It's... (Monty Python's Flying Circus)

Member Name: Hunting_Bears

Product:	Monty Python's Flying Circus
Date:	02/07/03 (165 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: genius sketches, great acting

Disadvantages: none

'Monty Python's Flying Circus' is possibly the greatest comedy sketch show ever made on television. Mixing surrealism, absurd situations, intellectual humour and outright silliness, this programme is an inspiration to ever sketch show since its inception in 1970 with wonderfully ludicrous sketches with titles like 'I was a Hetrosexual', 'Confessions of a Cheese Addict' 'Mr. Pither' and 'Poofy Judges'. All in all there were 44 episodes stretched over four series. The last series was made without John Cleese who thought he was 'carrying the show' (but Python is funny collectively and not because of one writer and performer).

The team consisted of John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones and the best one of all Michael Palin. All were university educated (Jones and Palin studied at Oxford and the rest apart from Gilliam were educated at Cambridge). All came from upper-middle class backgrounds except for Palin and Gilliam (read Jonathan Margolis' biography of Palin and discover that Michael's dad despite being a graduate of Cambridge was one of life's big losers). They all met at the BBC after writing for various shows. The team was given carte blanche and together they managed to make television and comedic history.

The television show worked on many levels, people laughed because it was stupid, people laughed because it was incredibly clever no matter the reasons everybody laughed. The writing teams were Cleese and Chapman, Palin and Jones, animation by Gilliam and Eric Idle wrote alone.

Now it would be impossible for me to review every single episode and sketch so I have whittled them down to my personal top ten favourite...Ladies, Gentlemen, Midgets, Marxist radicals I give you Martyn Brown's:

'Monty Python's Flying Circus' Best Ten Ever...In the Entire Universe...In all of Civilisation, Undeniably, Unanim
ously, Positively, Incredibly...oh get on with...Sketches'



10. Jean-Paul Sartre

This is a great sketch with John Cleese and Graham Chapman in drag, talking about famous French Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. They apparently spent last summer on holiday with the family Sartre. Most of the dialogue is in French and there is an excellent line where (In French) Cleese asks Mrs. Jean-Paul Sartre if her husband 'is free' (to talk on the phone). The reply by Terry Jones (Mrs Sartre) is 'he's been trying to work that out for the past thirty years' (genius dialogue). The two women sail to Paris on a wooden dingy and visit Mrs Sartre and reminisce about last summer. John Cleese asks Mrs. Sartre where her husband is the reply is superb; 'He's resting in the other room, he's a bugger in the afternoon if he's had a drink'. The Monty Python drag sketches with their high-pitched voices and old women's clothes are very funny indeed.


9. Spanish Inquisition


Graham Chapman walks through a door in a living room with fancy decor and says in an unintelligible Yorkshire accent 'Thuz Truble down't mill'. The lady sat on the sofa replies with an upper class accent that she cannot understand the regional dialect and says 'I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about'. Chapman repeats the line several times and gives in. Using an upper class accent he repeats 'I was just saying that there is trouble down the mill, I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition'. At that moment three Spanish Inquisitors barge in (played by Palin, Gilliam and Jones as Cardinal Biggles) and pronounce 'Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition'. The two puzzled characters look on as Palin gets flustered with his dialogue and asks Chapman to repeat the scene so that the Inquisitors can come back in with added gusto.

This totally bizarre
sketch is a very famous and continues throughout with the Inquisitors torturing a heretic with a pillow and a comfy chair. The best part of the sketch is at the end when the three Cardinals jump on a bus and Palin says (paraprhase) 'Three to Islington please'. The sketch has total disregard for history or realism and is utterly and brilliantly insane.


8. 'Hells Grannies'

An all-time great sketch with a gang of vicious old ladies (the Pythons in drag again!), they roam the streets of London, smashing up telephone boxes and scary young mothers with prams.


7.'Nudge Nudge Wink, Wink Say No More'

Terry Jones is having a quiet pint in a pub (dressed in bowler hat and suit) when Eric Idle's cockney working class gent sits next to him and starts asking him questions disguised as double entendre's such as 'Is your wife a goer?' and 'Does your wife like photography?' Jones' reply is 'Yes we take Holiday snaps" Idle then says 'Oh yes they can be taken on holiday...candid photography oh yes" Idle's catchphrase for every answer is the famous 'Nudge nudge wink, wink say no more mate'. After a while Jones gets fed up with Idle's sexual banter and asks 'Are you insinuating something?' Idle looking shocked says 'No mate' then after a few seconds says 'Yes'. Idle asks awkwardly 'You've slept with a woman right?' Jones sits awkwardly and replies 'Yes. Idle then utters the line 'What's it like?'


6. Germany vs. Greece (International Philosophy)

This wonderful sketch in which Immanuel Kant, Nietzsche, Hiedegger, Karl Marx, Schopenhauer and other famous German philosophers battle against Plato, Socrates and Archimedes on the football pitch refereed by Confucius is amazing. The game kicks off and all the great thinkers mutter ideas amongst themselves and the commentat
or (Palin) says 'We will continue the coverage when something interesting happens'. Later on in the second half Nietzsche is yellow-carded by Confucius when he tells the referee that ' he has no free will' and the commentator informs us that 'this is Nietzsche's third booking in four games'. When the game is almost over Archimedes has an idea, passes the ball to Plato who weaves through the German defence and boots it over to Socrates who scores with a diving header into the open goal.


