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March 28, 2024, 06:48:24 PM

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Rewatching Monty Python's Flying Circus

Started by Sydward Lartle, April 25, 2017, 08:45:11 PM

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thenoise

Quote from: Queneau on November 30, 2018, 09:19:43 AM
I'm just wondering how Not the Nine O'Clock News can be considered an "immediate" successor when it came some 5 years later. I think you could go further and say that it is not a successor at all if you consider the shows are completely different in terms of content, style and probably target audience.

= 'next sketch show chronologically on my DVD shelf'.

I'd imagine it was compared to Python at the time though (probably unfavourably).

McChesney Duntz

Fwiw, Cleese stated several times that NTNOCN was the belated "next step" after Python. It does seem odd that no one really tried to seize the comedy mantle for a full decade after MPFC first aired. No real imitators that I can think of, either.

petril

if there's one thing NTNON had that Python didn't, it was imitators. Every second sketch show in the eighties had the same musical parody set piece, topical gags bit near the start(okay well feed lines for clips of Thatch et al) and the quick parade of visual gags where you got to hear the middle bit of the theme tune somewhere about 12 minutes in

Lisa Jesusandmarychain

" Three Of A Kind " was very much the sanitised version of " Not The Nine O Clock News ". Is David Copperfield still alive nowadays ? I have no idea.

the ouch cube

Poor MPFC sketches: Seven brides for seven brothers is bizarrely pointless and just kind of...there.

Even if it is supposed to be pointless, that just renders it pointless in a different way.

Replies From View

Quote from: petrilTanaka on November 30, 2018, 09:48:00 PM
if there's one thing NTNON had that Python didn't, it was imitators.

Python had no imitators?


Having an enormous influence isn't the same as breeding imitation, I guess.

Quote from: EOLAN on November 30, 2018, 09:23:57 AM
Another shout out for the Angus Podgorny/Blanmange/tennis sketch. Enjoyed that a lot including all the points choie pointed out. I was genuinely disappointed when Andy Murray ended up becoming quite good at that tennis as it ruined the central tenet of the sketch. And I just feel there is a great rhythym and pace to the section of everyone being converted into Scotsmen.

Just the sheer ridiculousness of it is beautiful, and there's a populism that's largely absent from the typical Python sketch.  You could imagine far more conventional sketch shows doing something like it.  Of course, today, it'd get slaughtered.

Quote from: EOLAN on November 30, 2018, 09:23:57 AM

And finally, love the outdoor street scenes in Python; giving a historical artefact of England at the time and the empty streets and estates as England gets deserted has a very beautiful, nostalgic  and melancholic tinge to it.

And stuff like office workers wearing bowler hats and pin-striped trousers in their sketches is all social history.

Andy147

Quote from: the ouch cube on December 01, 2018, 06:26:47 PM
Poor MPFC sketches: Seven brides for seven brothers is bizarrely pointless and just kind of...there.

Even if it is supposed to be pointless, that just renders it pointless in a different way.

I do like the line "Do you four boys take these two girls to be your seven brides?", and how it links with the earlier line "If you can find a piano stool you can appear later on in the show on film", but there's not a lot going for it. Does have a rare appearance of "Mrs Idle" as one of the brides.

Sexton Brackets Drugbust

Quote from: Andy147 on December 01, 2018, 07:54:21 PM
I do like the line "Do you four boys take these two girls to be your seven brides?", and how it links with the earlier line "If you can find a piano stool you can appear later on in the show on film", but there's not a lot going for it. Does have a rare appearance of "Mrs Idle" as one of the brides.

I'm tickled by, 'Behold, the seven brides.'

neveragain

"What you do in your own time padre is written on the walls of the vestry."

choie

I love the padre's dismissive wedding vows followed by "right, now go and do your prep."  I find the sheer dreariness and desultory nature of this obligatory school production, where they couldn't even care enough to find seven brothers or brides, much less bother with the actual plot/musical numbers, to be terribly, terribly tragic funny.

Speaking of the Science Fiction Sketch, it's interesting (at least to me) that they gave the role of... um... Nameless Blonde Ditzy Science "Assistant" to someone we never see again in MPFC as far as I know, instead of Carol Cleveland. We know Carol could play incredibly dumb--I find her performance as Vanilla Whoare (sp?) the best part of "Scott of the Antarctic."  The sentimentalist in me likes to think that they wouldn't wanted Graham's character to thwack her on the head the way they do Nameless Blonde Ditzy Science Assistant.

(Also... is it my memory or does Graham get most of the romance scenes in the canon?  Aside from Eric's "Now I'd like to alter the mood a little..." guitar-playing link, and I suppose Michael in the Castle Anthrax (where he doesn't actually get so much as a kiss IIRC), Graham seems to make out with more women than the rest. Well, there's Terry J. and Carol clinching in the "Bevis shows movies to his newlywed" sketch, but I can't think of anything else. Maybe it's because Graham tended to play more straight men--er, in a comedy sense--as well as leading men in the films, than the others?)

Ooh! Almost forgot:

Quote from: the on November 30, 2018, 08:53:38 AM
I (probably wrongly) assumed it was a reference to the SCUM Manifesto / acronym shenanigans.

