Rewatching Monty Python's Flying Circus

[Catalogue Trousers]

Plus I think he chose his moment by deliberately coming back once Famous Mortimer, Jemble Fred, Ronnie the Raincoat, Hank Kingsley and so on weren't here.

Which is a bad thing how, exactly? If anything, it looks to me more like Sydward was doing his best to avoid unpleasant bitchy infighting by only coming back when such was the case. Cowardly? Maybe. Respectful and prudent? A lot more likely. You seem to be the only person who wants to carry on the old and pointless hostilities.

This board's big enough for all of us. Just ignore each other, if you really can't stand each other so much. Sydward is coming across as the more patient and better man by far at this point, despite his odd lapse into his old ways when goaded - and I'm another one who very much wants him to stay.

This olive branch brought to you by Catalogue Trousers.



Edit new page number 3, THE HORSE CHESTNUT.

[Sydward Lartle]

And as for going on about "pandering hacks doing 'ironic' material about 'spazzies'"-- good grief, you do realise The Mary Whitehouse Experience was over a quarter of a century ago, and David Baddiel is hardly at the forefront of present-day stand-up comedy?

I was referring more to Ricky Gervais, Jimmy Carr and Frankie Boyle, as a matter of fact - all of whom get away with peddling material even the likes of Jim Davidson wouldn't touch with a barge pole under the thin veneer of 'irony' and 'ha ha, we can laugh at this because we know it's wrong'. To paraphrase Frank from God Bless America - since you're such a stickler for referring to sources - comedy that exists purely to be provocative or offensive isn't 'edgy'. The comedians I mentioned above could not possibly be more mainstream or pandering if they tried, because there are thousands of morons out there who were brought up under the stifling cloak of political correctness and therefore find it liberating and outrageous when some smirking troll does a piss-poor routine about 'n**ger bombing' or Jordan's son fucking her. This is the 'I can't believe you just said that' generation, like it or not. As much as it's a fucking horrible and reductive state of affairs, it's here, and I don't think it's going to disappear any time soon.

A word of advice -- start liking Ken Dodd.

Although I'm nobody's idea of a Doddy fan, I did go and see the man himself in concert around twenty years ago, and not only did he do a whopping five hours on stage - admittedly with a song here and there to give his whirring comic brain a rest - he never repeated a single gag, comment or aside. I admire his dedication to his craft and his determination to give audiences value for money, even if I don't particularly care for his material - some of which was, admittedly, very good indeed.

[Lapsedcat]

Here's a PM Jake Thingray sent me when I was a member of this board back in 2013. I haven't kept any of his more recent obnoxious messages, but I think this one tells you everything...

Oh, just kill yourself. No-one will miss you. Jem Roberts (and Louis Barfe and, in a lesser way, myself) actually get commissions to write about what they know about, because they're able to write to order and take others' views into account; you just spew out any old rubbish off the top of your head (increasingly, stuff you've posted before, on your blogs that nobody reads) and expect people to call you a genius. If you can't accept that not everyone shares your views on everything, and moderate what you have to say accordingly, you'll remain on benefits and your only outlet will be being tolerated by people who despise you, as on here.
And the Goodies is dreadful.

How can you even begin to reason with someone like that?
I've reported him to the moderator and sent Barry Admin a PM; nothing has worked. So I think it's best that I leave. It's horrible that I've effectively been bullied off the board again - by a filler writer for a failing broadsheet - but he's the one keeping this vendetta alive, not me. All I want is a quiet life. Be warned though, Gavin, if you continue to shadow my internet presence, or if I receive any more unwanted mail at my home address, or indeed anonymous e-mails from people gloating over my past misfortunes, you are very high on the list of suspects and will be dealt with accordingly.

For the record, since this latest saga began, I have received several PMs from people saying 'welcome back', 'please don't go' and 'ignore the naysayers', yet once again, I find myself forced out by one single person with a burning grudge. I thought I might be safe this time now that the usual bunch of cackling opportunistic hyenas are no longer around, but it seems not to be the case.

Whoever he is he sounds like a dreadful cunt. The Goodies were GRATE.

[Sydward Lartle]

Up to the third episode now, and there has definitely been an improvement. The opening courtroom sketch dragged a bit, but I enjoyed Palin's performance as Cardinal Richilieu, in particular the way he says "I sure did that thing", and the songs about wanting to be a window cleaner and an engine driver. I've been on a Play Away binge recently and this kind of fucking jocular silliness chimes with me. I also enjoyed the filthy children's stories and the restaurant sketch, but again, I think the version in And Now For Something Completely Different is much better. Still a mixed bag, but it's definitely looking up.

[Serge]

Palin's performance as Cardinal Richilieu, in particular the way he says "I sure did that thing"

One of my favourite moments in all of Python.

[Revelator]

The 'famous deaths' sketch was a terrible choice for an opener

I can't agree. There are wonderful bits in that sketch--the special request death of a random average man (rather sinister really), or the Nelson's dummy plummeting to the street while screaming "Kiss me Hardy!"

the language class where - hilarity upon hilarity - native Italians were being taught Italian by a teacher who needed members of the class to translate each other's complaints to him

Well, it is a funny idea, and the sketch is held just long enough to express it before transitioning into Whizzo Butter. And Chapman's stolid German and the Naples/Milan rivalry are also inspired bits.

Amazing how dated the spoof arts programmes seem now - television just doesn't look like that any more, and hasn't for a long time.

So? You can hardly fault a show from 1969 for not accurately satirizing the look of television from four decades later. And the "Eddie-baby" and "Two-sheds" sketches are master-classes in exploiting passive-aggressiveness and flat-out rudeness for comic effect. The look may have dated, the humor hasn't.

The painters' cycling race was desolation itself. The lack of reaction from the studio audience made the whole thing seem even bleaker, somehow.

Well this is a case of material that isn't playing for belly-laughs but exploiting an imaginative concept, and mostly succeeding, thanks to the level of detail in content (a veritable catalogue of modernist artists) and presentation (the various breathless reporters, including Palin with his slap-on Picasso heads). The final shot of Toulouse-Lautrec pedaling past on a child's tricycle is doubly funny, since Picasso's journey had been offscreen and in the viewer's imagination.

I did get a jolt of recognition / nostalgia when the 'funniest joke in the world' sketch started, but by God, the original television version was flaccid, under-rehearsed and far too loose when compared to the tight, pacy re-working from And Now For Something Completely Different.

I had the opposite reaction. I can't think of a single sketch from And Now For Something Completely Different that didn't better in the original TV series. On film the material felt stiff and dead.

The French scientists expounding on the flying sheep - 'aren't foreigners hilarious?' Not really.

Not all foreigners, but excitable Frenchmen are.

The Epilogue wrestling match would have worked better at half the length, get in, do the gag, move on, but as it was they killed it through overexposure.

That's a bizarre reaction to a sketch that breaks off before the first wrestling match is even over.

'The Mouse Problem' was a pretty weak finalé

I thought it was a pitch-perfect parody of the documentary expose format, right down to the vox pops ("Well I mean, they can't help it, can they? But, er, there's nothing you can do about it. So er, I'd kill 'em.")

Is it worth continuing with the rest of the series?

It's the greatest sketch comedy ever made. Of course you should continue.

Q seems definitely the more anarchic, the more dangerous of the two. Python is overall the better written but Q really has that feeling that anything could happen.

I'm not sure if Q really is more anarchic. I've seen most of it and my impression is that when you've seen one episode you can predict the format of them all. With the Pythons you're never sure when they'll throw animation at you, or if they won't show the titles until a minute before the end, or if this week's episode will be a Cycling Tour, or whether the sketches will start cannibalizing each other, or there will be a callback to an earlier sketch where you absolutely least expect it. That kind of anarchy requires the sort of planning and discipline that Spike didn't have. It's true that you never know when Milligan will tire of a sketch, but Q otherwise has a pretty predictable basic format, and the shows tend to blend into each other in a way that Python doesn't. I'd also like to speak up in defense of Python's first series--no, it's not as well-oiled as the later series, but had those never existed it would be regarded as stone-cold classic, containing a rich hoard of great standalone sketches.

[Replies From View]

Terry Gilliam's end credits for the Marty Feldman Comedy Machine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AWIBgaRPLo

[the science eel]

Terry Gilliam's end credits for the Marty Feldman Comedy Machine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AWIBgaRPLo

OH! that's wonderful!

Straight to my Fb page...

[Sydward Lartle]

I'm going to continue with Monty Python, because I already know the second series contains some hilarious moments (even if there are a fair few sketches that fall flatter than a witch's tit, and the whole Scott of the Sahara episode is pretty arid from start to finish) and the third series just bubbles with supreme confidence, but I think a few things need to be put into some perspective before I continue, lest this thread seems like I'm just gainsaying popular opinion or hacking great lumps out of a sacred cow for shits and giggles.

A well-meaning friend of the family bought me a ticket for one of the big Python reunion shows at the O2 a few years ago. Yes, I went along, and to be absolutely fair, I had a smashing seat - quite near the front - but I think I laughed about twice. Pretty poor going for a comedy show. I was far from alone in my sense-of-humour shutdown - indeed, when Palin appeared onstage in the auburn wig and leopard print jacket of his Blackmail host, surrounded by what looked like half a dozen lingerie models, the man next to me sighed 'This is fifty shades of bollocks, isn't it?' to his (female) companion who'd spent the entire evening muttering 'Oh, for God's sake'. John Cleese was far from match-fit, and knowing that Terry Jones was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease explains why his performance that night was all over the place. What really hurt, though, was how... Idle-ised the whole evening felt. Taking all those sketches and routines and putting them through the same glitzy bullshit treatment that made Spamalot a huge hit with idiots. How very dare he.

In fact, the scale and success alone of these reunion shows seems to sum up a key problem with the Python legacy nowadays. It's become so monolothic that it's almost impossible to criticise, and it's been praised, examined, dissected, venerated and hero-worshipped to the extent that anyone who watches it for the first time and simply doesn't find it funny is bound to think they're either missing something, or - rather like the hardier souls who found themselves unable to shed a tear or display the correct symptoms of national mourning in the aftermath of Diana's death - convince themselves that there's something wrong with them. Elsewhere on this forum, there are threads from other users complaining that they found Eraserhead disappointing or that they didn't laugh much during This is Spinal Tap. In short, excessive admiration is as capable of destroying art as closed-minded indifference.

Then, of course, there's the knotty problem of the very specific set of circumstances that brought the Python team into existence in the first place, to wit; comfortable white men, too steeped in the class system, bums-and-tits sexual innuendo, and casual racism and sexism to be truly satirical about a medium they didn't grow up with (i.e. television) but only ever experienced as a career choice after university. John Cleese in particular is a BBC man to his toenails, with his severe manner, his sensible haircut and the imposing presence of a testy schoolmaster. Terry Gilliam was the only true breath of fresh air - a contemporary of future underground legend R. Crumb and alumnus of the Harvey Kurtzman school of American satire (Mad / Help! / Humbug) is patronisingly regarded as 'the animator', whilst Graham Chapman getting pissed, dressing as a Viking and saying 'ocelot' in a plummy accent is apparently the height of comic genius. 

Michael Palin and Terry Jones were clearly just waiting for films to come along, hence the strong visual element to most of their sketches and their oft-repeated stage direction which called for 'a slow pan across impressive countryside accompanied by stirring music'. Eric Idle was just a chancer who was very seldom funny - even in his own series, Rutland Weekend Television, he was frequently upstaged and outperformed by jobbing character actors like David Battley and Henry Woolf (very tellingly, some of Frankie Howerd's projects floundered as a result of him being surrounded by powerhouse performers who made him look rather ordinary). 

Back to Cleese, and his anally retentive, ultra-precise, graph-and-pie-chart academic approach to comedy writing was already looking pretty creaky by 1972 (Fawlty Towers, glorious as it is, appears to be a pretty dusty and angular piece of writing in places - all those lines for the old ladies and the Major that even the contemporary audience failed to notice or laugh at, the sudden plot deviations, the reliance on funny foreigners and stereotypes). It came as no surprise to me to find out that Cleese was an arrogant varsity bully (ask Miriam Margolyes) who got away for it for far too long - always entertaining groups of salivating acolytes, most of whom were young and impressionable. Sadly, this came to be equally true of the rest of the team, right down to the careerist schmoozing with Victor Lownes, stray members of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and the Beatles and prime movers and shakers in the world of American media.

