Monty Python's Flying Circus

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3:13

This is the last one of the third series and the final Monty Python's Flying Circus TV episode to feature John Cleese as a performer, although he was happy to participate in the films, and writing for Holy Grail began at roughly the same time that this was broadcast in January 1973.

Unfortunately, this isn't a particularly good one. The whole thing is linked together by a running joke about a tedious awards ceremony which is a bit overdone. The one classic item (or at least it was on one of the LPs) is the Oscar Wilde sketch, and even that isn't as funny as it seemed when I was 14. Maybe I've just heard it too many times.

I did love Terry Jones' "dirty vicar". He gets to grope Carl Cleveland's right breast. I don't know if he wrote that sketch himself. I laughed out loud.

I quite liked a sketch about a strap-on electronic brain from Currys, and Ioticed that part of it was filmed at a location called The Bye in W3 (as you can see from the sign on the house).



Had a look on Street View, the same sign is still affixed to the side of the house, but at some point an extension has been built:



If you look carefully on Street View and the source material from the Python episode, you can see that the same paving stones are in place, half a century later.

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4:1

In October 1974 the Pythons, minus John Cleese, return for one last, short telly series. Whereas the first three series each have thirteen episodes, the fourth has only six.

Cleese hadn't left the group. Work had already commenced on the Holy Grail film, which he did appear in. But although he did write material for the final series, he didn't want to perform in it. So he didn't.

I well remember sitting down to watch this one evening slightly less than fifty years ago, though watching it again today, I barely remembered any of it. The first eighteen minutes or so consist of a sketch about the Montgolfier brothers. It has more of an anarchic sitcom feel than a Python sketch. I did remember the brothers' conversation about personal hygiene, but little else.

A couple of brief unrelated sketches follow then there's a much funnier piece about an inaugural Zeppelin flight.

There isn't a standalone animated piece which seems a shame, though Gilliam does contribute brief animations to other sketches.

The visual quality of the material recorded on video (as opposed to film) is a bit higher in this series; I suppose the tech had moved on a bit by 1974.

This episode was written almost entirely by Palin, according to Wikipedia. It's not bad. It definitely picks up towards the end.

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4:2

For me anyway easily the most memorable of the fourth series episodes, though I'd forgotten that it's a full-length story (this is only the second episode to do this). It's about a man who buys an ant from a department store, though it does deviate into pieces that work well as standalone sketches.

Written mainly by Cleese (who of course does not appear) and Chapman, with help from Palin and Neil Innes, though it's Eric Idle who features most prominently. As a writer, Eric contributes very little material to this fourth series, because (according to Palin's diary) he was in France for most of the planning and writing stage.

Once again there isn't a long animation sequence which seems a shame. But Gilliam does have a couple of minor speaking parts.

It's really a very good one. A bit of a gem. The ideas sustain a full-length story much better than the cycling tour episode from the third series. Jones is excellent throughout but Palin is especially brilliant as a German Queen Victoria.

Somehow, the material written by Cleese was written for, but not used in, the Holy Grail film. Difficult to understand because the film was set in AD 932, whereas this whole episode takes place in the 1970s.

Idle gets to do a Brian Clough impression near the end.

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4:3

Pretty good one. It does have two sketches which I remember fondly, one of which I would suggest is a classic: the RAF banter sketch. Sausage squad up the blue end, and all that. Written by Palin and Jones. And the woody / tinny words sketch.

The sketches flow into each other or refer to each other in the usual clever surrealist manner. There's one overlong and not particularly funny sketch about TV executives retitling old TV programmes.



I was slightly uncomfortable watching two middle-aged ladies, Jones and Chapman, using a remote control which operates their TV by giving a browned up Terry Gilliam, in what I might describe as a punkah wallah outfit, an electric shock.

Douglas Adams makes a brief appearance as a doctor.

A World War II theme is used quite persistently, but there's no underlying narrative or plot. It's really strange, watching these sketches from 1974, to think that the war they depict took place only thirty years previously.

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4:4

I liked this one. I must have seen it when it was first shown and at least once since then. But I didn't remember a minute of it.

Apart from the obvious fact that John Cleese isn't in it, it's pretty standard Python fare. Very good, though there's nothing here I could point to as outstanding. I would say that the comedy leans ever so slightly more into the conventional in this last series, though I think that has more with impending middle age than Cleese being absent.

