PBS To Air Six New Monty Python Specials

Freshly Exhumed wrote to mention a PBS release with good news for BritCom Fans. The Public Broadcasting Service is planning to air six new Monty Python specials. From the article: "Each of the exclusive-to-PBS six one-hour programs will focus on one member of the original Monty Python troupe - Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and Terry Jones - and showcase favorite clips from the group's television series and movies, mixed with new footage. The five living Pythons - Cleese, Idle, Gilliam, Palin and Jones - will each produce and write their own episode, with the five collaborating on a sixth special to honor deceased member Chapman."

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[riflemann]

Great choice of topic and its associated logo :) I dont reckon you can get more appropriate!

Re:No one really expects the Spanish Inquisition!

[amliebsch]

See, now, you had to take a good, funny joke line and inject your thuddingly unfunny political screed. It's people like you what cause unrest.

Re:*Yawn*

[MightyMartian]

Doesn't stand the test of time? There are a few sketches that refer to events of the period, and some of it is very particularly English, but nobody can tell me that The Twin Peaks of Kilimanjaro, the Spanish Inquisition, the Argument Room, the Piranha Brothers, Upperclass Twit of the Year, Bicycle Repairman, the brilliant Monty Python's Contractual Obligation, the entirety of The Holy Grail, etcetera and so on are dated. Flying Circus is probably television's finest moment, a bit of the sublime and absurd by six guys who threw out every single sketch comedy rule and made little half hours of perfect comedy.

Re:A good reason to watch TV for a change...

[PFI_Optix]

Are you saying the Wayans are some even slightly remote way comparable to the perfection that is Python?

You may now die a horrible, painful, agonizing, terrible, excrutiating, cruel death.

Re:I'm getting skeptical here...

[MightyMartian]

To be honest, by the time of the Meaning of Life, I think even they knew that the well was dry. My understanding was that after that, they pretty much split up, though they did make appearances on occasion in each other's projects. But Life of Brian is an astonishingly irreverent and blasphemous observation piece on organized religion which, to be quite honest with you, is more relevant right now than it was even then. The Holy Grail is pretty much a crossover classic, one of the great cult films which has earned its place among the funniest films ever made. The TV series, of course, wasn't always even (particularly after Cleese's departure), but those first three seasons are jaw-droppingly funny. These guys had no respect for anything at all, not even for their own real talents as writers. The thing I like the very most about Python was their absolute rejection of the sacred cow. Homosexual drill sergeants, the upper class portrayed as almost animalistically stupid, sketch routines that would just be cut off in midstream in violation of every notion of how to write that sort of comedy. Monty Python was to television what Sgt. Pepper was to records, and both were rare events where the lunatics were essentially given the run of the asylum and ended up producing some of the 20th centuries most extraordinary entertainments.

Maybe the first season of Saturday Night Live came close, and certainly the individual talents of all the guys that came out of Second City have to be considered, in a slightly different, more North American fashion, to be the equals of the Pythons, but seeing a sweaty John Belushi lose his marbles, while funny, doesn't seem nearly as funny as seeing John Cleese go bananas and start shouting "DON'T MENTION THE WAR!" I think you'll find most of the guys from Second City and SNL will pretty much pay homage to Python as the real Holy Grails of sketch comedy.

Let's face it, Englishman are funnier to mock than Americans, and it's even funnier when it's an Englishman.

Re:I work with a Brit

[Keith Russell]

I work with a Brit and she hates Monty Python.

The operative word here isn't "Brit", but "she". Python's humour has traditionally appealed more to men than women. In fact, BBC America ran a promo for Monty Python's Flying Circus that consisted of a clip of a sketch (I don't remember which), and the tagline: "If your girlfriend laughs at this, marry her."

Re:AAAARRRRGHH!

[LordSnooty]

I am so facking sick of my local (Orlando, FL, WMFE) public television station playing so much facking British programming.

Well, now you know how we felt in the '80s. Wall-to-wall Cagney & Lacey, Thorn Birds and Falcon Crest.