fawlty Towers, it's a fair bet that the BBC will never show this one again.
Elsewhere there's the Upper Class Twit of the Year contest - pure class prejudice, but funny. And a sketch I'd completely forgotten about a government minister who falls through the Earth's crust while delivering a party political.
Palin excels in this episode as an intense and over-earnest documentary presenter. Quite a manic performance. I think it would have worked even better in 1970 when that sort of TV presentation was in vogue.
Eleven days since the last time I watched one of these, how does that happen? Anyway ..
1:13 : Intermission
Sadly, the first series bows out on a below-average instalment. Too often in this one, the Pythons reach for something utterly daft to prop up a weak idea. There are some clever and funny moments of course. Palin is delightful as a manic restaurateur. There's a really funny, but short sketch with Eric Idle as a doctor that plays with words beautifully.
The animations are, as always, very good. There's even one that uses stop / start animation with humans. Must have taken a long time.
But on the whole it's slim pickings. The episode as a whole feels a bit frantic and hollow.
I was interested to see Terry Jones being wheeled into a restaurant on a silver tray on a bed of salad with a tomato in his mouth as the special course. "Try me with some rice", he says. That must be where Douglas Adams got the idea for the Ameglian Major Cow from the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, bred to want to be eaten.
The albatross sketch is in this one. It's much, much more sweary (and funnier) on the Python's live LP, Live at Drury Lane.
Tellingly, I didn't remember seeing any of this one except for the aforementioned doctor sketch.
This episode's politically incorrect moment: a young man browned up with a turban on, doing a cod-Indian accent. A bit like Michael Bates in It Ain't Half Hot, Mum.
I'm getting through these a bit less quickly than I expected, and it looks like I won't be getting through all of them this year. However, I got round to the first instalment of the second series this evening.
2:01
This time round the episodes aren't actually titled, though Wikipedia refers to them by the most notable sketches.
I was reading Michael Palin's diaries earlier today; the 1969-1979 edition that I bought years ago. In an entry in early 1970 he writes that the first series had been highly successful, and that they hadn't actually written anything for the second series eleven weeks before filming was due to start.
The success of the first series is apparent from the audience reaction in this first second series episode - the audience are clearly very much up for it, with delighted squealing emanating from some sections of it. By this point, the Pythons had a fan base.
This one is a bit of a game of two halves - it has the brilliant new cooker sketch and the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch - surely one of the greatest Python moments of all time. But later, it also has the overlong Piranha Brothers piece, which while it does have some hilarious moments - notably Michael Palin as an escort agency owner - is padded out with repeated descriptions of surreal acts of violence which aren't that funny after the first couple.
I was quite impressed by Graham Chapman's performance as a languid, working class gangster type; quite different from his usual moustachioed pompous / upper-class caricatures. More versatile a comic actor than you might think.
The new cooker sketch works quite nicely as a parody of excessive bureaucracy in 1970s state monopolies, though whether these young men were aware that nationalisation was the source of the problem, I couldn't say.
Overall - pretty high standard.
2:02
This is a very good one indeed - no weak parts, consistently funny and the constituent sketches link into each other cleverly, almost like a bizarre stream of consciousness. It flows beautifully.
One of the best ones so far for sure. It doesn't have one of the very best Python moments but it does have the brilliant Spanish Inquisition sketch, although it's possibly not quite right to characterise it as a sketch since it sort of pops up at various points throughout.
Eric Idle seems a bit underused in the second series so far; he hasn't featured prominently.
There's a scene that's supposedly set in Jarrow in which Graham Chapman speaks in a broad Yorkshire accent. I mean why not set it in Barnsley or Huddersfield?
This was the first Python episode I ever saw. I remember this because right at the very end, Michael Palin exclaims "bugger!" and my dad, despite being one of the most vulgar and unpleasant people I've ever known, sneered his disapproval at the bad language.
Terry Gilliam has a minor speaking part in the Spanish Inquisition scenes. Normally when he performs he's a little bit wooden but he plays a blinder in this one as a deranged cardinal.
Came across this letter to a 14 year old boy;
Dear Matthew,
I am afraid I'm much too important to write notes to people like you.
Please remember that I am very very very very very very important.
However, there is no John Cleese fan club (despite my importance) because they were all murdered in 1983 by Michael Palin's fan club.