5. Argument Sketch


Michael Palin walks into an office and says to a secretary
'I'd like to have an argument please'
She replies:
'Would you like a single five minute argument or a course of nine'?
Palin thinks hard and asks for a single half-hour argument and pays £5. He walks down a corridor into an office and is confronted with Graham Chapman who yells insults such as 'What do you want you snivelling odious malcontent?'
Palin is shocked and says 'I'd to have an argument'.
Chapman apologies and says
'Sorry this is abuse, this 12A you want 12B next door'.
Palin walks out the door and Chapman insults him. Palin opens 12b and is confronted with John Cleese who tells him to have a seat. Cleese then sits in silence and says
"I will not start until you pay me five pounds".
A shocked Palin says
"I paid the secretary".
Cleese:
"No you didn't".
Palin:
"Yes I did".
"No you didn't".
"Yes I did".
After about a minute of passing back and forth Palin complains
"This isn't an argument its just contradiction".
Cleese: "No it isn't".
Exasperated Palin continues.
"Yes it is an argument is a series of statements for or against on a given hypothesis. You're just contradic
ting every
thing I say".
Cleese "No I'm not".
Palin "Yes you are".
Cleese then rings a small bicycle bell
"Ok five minutes are up".
Palin is frustrated and feeling cheated.
"That was never five minutes".
Cleese "Yes it was".
Palin sighs.
"I shan't continue unless you pay me another five pounds" Cleese carries on with his paper work.
Palin hands over the money begrudgingly but Cleese remains face down eyes on his work.
"Well" Palin asks.
"Well what" a puzzled Cleese replies.
"The argument I paid you another five pounds".
"No you didn't"
After another round of yes and no Palin says
"Hah hah! If I didn't pay you five pounds why are you arguing?"
Cleese looking caught out replies
"I'm not".
"Yes you are".
Cleese says
"I could be arguing in my spare time".



4. The Dead Parrot Sketch

This is a priceless moment and possibly the gang's most famous moment in all of comedy. Michael Palin is the owner of a pet store, John Cleese the customer who wishes to return a parrot that he believes is dead. Palin refuses to except that the parrot is dead and comes up with a multitude of excuses including "It's not dead it's one of those Norwegian blue's pining for the fjords". I love this sketch because Palin's character refuses to recognise that the bird is dead, Priceless.


3. Ministry of Silly Walks


A sketch involving Cleese (and his famous bandy legs) and Michael Palin. John Cleese's character works at the Ministry of Funny Walks in Whitehall and Palin has an appointment to see if he can obtain a government grant to help fund is funny walk. Cleese isn't the least bit impressed with Palin's example and shows him a film made to look like si
lent film foo
tage of historical funny walks. Obviously this gag is very visual but you have to watch it because John Cleese is the master of 'Funny Walks'.


2. Little Red Riding Hood and Buzz Aldrin'


This little sketch is beyond funny, narrated by Michael Palin it features John Cleese as Little Red Riding Hood who knocks over trees, eats and spits out pieces of chicken, Little Red Riding Hood is a grotesque, statuesque 'Brick shithouse'. The first laugh out loud moment occurs when the narrator says 'There once was a woodcutter and his wife who had a lovely daughter' cut to Cleese dressed in ill-fitted red clothes and blonde wig chopping wood with his hands'. Cleese is 6'4 in real life and he barges his way through the forest breaking branches and pushing over trees. The 'Big Bad Wolf' is nothing but a small dog dressed up in furs. The wolf travels to a little log cabin and is confronted not by the Grandmother but by astronaut Buzz Aldrin. The cabin is in fact NASA'S European Headquarters and the dog is shot by security. The narrator continues 'NASA agreed to stop their nuclear testing except for Mondays and Thursdays after teatime'. Mr and Mrs Riding Hood 'sold their story for forty thousand Deutsch Marks to Der Spiegel (there is a shot of the family who now own a Ferrari. An utterly stupid and absurd twist on a fairy tale and one of the funniest Python sketches ever.



1. The Yorkshire Businessmen



My favourite sketch is where a group of Yorkshiremen are sat around in dinner jackets, smoking cigars and reminiscing about their poverty striken childhoods spent invariably in septic tanks, a hole in the ground, a crack in the middle of the road, a lake and a corridor. Each of the men tries out do each other with tales of how deprived they were and how kids today don't know they are born.

(rough transscript)


Graham Chapman comes out with this line after hearing that none of others lived in a house ups the ante by announcing:

"When I say it were a house I meant it was a hole in the ground with a tarpaulin over it, but it were a house to us"

Palin's character: "Luxury, we lived in a rolled up newspaper in a septic tank, we come home after 15 hours down't mill and our dad would thrash us if we were lucky".

Jones' character "Luxury. We lived in the middle of a lake, we'd have to get up at five in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of cold gravel, go work down't mill and come home. And our dad would cut us in half with a bread knife and dance on our graves".

Eric Idle says "Right...I had to get up half an hour before I went to bed and pay the owner of the mill for permission to come to work".



Monty Python's Flying Circus is a truly genius work, funny, witty, outright stupid and totally irreverent, groundbreaking comedy at its best. Many have tried to copy the style but never succeeded (not even the Fast Show). Who else could write a sketch about an utterly rubbish sketch. It is an audacious moment when Graham Chapman's Army General interrupts the scene by announcing "This whole premise is silly. I'm stopping it. I'm the senior officer here and I haven't had a funny line yet".

They may all be old men now pushing sixty but they are and will forever be genius comedians (even Eric Idle).

Summary: