Monty Python's Flying Circus - Classic or Dud?

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.

Is this where I can reveal that I changed all my AOL sound effects to Holy Grail .wavs

It’s SO much funnier than ‘.. Brian’ that it’s not even a debate anymore.

incorrect

like incorrect on both counts but so incorrect on in not being a debate that you should be banned

Since we brought up The goodies, bill office was quite the musician/songwriter, two songs a week on. I’m sorry i’ll Read that again for ten years.

Needless to say there is a lot of Python in ISIRTA and the earlier series probably have a similar hit/miss ratio. Ferret song stands with most of the best python sketches.

out of em all was bill oddie or gilliam or who the biggest prick

tim brooke-taylor clearly the worst ito no actual talent coattailing

Oddie the worst in terms of glaring me down when I saw him on a bus one time and was thinking of thanking him for his work

A glare that intimated the real possibility of verbal assault if I dared to acknowledge him

old cunt

t/s getting slotted by Bill Odie vs Rory McGrath.

Hate to say it, but Oddie used to be a regular customer when I worked in the jazz department of London's biggest record shop and he was always perfectly fine - clearly knew and loved his music, didn't expect or demand any special treatment, no trouble at all.

I know someone who used to work with his ex-wife and, yes, ex-wives and all that, but...

out of em all was bill oddie or gilliam or who the biggest prick

... or Cleese or Idle.

Just watched the episode with the Clockwork Orange parody for the first time in several decades ( https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6ewjb0 ) and it's pretty insane. And is in fact a parody of 2001 as well. Graham sends rabbits to the moon, Bill and Tim follow suit and get kidnapped by the moon rabbits who have become a super race and are sent back to earth as rabbits to terrorise the population (The Transistorised Carrot). How in hell they dreamed that up I don't know. It sort of holds up.

And it references Monty Python too!

That NTNOCN sketch is great, and sent me back to the original, which I still think might be their finest moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeKWVuye1YE

if you can bear it, the bill oddie "who do you think you are" was interesting, if also wrenchingly sad (one of the saddest i remember): http://www.bbc.co.uk/whodoyouthinkyouare/past-stories/bill-oddie.shtml

it doesn't quite expunge the "don't be a prick" rule but it does explain what maybe turned him into one

If Marcello was here he could list all the jazz/improv musicians who played on the Goodies records. I know Dave Macrae, from Matching Mole, was heavily involved. Also that "Funky Gibbon" was inspired by Parliament/Funkadelic, though it sounds more like "Smash the Social Contract" by Cornelius Cardew.

... actually it's the other way round "Smash the Social Contract" sounds like "Funky Gibbon".