I especially liked the sketch about bogus psychiatrists. Some of the dialogue from it featured in one of the books so it was familiar to me from that. Actually the conclusion of that one, featuring a 1970s computer masquerading as a psychiatrist and subsequently being shot by Carol Cleveland, is genius.

There's a spoof of the old Nationwide programme, with Idle doing an impression of Michael Barratt, who only died a couple of years ago (I've just read). Later, Palin gives us his best Frank Bough. Not the sort of thing that's aged terribly well of course, but then I'm sure it wasn't anticipated that people would still be watching these 50 years later.

There's a sketch based on Westminster Bridge. I love to see archive footage of London. Must have a look on Street View later and see if any of the old street furniture's still there.

In one sketch, Terry Gilliam appears blacked up, completely unnecessarily. However I find that in these days of stifling political correctness, I cherish this sort of thing.



And here's a gratuitous shot of Carol Cleveland, from Westminster Bridge.

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4:5

A pretty good one, another "full length story" episode, although the story is tenuous and of course the constituent parts go off on surreal tangents, some of which have almost nothing to do with the story, such as it is.

It's a tale about a comic-style super-villain called Mister Neutron, played by Chapman. The most dangerous man in the universe, no less. A character who is the supreme head of the US armed forces and sits at a huge desk beneath a massive eagle emblem is played by Palin. I was amazed by this because I remembered it well, but would have sworn it was played by Chapman. In either event, the character is obsessed by his own personal hygiene and spends a lot of time sniffing under his arms. I recall having a laugh about it at school the next day.

There's also a character called Teddy Salad, a CIA agent master of disguise, played firstly by a dog, then an animated dog model.

It's probably a bit sub-par in the context of the whole series and some of the arch cleverness found in earlier episodes is absent. There's no Gilliam animation either, except for a few short clips intended as special effects. I wonder why he'd given up on doing the long animations by the last series? They're just as sorely missed as Cleese, for me.

Despite that, it's a lot of fun. Written mainly by Jones and Palin, like the first "full length" episode (the cycling tour one).

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4:6

And finally, the very last one. This one is genuinely a belter. Nice that we close on a high.

Opens with the Most Awful Family In Britain sketch which has lived with me ever since I first saw it fifty years ago and was even better than I remembered. The spectacle of a grubby and bloated Terry Gilliam lying on his back, spooning baked beans into his mouth, covered in them and exclaiming "I'VE RUN OUT OF BEANS" is surely one of television's great moments. The entire family are awful. And the disintegrating set is a work of art. I believe this sketch was inspired by a BBC reality TV show from the same year which followed a working class family through their daily lives, fly-on-the-wall style. I remember that as well. Horrible.

The whole episode is very tight and very funny. It has some beautifully grotesque laugh-out-loud moments. Actually I had a sense that they were deliberately courting controversy once or twice, especially during a sketch involving an army brigadier in a tutu and a bishop who clearly have the hots for each other.

There's a recurring theme about the Liberal Party that mostly involves a caricature of Jeremy Thorpe appearing on screen for a brief moment; the episode is subtitled "Party Political Broadcast".

Apart from the Awful Family sketch, I especially enjoyed a classic Idle piece about people finishing each other's sentences, and the Batsmen of the Kalahari sketch, involving a lot of black extras playing cricket and slaughtering white batsmen by bowling spears and machetes instead of cricket balls. Definitely one that the BBC wouldn't broadcast now. For one thing you'd have to say "batters".

Here's an interesting thing. All of the batsmen are called 'Pratt'. W.G Pratt, Z. Pratt, C.U. Pratt, and so on. I wondered: could this have inspired the nickname of a certain Canadian drummer? I googled this, from the Guardian "readers' questions" for My Effin' Life:



There's a simple but brilliant Gilliam animation.

Neil Innes and Douglas Adams contribute material, though neither appear.

So that's that! Very glad that I finally watched the entire four series from start to finish, I'd had an aspiration to do that for many years. I do think this last series stands up quite well in the canon as a whole, although Cleese is missed.

The first Python episode was screened by the BBC fifty-five years ago last night.