They became sacred cows, effectively, in a way that neither their contemporaries or influences ever managed to be - although the Goodies were an enormous popular success almost from the beginning, their reputation suffered as a result of a pig-headed insistence on the part of the BBC to repeat so much as a single frame of their best programmes for decades at a time, meaning they were eventually reduced to a LOL SEVENTIES! footnote alongside the Bay City Rollers and spacehoppers. Nobody ever thought to tell the Pythons to stop until Graham Chapman died, by which time they'd already started to fall off the artistic radar to varying degrees (A Fish Called Wanda, Palin's licence payer-funded globetrotting and Nuns on the bloody Run notwithstanding), and by that time they'd effectively become as unassailable and imperishable as the Beatles. Who were also shite[nb]Calm your tits, for fuck's sake. I'm joking.[/nb].

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

That Python reunion show was terrible, I'll give you that. That terrible, terrible song they did with the Ministry Of Silly Walks background, with the terrible sub-sixth form lyrics. Thinking that allusions to homosexuality will still pass muster humourwise in the year 2014. Just sticking up videos of old Gilliam animations on the monitors for the masses who have paid anything up to 100 quid for a ticket. The grand finale consisting of the Pythons ( Grand )dad dancing to " Christmas In Heaven ", then standing there with batons to conduct the audience through " Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life ". All horrible stuff.  I think you've made up that quote from that bloke sat next to you, though.

[daf]

Who were also shite.

Bit harsh - 'My Wife' is a cracker!

[Sydward Lartle]

I think you've made up that quote from that bloke sat next to you, though.

He addressed it to his partner, not to me, but he said it alright.

[checkoutgirl]

What really hurt, though, was how... Idle-ised the whole evening felt. Taking all those sketches and routines and putting them through the same glitzy bullshit treatment that made Spamalot a huge hit with idiots. How very dare he.

That was a tactical decision I'd say and for two reasons. The first being they were playing a massive venue and had to project a big enough spectacle to a huge room, it was a big room because it was basically a cash grab. The second reason is that they were all pushing 75 years of age during the shows and getting Idle to usher in a load of dancers to do a lot of the heavy lifting while they changed backstage was ideal.

Also none of them could be bothered writing new material so a few classics tarted up with some musical numbers was just the ticket. It reinforces the idea that the shows were for the Pythons and their bank balances (especially Cleese and his 7 divorced wives) rather than for the fans who can probably fuck off as far as they are concerned. If you thought even for a second that the Pythons give a fuck about what the fans think you'd be very much mistaken.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

It's about time Eric Idle got a haircut, too. Girly haired cunt.

[Replies From View]

If you thought even for a second that the Pythons give a fuck about what the fans think you'd be very much mistaken.

Hmm, bit harsh.  The show was a cash grab, but to varying degrees I'm sure the Pythons respect both their legacy and their fans, and wouldn't have knowingly created something that would have upset anyone.  I don't disbelieve that they felt the O2 show was as good a reunion as they could have managed in this decade, but it may have irked (some of) them that the musical style was essentially an unironic version of what they'd lampooned many times before in their sketches and films.

[Autopsy Turvey]

I'd agree with checkoutgirl there, but I can't understand why anyone would think it was 'unironic'. Maybe us ascetic Python hardcore would have rather they just did stripped-down blackouts on bare boards with a box of wigs, but to fill that venue they needed to throw showbiz at it, and the spectacle and razzmatazz were inevitably dripping with irony. Spam Lake! If anyone went to the Python O2 shows and remained coldly impassive, I feel sorry for them.

[Autopsy Turvey]

Then, of course, there's the knotty problem of the very specific set of circumstances that brought the Python team into existence in the first place, to wit; comfortable white men, too steeped in the class system, bums-and-tits sexual innuendo, and casual racism and sexism to be truly satirical about a medium they didn't grow up with (i.e. television) but only ever experienced as a career choice after university.

Sounds a bit like you mean that simply being alive in 60s Britain made their career 'knottily problematic'. Otherwise, they parodied all the things you mention with greater focus and ferocity (and more revolutionary consequences) than most. And I'd have thought that to "be satirical" about TV it helps not to have those affectionate formative fondnesses, but to come to the medium as a quizzical thinking man. As evidenced by the fact that Python's satire of TV was, again, more vicious and astute than most.

[the science eel]

That was a tactical decision I'd say and for two reasons. The first being they were playing a massive venue and had to project a big enough spectacle to a huge room, it was a big room because it was basically a cash grab. The second reason is that they were all pushing 75 years of age during the shows and getting Idle to usher in a load of dancers to do a lot of the heavy lifting while they changed backstage was ideal.

Also none of them could be bothered writing new material so a few classics tarted up with some musical numbers was just the ticket. It reinforces the idea that the shows were for the Pythons and their bank balances (especially Cleese and his 7 divorced wives) rather than for the fans who can probably fuck off as far as they are concerned. If you thought even for a second that the Pythons give a fuck about what the fans think you'd be very much mistaken.

And here's me thinking they'd put on that show especially for me!

DAMN

[Revelator]

Sydward, did you come to discuss the Pythons or bury them?

when Palin appeared onstage in the auburn wig and leopard print jacket of his Blackmail host, surrounded by what looked like half a dozen lingerie models, the man next to me sighed 'This is fifty shades of bollocks, isn't it?' to his (female) companion who'd spent the entire evening muttering 'Oh, for God's sake'.

Sounds like free tickets were wasted on them too. Do I really need to point out that the leopard-print jacket was from the original sketch, and that the models were, in this case, a perfect fit for one of the sleaziest characters in any Python sketch? What an asinine complaint.

John Cleese was far from match-fit, and knowing that Terry Jones was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease explains why his performance that night was all over the place.

Jones has primary progressive aphasia, not Alzheimer's, and his performance was occasionally unsteady but mostly solid. The one moment in the show where he was caught looking at a cue card, during the Crunchy Frog sketch, when it was confiscated by Cleese, was also a highlight of the evening and probably pre-planned. And Cleese's paunch is completely irrelevant--all that matters is whether his timing and energy were still there, and they were.

What really hurt, though, was how... Idle-ised the whole evening felt. Taking all those sketches and routines and putting them through the same glitzy bullshit treatment that made Spamalot a huge hit with idiots.

Except that Idle didn't give "all those sketches and routines" the Spamalot treatment. The sketches were mostly left alone and interspersed with production numbers, some of which were appropriate ("Every Sperm is Sacred") and others best ignored. But the meat of the evening was the sketches, and damning it by complaining about the musical trimmings is like complaining your meat was badly cooked because the vegetables were too soft. Judged as a greatest-hits show, which is what the Pythons clearly intended it to be, it worked--the performances weren't as sharp as those from the Hollywood Bowl but nor were they anything to be embarrassed about, and the new-to-the-stage sketches from the Meaning of Life and Flying Circus (Blackmail, Spanish Inquisition) came off well. The Reunion Show was the equivalent of comfort food, nothing more or less.

It's become so monolothic that it's almost impossible to criticise, and it's been praised, examined, dissected, venerated and hero-worshipped to the extent that anyone who watches it for the first time and simply doesn't find it funny is bound to think they're either missing something

God forbid that perhaps they are. Or perhaps the show simply isn't for them. Some folks can't stand the Marx Brothers, others hate Spike Milligan. Comedy can be very subjective, but even if you can't personally enjoy a show, you might be able to objectively understand why others find it valuable.

Then, of course, there's the knotty problem of the very specific set of circumstances that brought the Python team into existence in the first place, to wit; comfortable white men, too steeped in the class system, bums-and-tits sexual innuendo, and casual racism and sexism to be truly satirical about a medium they didn't grow up with (i.e. television) but only ever experienced as a career choice after university.

This is a little rich coming from a Milligan fan, considering Spike has a lot more racism and sexism to answer for. And any comedy from 47 years ago will have some material a modern audience finds objectionable, since attitudes have progressed so far in the past few decades. But the objectionable material in Python is pretty small--when the show did racial jokes, they weren't casual and were intended to knock stereotypes, not enforce them.
The idea that Pythons couldn't be truly satirical about television because they didn't grow up with it is bullshit--imagine applying that rule to satire in general! Satire requires a cool eye toward imperfection, not childhood experience. The Python got their first jobs as adults in television--as critically-minded young men they learned the nuts and bolts of the medium and gained the necessary experience to send it up from the inside. They were more "truly" satirical about TV than anyone around--the Flying Circus deftly sent-up pretty much every existing genre of TV with equal success. What  other sketch show approaches its track record?