I enclose a photograph to remind you of my importance.
Yours sincerely,
JOHN CLEESE
Ten days already since I did the last one of these, I definitely am getting through them more slowly than I hoped. Anyway:
2:03
Curious one, this. It opens, rather agreeably albeit admittedly gratuitously, with a gag involving Carol Cleveland stripping down to bra and knickers. It contains a brilliant, very funny sketch about aeroplane pilots. But a lot of this episode involves clever, artfully surreal material that isn't really very funny, even if it's thought-provoking. By the end of the episode I'd started to be reminded of the UFO episode Mindbender by the piece about Deja-Vu. Bit of a niche reference that probably, but it involves people having their minds messed with by aliens.
There's a fairly long and not very funny sketch about a poet called Ewan McTeagle. But the animation is superb. Gilliam always puts in a good shift but this one is special.
Mixed bag.
2:04
Brilliant one. Consistently very good. A couple of all-time classics in this one in The Bishop and the architect sketch - which slightly seems to foreshadow the Grenfell Tower disaster but is extremely funny nonetheless. It would have been first broadcast about two years before building on the tower commenced, so it was eerily prescient.
Absolute bravura performance from Cleese in that one.
The piece about the East Midlands Poet Board isn't quite as entertaining, but I liked it.
The animation sequences are fantastic.
Much delighted squealing in the audience.
2:05
Another very good one, flows nicely and has a sort of other-worldly surrealness underpinning a lot of very good laughs. Beautifully absurdist comedy. The animation sequences - again - are brilliant in this one. I have to wonder if Terry Gilliam was taking LSD regularly.
Perhaps most memorable in this one is the Blackmail TV show sketch, which plays for laughs a bit more conventionally than most of the show but sees Palin on top glitzy TV show host form. Surprisingly risque, as well.
The piece featuring Cleese as a gormless boxer is possibly a bit overlong. Oddly enough one of my favourite parts of this episode was a sketch about a school performance of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. It isn't overly funny, but it just gets the dismal grammar school atmosphere spot on. Beautifully observed. And it features Connie Booth in a schoolgirl uniform; not much not to like about that.
Some of the video (or film) quality in this one is a bit poor.
How have another ten days sneaked past me since the last one? Anyway..
2:06
The first half of this one is decidedly below par, just not particularly funny. But things pick up after the half way mark with a superb sketch featuring Jones and Idle as an unfortunate jobless man whose wife has just died, and a publicity-obsessed celebrity who's an old friend. Really very good.
And the episode closes off with the classic election night sketch - one I know very well, because an audio adaptation was on one of the LPs. Actually the only sketch I recognised in the whole episode.
A couple of politically incorrect moments in this one - Graham Chapman doing a caricature of a Chinese person complete with funny accent, and someone made up as a "dead Indian" with Native American headdress, war paint and so on. The BBC is so painfully politically correct now that these off-colour moments have become something of a cause for celebration.
There's a nice animation featuring the Mona Lisa getting her knockers out.
Another 13 days have passed, I thought I watched the last one about a week ago!
And so to: 2:07
It's not a bad one at all, and yet I have no memory ever of having seen any of this. It's only the last few minutes - consisting of the Spot the Braincell TV quiz parody - that are familiar at all, and even that's only because it's on the Live at Drury Lane album.
And yet I could have sworn that I watched all of these in the '90s or early '00s.
Anyway - nothing spectacularly good, but it's pretty consistent. Maybe the sketch about village idiocy is overlong.
Eric Idle appears blacked up as a waiter called Uncle Tom in one sketch. Later, Cleese blacks up as a West Indian cricketer. They both do the preoposterous stereotype accent.
(https://i.ibb.co/WDRG4QR/idle-black.jpg)
There's also that moment when an old lady played by Terry Jones exclaims "I don't like darkies!" in Spot the Brain Cell, and Cleese - the avuncalar host - replies "Who does?!"
Come on BBC, more of this please. And while you're at it bring The Black and White Minstrel Show back.
2:08
Run of the mill at best, probably below average. Didn't recall seeing most of it. A sketch about hunting mosquitos is the highlight.
Margaret Thatcher gets a mention - she got her first job in government (as education secretary) in June 1970, just a few months before this was shown.
