Monty Python

[zootmoney]

I don't think the site is around anymore.

[princej]

Did you know that Carol Cleveland of Monty Python was also on Are You Being Served?

[Buppster]

I've seen all of the TV episodes and all of the movies but to be honest they're very patchy, hit and miss, some of the sketches are very memorable, original and funny but others were anything but. They also had a tendency to let an idea run for too long, so that what might have been funny in a two minute sketch lost all of its appeal once stretchered over the course of an entire episode. There was a lot of cross pollination and links with other TV series of the time, such as Do Not Adjust Your Set, Ripping Yarns, At Last The 1948 Show, Rutland Weekend Television....

[malaria]

"Let me just stress that there is no cannibalism in the Royal Navy, and when I say none, I mean there is a certain amount, more than we're prepared to admit..."

GENIUS.

Sadly, they're old men now, and ze huge BULL Cleese is engaged in a life-or-death struggle vit the smaller Palin, to assert control over ze interpretation of ze series...

Still can't get enough of the poetry of Ewen McTeagle.

[rascalstooge]

I remember seeing Monty Python on WQED-13 in Pittsburgh in the mid-'70s. They weren't bad.

[malaria]

Tony Hendra (Ian Faith in "Spinal Tap") once wrote sneeringly of them that they were "a tribe of overeducated nitwits," hence endless and occasionally obscure historical riffs about Cardinal Richelieu, the Inquisition, Nelson/Trafalgar, Stanley Baldwin and such.  If you know the history, it helps.  Also lots of riffs on the Scots, including the legendary (and legendarily broke) Scots poet Ewen McTeagle and his poetic interpreters ("Since then, McTeagle has developed and widened his literary scope. Three years ago he concerned himself with quite small sums - quick bits of ready cash: sixpences, shillings, but more recently he has turned his extraordinary literary perception to much larger sums - fifteen shillings, £4. 12 and 6 ... even nine guineas ... But there is still nothing to match the huge sweep, the majestic power of what is surely his greatest work: 'Can I have fifty pounds to mend the shed?'").

I find few people impartial about Python: it's either love or hate in most instance. With me, it's love.  Certainly helped that I took a lot of Eng. Hist courses in college umpteen years ago.

[rascalstooge]

I watched it a lot in 1976, I believe.

[rascalflats]

Never cared for it. I especially hated the large bare foot crushing over something.