Eric Idle was just a chancer who was very seldom funny - even in his own series, Rutland Weekend Television, he was frequently upstaged and outperformed by jobbing character actors like David Battley and Henry Woolf

Idle derangement syndrome at work--he couldn't even act in his own show! The one people cite as evidence that Idle did good post-Python work. It seems to me that Idle was clearly the most prominent actor in RWT, but of course I'm not seeking to damn him by finding something, anything, to knock in his most successful and respected solo work. At his worst Idle deserves his share of brickbats, but if he'd died at the same time as Chapman we'd be fondly remembering him as a  comic with extremely sharp timing who was the best of Pythons in playing cheeky, slightly aggressive characters and held his own with Palin in playing everymen.

Back to Cleese, and his anally retentive, ultra-precise, graph-and-pie-chart academic approach to comedy writing was already looking pretty creaky by 1972

And what was the hip new approach to comedy writing that showed how out-of-date this was? There's nothing dated about a masterpiece like "The Argument Clinic." Some writers are more methodical than others, that's all.

It came as no surprise to me to find out that Cleese was an arrogant varsity bully

It comes as no surprise to see you make your case with more pointless ad homimen. It is completely irrelevant to any judgment of Cleese's comedy whether or not he was nice to Miriam Margolyes.

Sadly, this came to be equally true of the rest of the team, right down to the careerist schmoozing with Victor Lownes, stray members of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and the Beatles and prime movers and shakers in the world of American media.

Yes, how dare they socialize with the people who funded their films! Far better that they didn't get Holy Grail and Life of Brian made.

They became sacred cows, effectively

Tell that to the British press.

Nobody ever thought to tell the Pythons to stop until Graham Chapman died, by which time they'd already started to fall off the artistic radar to varying degrees (A Fish Called Wanda, Palin's licence payer-funded globetrotting and Nuns on the bloody Run notwithstanding)

In other words, putting aside some of their biggest solo successes (including Jones and Gilliam's movies) and the Python film they'd made just six years before. 

and by that time they'd effectively become as unassailable and imperishable as the Beatles

Then good for them. 50 years on the Beatles look pretty imperishable, and Python has held up pretty damn well too.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

At his worst Idle deserves his share of brickbats, but if he'd died at the same time as Chapman we'd be fondly remembering him as a  comic with extremely sharp timing who was the best of Pythons in playing cheeky, slightly aggressive characters

No-one else could have been half so good in that role in the 'nudge-nudge, say no more' sketch, surely?

[Sydward Lartle]

You do realise you're effectively bolstering my argument about them being a pop culture monolith of whom criticism is largely regarded as sacrilege? Considering the amount of creative energies they spent tearing down sacred cows and attacking revered institutions, it seems highly ironic that they've become everything they sought to ridicule.

I don't accept your argument that the British press always had it in for them. The only iffy contemporary reviews of their work I've been able to find consist of some mild criticism of the Golden Age of Ballooning, a poor review of Holy Grail from the Monthly Film Bulletin and Richard Ingrams saying Python was junk a full five years after the last series was broadcast. If I remember rightly, the back cover of the BBC album (the one with the big foot on the front) was largely devoted to rave reviews the first series had received.

John Cleese can piss and moan all he likes about his unfair treatment at the hands of the press, but it reeks of sour grapes to me, largely borne of people realising once the dust had settled that A Fish Called Wanda really wasn't the funniest film of all time, Crichton was the director in name only, Curtis and Kline were pretty awful in their comedy roles and Palin's stutter almost brought the whole thing to a screeching halt a number of times. He still seems inordinately bitter about the poor reception of Fierce Creatures, to the point of mentioning it defensively during his Fawlty Towers commentary tracks.

Fuck it. You know what? YOU WIN. Life's too fucking short to argue over shit like this. Monty Python is brilliant. It's not for plebs like me. Here...