If so, the unlikely association between the character and that concept is a gag in itself.

Whoa, I think I've heard of this book, somewhere hidden in the gray cells of my brain. I never even considered the two to be related. I agree, that would be one heck of a farfetched--amusingly so--reference if true.

Jake Thingray

Quote from: thenoise on November 30, 2018, 07:33:17 PM
= 'next sketch show chronologically on my DVD shelf'.

I'd imagine it was compared to Python at the time though (probably unfavourably).

Going from memory, despite some complaints about "bad taste", Not The Nine O'Clock News was actually pretty well-received, as it was the latter-day That Was The Week That Was the press, and certain factions within the BBC itself and the industry in general, had been longing for.

Andy147

Quote from: choie on December 02, 2018, 01:16:47 PM
I love the padre's dismissive wedding vows followed by "right, now go and do your prep."  I find the sheer dreariness and desultory nature of this obligatory school production, where they couldn't even care enough to find seven brothers or brides, much less bother with the actual plot/musical numbers, to be terribly, terribly tragic funny.

Speaking of the Science Fiction Sketch, it's interesting (at least to me) that they gave the role of... um... Nameless Blonde Ditzy Science "Assistant" to someone we never see again in MPFC as far as I know, instead of Carol Cleveland. We know Carol could play incredibly dumb--I find her performance as Vanilla Whoare (sp?) the best part of "Scott of the Antarctic."  The sentimentalist in me likes to think that they wouldn't wanted Graham's character to thwack her on the head the way they do Nameless Blonde Ditzy Science Assistant.

Well, they did find seven brothers, but Watson, Wilkins and Spratt didn't turn up...

The blonde assistant (called "She" in the script, so she really is nameless) was played by Donna Reading. IMDB  claims she was also "Girl in Bikini with It's Man", "Girl in Bed" and "Milkman Seducer" (though more authoritative sources say the last of these was Thelma Taylor).

At least one Python book reckoned that the reason random actresses would appear in one or two sketches was that Ian McNaughton would seduce women by offering them parts in MPFC.

Lisa Jesusandmarychain

Quote from: Andy147 on December 02, 2018, 04:09:59 PM
Well, they did find seven brothers, but Watson, Wilkins and Spratt didn't turn up...

The blonde assistant (called "She" in the script, so she really is nameless) was played by Donna Reading. IMDB  claims she was also "Girl in Bikini with It's Man", "Girl in Bed" and "Milkman Seducer" (though more authoritative sources say the last of these was Thelma Taylor).

At least one Python book reckoned that the reason random actresses would appear in one or two sketches was that Ian McNaughton would seduce women by offering them parts in MPFC.

Yeah,  there was that actress who played Biggles' secretary in that third series episode too, innit ? She actually played the part really well, especially when she got up from her behind her desk, and had a bit of a saunter, better than how Carol Cleveland ( top actress though she was ) would have played it, I think.

Twed

She slighty stumbles before saying "Ibiza". Career over.

She is great.

Andy147

Nicki Howorth.
Katya Wyeth gets to say "But it's my only line!" in a couple of early episodes.

choie

Thanks so much for providing the names, Andy147! It's good not to leave these women nameless (even if the Pythons did, tsk tsk).

Quote from: Lisa Jesusandmarychain on December 02, 2018, 04:47:56 PMYeah,  there was that actress who played Biggles' secretary in that third series episode too, innit ? She actually played the part really well, especially when she got up from her behind her desk, and had a bit of a saunter, better than how Carol Cleveland ( top actress though she was ) would have played it, I think.

Yes!!  I always get a kick out of Nicki Howorth (thanks again, Andy!) in the Biggles sketch--in addition to the requisite beauty, she had a sort of... sincere innocence to her, both as she's messing up the dictation and in the outrage at being thought a courtesan. Although alas she let the audience laughter step all over her run regarding various synonyms for "fairy."  (Until All the Words came out, I could never interpret what she said before "--queen!") 

As an aside, does it ever bother anyone else that either Graham--or Graham-as-Biggles, as this might have been intentional--gets the "antlers-on means I am dictating" and "antlers-off mean I'm not dictating" instructions backwards?  OTOH it might just be that once Biggles realizes his secretary has got things wrong, he quickly realizes he'd better put the antlers on to get her to stop typing...

(Oh God I'm officially Analyzing Too Much.  Sorry.) 

Anyway, you're right about Cleveland probably not being as good in this role. She might have played it too sexily, too dumb, or too funny, rather than as straight as Howorth did. 

A lot of analysis for one small sketch, but for some reason it's rather a favorite of mine.

Sexton Brackets Drugbust

Yeah, Boggles antlers error always drove me mad as a kid!

Sorry for the thread necromancy, but does anyone know what book Terry Gilliam is carrying on the bus at the end of the Spanish Inquisition episode from season 2? I'm watching the whole series on Netflix at the moment, and the picture quality is not good enough to see the name of his quite hefty and scholarly-looking tome. I realise this isn't the most burning question in this year of our lord 2020, but it would still be quite interesting to know, and it's the sort of detail that tends to get stuck in my brain (and it would be funny if it's something completely irrelevant, like The Joy of Sex).

magval

According to the notes in the fucking 100 quid blu ray set it's The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology by Rossell agile Robbins.

