Monty Python's Flying Circus - Classic or Dud?

Yeah I've never met an American MP fan who felt that Gilliam was the main attraction. Guy just got a lot more ink over the years because his work outside of Python was significantly higher profile.

xps

Wait, was Monty Python responsible for that weirdly-long epilogue to my favorite Gilliam movie, The Crimson Permanent Insurance? That was pretty good, I guess.

Yeah darragh have you met someone who was like “I only liked the cartoons?” I cannot imagine such a person into being

Insurance Assurance, oof

"Yeah flying circus has some pretty racist bits, but have you rewatched Spike Milligan's Q.. series recently?

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length)"

"less racist than Q" is setting the bar real, real low.

"The Wikipedia page for Al Jolson contains a lot of carefully sourced “he had black friends” which made me kind of 🤨

― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby)"

yes this is extremely wikipedia, i recall the wikipedia page for "coal black and de sebben dwarfs" being the same way

"Lots of homophobic/transphobic cheap laughs in MP too - all in line with the popular light entertainment of the day.

― Ward Fowler"

yeah for me personally their contribution to the (long established) british tradition of comedy transvestism is the worst thing about them

having made all these ancillary complaints i will point out as is my wont that "monty python and the holy grail" is one of the most historically accurate movies about the medieval era there is and i will always love them for that

It was a prologue, not an epilogue – shown before TMoL, or the first part of it if you will.

xps

I think you have been read that xps too fast.

monty python and the holy grail" is one of the most historically accurate movies about the medieval era

I find the prevelance of coconuts unlikely tbh.

xpost Yes, as per usual, that was just me being a total dipshit.

it may have been british ilxors on this very thread who the fucknose

It's always anglophile Americans I come across who love MP the most and the grotesque 'Britishness' is obviously a big part of the appeal.

"Wait, was Monty Python responsible for that weirdly-long epilogue to my favorite Gilliam movie, The Crimson Permanent Insurance? That was pretty good, I guess."

that is from a Monty Python film, yes.

xpost Yes, as per usual, that was just me being a total dipshit.

― Fantasy Eyelid (Old Lunch), Wednesday, November 28, 2018 9:04 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It helps to know that the prologue was very much Gilliam's thing.

Also, whatever dialect Graham Chapman is using in the "flying sheep" sketch never fails to make me laugh. Nor does the following bit with Cleese and Palin speaking as Frenchmen demonstrating the sheep airliner.

"Wait, was Monty Python responsible for that weirdly-long epilogue to my favorite Gilliam movie, The Crimson Permanent Insurance? That was pretty good, I guess."

i thought this was funny OL do not apologise

yes, OL's dumb joke was good and ppl explaining it to him are the true dummies

There's a reason why Netflix isn't re-running the Goodies - and it's not just to annoy Bill Oddie, though that is a fine and noble reason in itself.

It's the same reason they're not re-running any other British sitcom or sketch-com or sit-sketch or indeed any programme of any kind from the 1970s (or 1980s or 1990s)

Netflix US does have 'Allo 'Allo!

I rescind my entire posting history

Also, whatever dialect Graham Chapman is using in the "flying sheep" sketch never fails to make me laugh.

Yes! "Notice they do not so much fly, as ploomet."

Aussie Netflix has fawlty towers and yes minister, there’s probably more but I can’t say I’ve loooked too hard.

There's a reason why Netflix isn't re-running the Goodies

There's plenty of racism in The Goodies and at least one incidence of blackface (specifically Tim Brooke-Taylor in blackface as an African-American boxer in 'Kung-Fu Capers'). The BBC did a 'Goodies Night' a few years ago and IIRC they couldn't show an entire episode. Instead they kept showing clips and then cutting back to Tim/Grahame/Bill in a studio in front of a live audience.

Also, whatever dialect Graham Chapman is using in the "flying sheep" sketch never fails to make me laugh.

A kind of generic West Country yokel accent. Or East Anglian.