This one's politically incorrect moments arrive courtesy of a sketch involving two overtly effeminate homosexual judges (Idle and Palin). And in another sketch, Palin, Idle and Jones portray Mozart, Shakespeare and Michelangelo respectively, each with extravagant Yiddish accents.
2:09
Decent one, maybe a little sub-par. Actually there's no maybe about it, it is a little below par.
The highlight is the famous 'Bruces' sketch, also performed to great effect in the Live at Drury Lane record. This of course contains frequent references to "pooftahs" and actually there's a lot of lampooning of homosexuality throughout this episode. I don't quite get this because Graham Chapman was openly gay, as Palin mentions in his diaries.
There's a bit of satire aimed at Margaret Thatcher, five years before she became a party leader and almost nine before she came to power.
The Batley Townswomen's Guild are back, having re-enacted the Battle of Pearl Harbour in the first series. This time they're re-enacting the first heart transplant, but it's just surrealist messing around really. There's a lot of surreal filler in this one.
Terry Jones gets a round of applause from the audience for a comedic song and dance routine he does in character as a police officer.
Eric Idle's appearance as a woman in one of the sketches suggests that he could have been a pretty successfully transexual, if he'd been that way inclined. Better looking than Eddie Izzard anyway.
(https://i.ibb.co/1zLMWHt/idle-trans.jpg)
2:10
Well I seem to have dropped the ball so if you'll forgive a mixed metaphor, it's time to get back on the horse. Sadly, this wasn't a good one. There's a prolonged piece lampooning art cinema which is clever, but not especially witty. Then a ridiculous, overlong piece about a remake of Scott of the Antarctic which only provoked a laugh when Michael Palin was called on to wrestle with a dummy lion, then a man in a lion suit. Not exactly sophisticated humour. I was quite impressed with Carol Cleveland's performance as an egotistical Hollywood starlet, though.
Oddly, the opening credits appear more than seventeen minutes in.
I did like the fish licence sketch. Definitely captured on film, not videotape and a nice cinematic feel to it as well. It segues into a ridiculous piece about a Derby Council 15 playing the All Blacks.
I probably would have liked this episode as a kid, just for the anarchic unconventionalism. As a miserable old man though, it's mostly just a bit too daft for its own sake without being particularly funny.
2:11
Unexpectedly, a very good one. Consistently funny from start to finish with sharp, punchy sketches and laughs aplenty. And yet I don't actually know any of these pieces, don't remember seeing any of them before.
Perhaps the "crackpot religions" sketch is a bit overlong. Interesingly there's an animation in this sketch that shows telegraph poles shaped like crosses (ie cruxifixion style). Wikipedia says it was removed, but in this BluRay version, it's present.
I was amused that one of the characters in a sketch named How Not To Be Seen is called BJ Smegma. There are some extremely impressive explosions in that sketch, the props department must have bought a job lot of TNT. Or something.
I especially loved the sketch about an ad campaign for a coffee company with and Idle (especially) Cleese on manic top form, and a sketch set at the offices of Exchange and Mart. Genius.
2:12
Not a bad one. It does have a few classic Python moments.The "communist quiz" sketch in which Karl Marx, Che Guevara, Mao Tse Tung and Lenin take part in a panel game. It was on one of the records (the live one I think). The rude Hungarian phrasebook sketch ("my hovercraft is full of eels"). And most notably, the Spam sketch.
It's all good. Maybe the piece about works of art going on strike is overlong. Nothing stands out as, er, outstanding.
2:13
This one had me in stitches for the first fifteen minutes or so, then it sags a bit in the middle with an overlong piece about patients being mistreated in a hospital (it's funnier than it sounds). Then it builds to a crescendo, climaxing on one of the classic and most controversial Python sketches.
The running joke in this one is that the Queen was believed to be watching. Therefore it contains a number of sketches which might be considered to be in bad taste (deliberately, of course). None more so than the famous Undertaker's Sketch, which the BBC allowed to be broadcast only on condition that the studio audience were heard to boo, and ultimately invade the set in protest. Despite the BBC's interference, it remains very funny.
Apparently (or so I've just read), it was ordered to be wiped from the master tape so it could never be shown again. However some time in the '80s the sketch was restored from an inferior video copy (possibly even a home tape copy one of the Pythons had had made at the BBC). It doesn't look bad and the audio is fine.
The Pythons did defiantly record a version of the sketch without the audience interruptions for one of their LPs. Somewhere (probably in a cardboard box in the garage) I have a book about Monty Python that has an interview with Cleese - he says that he and Chapman were killing themselves laughing when they wrote it, and were angry and disappointed that it had to be compromised.
Reggie Bosanquet appears as himself in one of the other sketches.
And that's the end of the second series! Took me more than five months to get through it, I'll see if I can get through the third series a bit quicker.
3:1
And so we come to the third series of Monty Python's Flying Circus. This first episode was shown in October 1972, nearly two years after the last episode of the second series was first broadcast.
It's not at all bad. There's an entertaining piece about the North Malden Icelandic Saga Society contributing to a BBC drama. There's a thoroughly serviceable courtroom sketch, with Eric Idle putting in an excellent shift as an improbably sympathetic murderer. Probably the cleverest piece is one written by Cleese and Chapman about two old women arguing philosophy and existentialism at the launderette. They visit Sartre in Paris.
But ironically the funniest sketch is arguably the least unconventional - the famous Whicker's World sketch, based on simple parody and impressions of Alan Whicker.
3:2
A very good one. Consistently very funny, except for an overlong sketch about "slenderising garments".
I remembered a fair bit of this one - a very funny spoof of Blue Peter, the short piece featuring Mrs Niggerbaiter speaking to a government minister as if he were six months old, and the famous, short but funny fish-slapping sketch. I recall from Michael Palin's diaries that he was provided with brandy immediately after being dunked in the Thames. I remember him mentioning it in an interview in Melody Maker about 50 years ago as well.
Lulu and Ringo have cameos in a brief sketch at the very end. More than fifty years later, they're still both household names.
One thing that struck me (again) about this episode is the amount of material that might be considered politically incorrect in the present day. Apart from Mrs Niggerbaiter, there's a sketch with ridiculous homosexual stereotypes. Someone (Pailin I think) does a ridiculous cartoon-Chinese accent for one of the animations. And Cleese appears dressed as a "red indian" very briefly.
Palin plays an outlandishly camp TV presenter in one sketch. He played a very similar character in a guest appearance on OTT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O.T.T._(TV_series))about ten years later, but for some reason he doesn't write about that in his diaries, or at least the published version. I wonder if he came to regret it.
3:3
Fantastic one. Consistently very funny, delightfully clever and surreal comedy. A few classics in this one. The skit on The Money Programme, which I remember as a '70s TV show about finance (obviously), but which (I've just checked) actually ran until 2010. The delightfully sordid Church Police sketch, which I found that I knew by heart - it was on one of the Python LPs. On the TV version, God's hand appears appears from above to point out the culprit of a serious crime; on the LP version a booming (and oddly effeminate) heavenly voice announces "the one in the braces .. he done it".
One sketch I didn't remember at all, but which was genuinely brilliant, concerned a restaurant in the middle of a jungle. Palin and Jones both appear heavily blacked up, with cod-African accents. Actual black people appear as extras (with spears). I have to wonder what they thought of it. In the following image, Michael's character has had an altercation with a tiger.
(https://i.ibb.co/7N1gy0z/blackedup.jpg)
And another one that was on one of the albums - the legendary argument clinic sketch. Please indulge a small anecdote, intended to demonstrate this particular piece's enduring place in popular culture. A few years ago I took issue with a change of policy one of our directors intended to introduce, and when I emailed him about it, he replied with "is this a five minute argument, or the full half hour?". "I've told you once", I replied.
3:4
Another three weeks have passed somehow. Must get into the habit of doing these at least once a week.
Anyway another absolutely brilliant one, just inspired from start to finish. Hilarious. One of the best 30 minutes of telly ever. The sketches thematically segue into each other cleverly. There's a nice running joke. There's an extended animation which is gobsmackingly inventive and utterly hilarious. I laughed out loud several times. There just isn't a weak moment.
I remembered the scene with Cleese as a merchant banker and Jones as a charity worker, but didn't remember that it morphs into a genius sketch involving pantomime horses in the same office.
Richard Baker, the newsreader whom older readers may remember has a cameo in one sketch (as himself) and keeps a completely straight face. Legend.