And now I feel like it was worth it :-)

Twonty Gostelow

Quote from: magval on December 10, 2020, 08:43:47 PM
According to the notes in the fucking 100 quid blu ray set it's The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology by Rossell agile Robbins.

Rossell Hope Robbins. Specifically this edition https://www.amazon.co.uk/Encyclopedia-Witchcraft-Demonology-Rossell-Robbins/dp/B001R1KJ8Y

Ha ha, fucking hell! Amazing work, chaps, and thanks a lot! And I can now actually see (very blurrily) that it's that very book that Twonty linked to. And of course, I meant season 1!
And while I'm here, I might as well say that season 1 was...OK. Some amusing sketches, but not actually very funny, though of course very important in the development of modern comedy (I have seen many of the sketches before, but not *in context*). But I'm two episodes into season 2, and it's already *a lot* better!

Lisa Jesusandmarychain

You *did* mean season 2 for the Spanish Inquisition sketch, you know.


(This is my only line.)

Quote from: Lisa Jesusandmarychain on December 10, 2020, 09:18:56 PM
You *did* mean season 2 for the Spanish Inquisition sketch, you know.


(This is my only line.)

Fuck me, yes I did. I finished season 1 yesterday, and started season 2 today, but somehow mixed them up. However, I am very, very drunk today.


the science eel

Quote from: Sex Festival Organizer on December 10, 2020, 09:12:38 PM
And while I'm here, I might as well say that season 1 was...OK. Some amusing sketches, but not actually very funny, though of course very important in the development of modern comedy (I have seen many of the sketches before, but not *in context*). But I'm two episodes into season 2, and it's already *a lot* better!

I liked both seasons about equally, I think. But one thing I noticed while watching the first - there are about three consecutive episodes that just aren't very good. Maybe 8, 9, 10. Something like that. It gets very good again for the last three, but...seems like they didn't 'distribute' the good stuff about fairly.

Going to start on 3 (a re-watch, of course) over Christmas.

Andy147

Quote from: the science eel on December 13, 2020, 06:26:34 PM
I liked both seasons about equally, I think. But one thing I noticed while watching the first - there are about three consecutive episodes that just aren't very good. Maybe 8, 9, 10. Something like that. It gets very good again for the last three, but...seems like they didn't 'distribute' the good stuff about fairly.

Going to start on 3 (a re-watch, of course) over Christmas.

I could be completely wrong, but I'd guess you mean 9, 10, 11.

S1E8 includes the Parrot sketch, plus "Army Protection Racket", "Buying a bed without saying mattress" and "Hell's Grannies".
E9 has the Barber/Lumberjack song, but not a lot else I'm very keen on.
E10 has a few decent short sketches, but nothing very memorable.
Ditto E11, which feels like it has a lot of undertaker sketches (but not the famous one with the fake booing).

Revelator

Quote from: Andy147 on December 15, 2020, 09:19:19 PM
I could be completely wrong, but I'd guess you mean 9, 10, 11.
E9 has the Barber/Lumberjack song, but not a lot else I'm very keen on.
E10 has a few decent short sketches, but nothing very memorable.
Ditto E11, which feels like it has a lot of undertaker sketches (but not the famous one with the fake booing).

Episode 11 ("The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Goes to the Bathroom") does drag, but also has a few quality sketches ("Inspector Tiger," "Interesting People," & the "Batley Townswomen's Guild"). Nevertheless, definitely not one of the best episodes from that series.

"Lumberjack Song" aside, episode 9 ("The Ant, an Introduction") also features "Llamas," "Kilimanjaro Expedition," and "The Visitors" (featuring Cleese's favorite Flying Circus role, the abominable Mr. Equator). Any episode with four top-notch sketches is good in my book.

Episode 10 features a lot of good rather than great sketches--"Bank Robber in a Lingerie Shop," "It's A Tree," "Vocational Guidance Counsellor," "Ron Obvious," "Gorilla Librarian," and "Strangers in the night"--so it's above average for me.

My picks for the weakest entries in the first series would be 4 ("Owl-Stretching Time"), 7 ("You're No Fun Anymore"), and 13 ("Intermission"). 4 & 13 still have great bits ("Self-Defence Against Fresh Fruit," the Colonel, "Come Back to My Place," "Historical Impersonations") but 7 is saddled with the endless blancmange story.

But as I always say about the Flying Circus, even when a sketch isn't funny it's still conceptually interesting. 

the science eel

Maybe the three were earlier in the series, then. 5, 6, 7, perhaps. Anyway - yeah, agreed that it's all at least interesting.

And is it only me who gets a kick out of the 1970-ness of them all, too? I mean, of course it's secondary to the actual ideas and performances, but it gives me a wee tingle to see an old Lyons Maid sign in a shop window, or the shaky green title cards introducing some scenes. Just beautiful stuff.