Aussie Netflix has fawlty towers and yes minister, there’s probably more but I can’t say I’ve loooked too hard.

ha ha, searching for Yes, Minister on US Netflix brings up:

Fawlty Towers
The IT Crowd
World War II In Colour
the US remake of House Of Cards
Bodyguard
The Good Place
Death In Paradise
Friends
Life Of Brian
The Roosevelts: An Intimate History
and Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac

My first exposure to Python was via a CBBC programme called 'Boxpops' which also featured this sketch from NTNOCN:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asUyK6JWt9U

Which, while somewhat true, isn't half calling the kettle black in NTNOCN's case. And re-watching it on YouTube a year or so ago, it's probably aged much worse…

i certainly think SCTV w/ the peak cast was better than 50/50

is SCTV streaming anywhere?

It is strange how poorly the UK looks back on the Goodies - it was very very popular in Australia in the 80s as a kids show! Apparently even the cast members were a bit taken aback.

I dont recall weather what we saw was edited much, but probably not given how shithouse Australians tend to be about caring about racism/sexism in media in the first place ("its just a jooooke cant you take a joke" etc)

haha never saw that NTNOCN skit. Funny.

AFAIK the Goodies never ran in the US, at least not with any regularity; maybe a few PBS stations picked it up in the 80's. I've never seen it and only knew about it from books on Python.

It is strange how poorly the UK looks back on the Goodies - it was very very popular in Australia in the 80s as a kids show!

It was generally considered a bit of kids show in the UK tbh.

it was a kids show

it was on at 7, even benny hill was on at 8

Many episodes parodied current events, such as an episode where the entire black population of South Africa emigrates to Great Britain to escape apartheid. As this means that the white South Africans no longer have anyone to exploit and oppress, they introduce a new system called "apart-height", where short people (Bill and a number of jockeys) are discriminated against.

Huh.

(xp) I think Bill Oddie got annoyed at the idea that it was seen as a kids show but then he's annoyed at everything.

it was on at 7, even benny hill was on at 8

it was generally on at 5-6pm in Australia, and quite frequently cut. They did a stage tour in 2005 which was largely them sitting down, talking about the episodes that had been censored, and then showing the censored bits on a big screen.

lol

i liked the one where they knew the end of the world was about to happen bcz the pages in graeme's diary were blank after a certain date, aged 11 i thought this tremendous stuff

I remember one episode that was a parody of Clockwork Orange - not exactly a kids' film!

i think the parody involved them dressing up then falling down

IIRC, Cleese appears in The Goodies as a genie emerging from a can, shouts "Kids' programme!" and disappears.

everything the goodies have done since the goodies is better than anything john cleese did EVEN IN MONTY PYTHON there i said it

Some of them were definitely broadcast later than 7, I wasn't allowed to stay up for them. Altho that was probably mainly on the grounds that my dad "wasn't watching that rubbish".

yr dad otm tho i loved em (silly men falling down was my jam)

Yeah I had the books and watched the TV show whenever the opportunity presented. The books were *definitely* not kids material despite the fact that yeah it's just gussied up slapstick mostly

I still fondly remember the Bronson The Wonder Man and "many moods of Charles Bronson" jokes from the Goodies' Disaster Movie book in the school library, despite having not seen Death Wish at age 8, nor any subsequent age

Is that a dagger I see before me? No, it's Trufo the wonder dog!

...sorry I seem to have derailed a Python thread into a Goodies discussion haha.

monty python and the holy grail" is one of the most historically accurate movies about the medieval era

Unlike almost every other film, MP films really got onscreen filth right. Like, literally, the cast often looks like it'd been rolling around in the dirt and mud before shooting a scene.

holy grail is probably their finest achievement in so many ways -- a consistently funny script, fine performances, just enough animation -- that i wish i hadn't burned out on it so long ago

still laugh whenever i think of "what, the curtains?"

Yeah. Probably not an uncommon story, but The Holy Grail deeply resonated with me and my nerd (USA) friends in middle school in the mid 90s. Like actually revelatory, shaped our senses of humor and inspired us to write comedy bits that we passed back and forth. It was an obsession for a good year or two.

We delved deeper into all the other Python stuff but it was mostly never on the same level in our minds. Not entirely sure of the alchemy, that one wrecked us scene to scene but the other movies and show mostly fell flat.