Monty Python's Flying Circus

[Nickslikk2112]

As far as I' can tell no stadium of any kind was ever called the Stadium of Light before this.

Benfica's - Estádio da Luz.

[The Picnic Wasp]

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.

[Slim]

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.

[Slim]

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.

[Slim]

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.

[Slim]

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.

[The Picnic Wasp]

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

[Slim]

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.

[Slim]

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.

[Slim]

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.

[Slim]

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.

[Slim]

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.



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.

[Slim]

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.

[Slim]

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.

[Slim]

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.