A man enters a pet shop with a parrot that he’s just bought there “not half an hour ago” and that is evidently dead. However, the pet shop owner insists that the parrot is not dead but is simply resting. This is the beginning of the ‘Dead Parrot Sketch’, which is one of the most famous sketches from the comedy show Monty Python’s Flying Circus. First broadcast on the BBC more than fifty years ago, it is considered to be one of the greatest series in the history of British comedy.
CREATORS
The creators of the show, who became known simply as Monty Python, were British performers John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Graham Chapman, and American animator Terry Gilliam. Some of the members met at university. And not just any university: Cleese and Chapman at Cambridge, and Palin and Jones at Oxford. However, all six of them didn’t meet for the first time until the late 1960s, when they were working on various TV shows for the BBC. It was on September the 7th 1969 that they recorded the first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which was broadcast a month later.
DEMOCRATIC APPROACH
There are various accounts of the origin and significance of the title of the series. But the consensus among the members of Monty Python is simply that it sounded funny. The series of weekly shows was conceived, written and performed by the six members of the group, who had a unique process. Typically, the five Brits worked eight-hour days writing sketches. Cleese and Chapman wrote together in isolation from the others, as did Jones and Palin, while Idle wrote alone. Then the five of them got together with Gilliam to critique their work and discuss ideas. If the majority of them thought that an idea was funny, they kept it; if not, they discarded it. Gilliam then worked on the animations to complement the sketches.
it’s...
What distinguished Monty Python’s Flying Circus from other comedy series was that its creators abandoned the rules of traditional sketch shows to create something fresh and original. Its eccentric and often ridiculous nature is evident from a running gag from the first season: a man, played by Michael Palin, approaches the camera but never gets to say anything more than “It’s”. He’s in a different scenario every time, but almost always appears impoverished and in difficulty. This sketch is followed by the opening theme tune, military marching music performed by the Band of the Grenadier Guards, which is accompanied by a series of surreal animations by Gilliam, which look like cut-out pieces of paper.
And now for SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT...
Monty Python experimented with form and content to create a stream-of-consciousness effect. Gilliam’s animations were used to transition from one sketch to another. They incorporated the show’s most iconic illustrated image: a giant foot. The series didn’t have the consistency or continuity that was typical of comedy sketch shows at that time; recurring characters changed their names and other details from one episode to the next. Sketches were about everything, from absurd situations to politics and religion to the idiosyncrasies of British life, but they didn’t always have a point or a punch line.
HUGE SUCCESS
In total, Monty Python created forty-five episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus for the BBC, broadcast over four series between 1969 and 1974. The series was an enormous success. It changed the comedy world forever and made the members of Monty Python superstars. They went on to create incredibly successful stage shows, musicals, albums and books, as well as films that many consider to be among the greatest of all time, in particular Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life.
A NEW WORD
Monty Python also inspired the word ‘Pythonesque’, which is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “denoting or resembling the absurdist or surrealist humour or style of Monty Python’s Flying Circus”. Fifty years on, people are still trying to replicate Monty Python’s humour, but few if any have created a style of comedy that’s as innovative or original as that of this illustrious six-member group.
monty what?
There’s little logic to the choice of name the comedy group used to present themselves to the world. Monty is a first name, a typical short form of Montgomery or Montague. According to Michael Palin, shortly before premiering the show, the BBC was pressuring them to come up with a title for it. BBC executives suggested they might use John Cleese’s Flying Circus, because Cleese was then the best-known of them. But Cleese did not want to associate his name with something that could be a disaster! So the group went for an absurd name instead: Monty Python.
filmography
Monty Python released four films. The first was a reshot compilation of sketches from the first two seasons of Flying Circus, ironically entitled And Now for Something Completely Different. The subsequent The Meaning of Life was a series of loosely-related sketches. Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Life of Brian had proper plots and were based on King Arthur’s legend and the life of Christ, respectively.