TV Series: Monty Python's Flying Circus

My regular readers will probably have guessed the reason for my lack of posts this month. I've been watching television series instead of films. I don't write reviews of every series I watch, but I ought to make a few comments, just so that you know I'm still alive. Among other things I've been watching "Monty Python's Flying Circus" lately. The whole tv series, as broadcast from 1969 to 1973.

I often speak to people who claim to be Monty Python fans. Then when I ask them they say they only know the films, not the television series. Significantly, in America the Monty Python tv series has never been released on DVD as a standalone item, it's only been boxed together with the films, as if it were an extra. If you're one of the people who only knows Monty Python from the films you're missing out. True, the films are excellent (and I may review them at a future date), but the television shows are even better.

The Monty Python team was made up of six writers, who were also the primary actors in the show: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. In the fourth season John Cleese left the show. A lot of fans associate Monty Python with John Cleese, but he was actually a minor contributor. In the whole of the third season he only wrote two sketches, although he appeared as an actor throughout the season. All six people wrote sketches, but the main creative team was Terry Jones and Michael Palin. Graham Chapman and Terry Gilliam also co-wrote a large number of sketches.

Monty Python is often considered a revolution in British comedy, but it was actually part of a continuous development which started with "The Goon Show", a radio comedy series starring Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe that ran from 1951 to 1960. Spike Milligan continued this style of comedy on television in his solo series. "The Frost Report" and "At last the 1948 Show" were two other comedy series leading up to Monty Python.

It's difficult to summarise the humour of Monty Python. Obviously it's known for its silliness, but there are serious intellectual undertones. Palin and Jones were Oxford University graduates, while Cleese, Chapman and Idle were Cambridge graduates. Their sketches frequently make reference to Jean-Paul Sartre and other philosophers. A typical Monty Python episode is a series of sketches that run into one another. Although the sketches were usually on unrelated topics, there would be random intrusions by characters or situations from previous sketches.

The sketches would often use alienation techniques, reminding the viewer that he's only watching television. A character might forget his lines, and somebody else would hand him the script to remind him. Someone would turn up in a costume, then be sent away because he wasn't due till the next sketch. People from the "BBC planning committee" would walk in and order a sketch to be discontinued because it was too silly. Sometimes a show would have a fake ending, and the viewer would be fooled into believing that the news was starting. The BBC vignette would show, followed by the news credits, and on several occasions the newsreader Richard Baker would appear reading fake news reports. ("Monty Python's Flying Service" was broadcast at 8:30pm on BBC1, the main news program of the day was at 9:00pm). This doesn't work quite as effectively on DVD, but I'm sure many viewers were fooled when it was first broadcast.

While not a revolution in British comedy, "Monty Python's Flying Circus" was certainly the peak in its genre. Very few programmes carried on in this style. Spike Milligan and Marty Feldman had similar comedy shows. Probably "The Goodies" came closest to the spirit of Monty Python, while not reaching its quality. If you haven't seen the tv series yet, buy it. For an early series, starting in 1969, it's surprisingly good picture and sound quality. It compares favorably with "The Benny Hill Show", which still has some fuzzy scenes as late as 1982.