[McChesney Duntz]

So you make provocative arguments then flounce off in a huff the second someone engages you in them?  (Or pretend to, anyway.) Grow some fucking stones, lad - even us Python diehards can gain from having our ardour challenged. 

[Sydward Lartle]

Sorry, did I not make it clear enough that I absolutely adored this stuff when I was fourteen-fifteen, but watching it again recently has left me cold? I used to think my older brother was a proper boring cunt because he'd never ever talk to me about seeing Thin Lizzy live or watching the Goodies every week or buying the Python records the day they came out, but now I can see why. He grew up. His tastes changed. I'd be the same if a fifteen year old wanted to talk to me about Imelda Davis / Ziggy Greaves-era Grange Hill, Panic Station[nb]Spitting Image-ish pop-science programme for ver kids[/nb] or the Raccoons. Not arsed, mate. History.

You know how sometimes you meet someone you used to be friends with at school, then after about ten minutes you remember why you stopped being friends with them? That's how I feel about Monty Python now.

[Danger Man]

In fact, the scale and success alone of these reunion shows seems to sum up a key problem with the Python legacy nowadays. It's become so monolothic that it's almost impossible to criticise, and it's been praised, examined, dissected, venerated and hero-worshipped to the extent that anyone who watches it for the first time and simply doesn't find it funny is bound to think they're either missing something, or - rather like the hardier souls who found themselves unable to shed a tear or display the correct symptoms of national mourning in the aftermath of Diana's death - convince themselves that there's something wrong with them. Elsewhere on this forum, there are threads from other users complaining that they found Eraserhead disappointing or that they didn't laugh much during This is Spinal Tap. In short, excessive admiration is as capable of destroying art as closed-minded indifference.

Good God TC, you've started making sense.

[Sexton Brackets Drugbust]

I thought I'd seen all of Python, but this episode where Chapman simply gets pissed, dresses as a Viking and says 'Ocelot' in Received Pronunciation is new to me.

[Sydward Lartle]

Good God Sydward, you've started making sense.

Fixed.

Only slightly off topic, but I assume everyone here has seen Out Of the Trees by now? It's extremely light on laughs, considering the amount of talent on both sides of the camera.

[Revelator]

You do realise you're effectively bolstering my argument about them being a pop culture monolith of whom criticism is largely regarded as sacrilege? Considering the amount of creative energies they spent tearing down sacred cows and attacking revered institutions, it seems highly ironic that they've become everything they sought to ridicule.

Sorry, but this is nonsense. Having someone on a message board rebut your arguments--which were largely specious, short on logic, high on ad hominem, and easily dismantled--does not mean criticizing Python is sacrilege either here or in the outside world.

I don't accept your argument that the British press always had it in for them.

I never said the press always had it in for them--Python was indeed well-received. But during the past couple of decades it's been treated more dismissively--look at the articles that arose when the reunion show was first announced. The idea that it's some kind of untouchable institution is a fact-free fantasy.

John Cleese can piss and moan all he likes about his unfair treatment at the hands of the press, but it reeks of sour grapes to me, largely borne of people realising once the dust had settled that A Fish Called Wanda really wasn't the funniest film of all time

Cleese was quite happy about his Wanda press, and he openly regards Fierce Creatures as a mistake. His usual target nowadays is the Mail, which is indeed pretty vile.

Fuck it. You know what? YOU WIN.

Thank you, but I'd prefer to triumph over a stronger set of arguments.

[Autopsy Turvey]

Sorry, did I not make it clear enough that I absolutely adored this stuff when I was fourteen-fifteen, but watching it again recently has left me cold?

I already know the second series contains some hilarious moments ... and the third series just bubbles with supreme confidence

You also said the first series was 'looking up' after episode three. You know how crammed with invention and ideas and jokes Monty Python's Flying Circus was. I'm all for robustly challenging a perceived cultural consensus, but sometimes it's like enjoying a lovely picnic but retrospectively dwelling on the fact that the sandwiches weren't cut the right way and the sun went in and there was an ant in the lemon squash.

[the science eel]

oh, bra-VO!

[Sydward Lartle]

In this case, those are the least of my worries. There's a lowering black cloud overhead and wasps buzzing around with their arse-daggers primed. How dare I not enjoy something as much as I used to when I was fifteen. How fucking dare I.