Monty Python's Flying Circus: The Complete Boxset

Introduction

If you were to try to illustrate the benefits of a university education, where would you start? Doctors? Teachers? Scientists? Civil servants? How about the conveyor belt of comedic genius from Oxbridge in the 1960s and '70s? Arguably starting with David Frost, John Bird, Alan Bennett and Peter Cook with shows like That Was The Week That Was and The Frost Report, the Cambridge Footlights produced many fine comedians.

The Cambridge Footlights attracted five key members at roughly the same time: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. Chapman, Cleese and Idle were all Cambridge graduates, with Palin and Jones Oxford alumni. With their different personalities, they formed an unlikely alliance and, when joined by Terry Gilliam, conceived, wrote and performed a TV show. Giving little thought to what it would actually be called, although titles such as 'Owl Stretching Time', 'The Toad Elevating Moment' and 'Bun, Wackett, Buzzard, Stubble and Boot' were considered, the director general of the BBC informed them that, due to time constraints, he had already told the TV listings that the show would be called 'Flying Circus'. Michael Palin liked the name Gwen Dibley, which he had picked up in a newsletter at his parents' house, but others thought that a slippery and sinister name was more applicable, hence 'Python', though where 'Monty' came from is a matter of much debate.



Keen to avoid what they saw as the established nature of sketch comedy: they felt that Peter Cook and Dudley Moore performed brilliant sketches that were always better than the punchlines, so decided to forego them altogether and even finished one with John Cleese declaring that "This is the silliest sketch I've ever been in" before walking off! Sketches were also interrupted by Graham Chapman's 'Colonel' describing it as 'Far too silly', a 16-ton weight falling on someone, or by a knight with a dead chicken hitting a protagonist over the head! Terry Gilliam's role in 'Monty Python' enabled the show to link sketches with Gilliam's unique and surreal animation, which he had first exhibited on Do Not Adjust Your Set.

As each British member was an Oxbridge graduate, there was an intellectual subtext to much of the anarchic and irreverent humour. The Pythons split up to write: Graham Chapman, a qualified doctor, wrote with John Cleese, a law graduate; Michael Palin wrote with Terry Jones, combining their expertise in modern history and English; leaving Eric Idle, another English graduate, to write alone and Terry Gilliam able to work on his cartoons independently.

The influence of Monty Python on comedy and even culture is impossible to quantify; 'Pythonesque' is in the Oxford English Dictionary, although what it actually means is probably open to debate, with the Pythons themselves unsure of the definition.

This set contains all four series of the show, with the 45 episodes spread across 7 discs and a bonus disc containing two new documentaries: Before The Flying Circus and Monty Python Conquers America plus an animation discussion with Terry Gilliam and a never-before-seen opening.

Video

The discs, previously released separately in 2007, claim to be remastered and it's certainly the case that the picture quality is so much better than it looked when first broadcast. Nevertheless, some grain and lack of clarity is there but this is to be expected and, considering the budget and the fact that the early episodes are nearly 40 years old, the transfer is as good as it's going to get.

Audio

A perfectly fine stereo soundtrack with slight amounts of pops and hisses although this is to be expected given the age of the stock. Series 1 has Polish and Hungarian options and there are myriad subtitles available.

Extra Features

The bonus disc contains two brand new and exclusive documentaries: Before The Flying Circus and Monty Python Conquers America, an animation discussion with Terry Gilliam and a never-before-seen opening.

Presented in black and white, Before The Flying Circus is a well researched and revealing documentary about the backgrounds of all the Pythons and how they became involved in comedy and eventually formed The Flying Circus.

I'd always thought that success Stateside came easily to Monty Python but the Monty Python Conquers America featurette shows how difficult it was, with networks unwilling to screen the TV shows, ... And Now For Something Completely Different bombing and them only getting their break thanks to PBS. This includes interviews with those around at the time and those inspired by the material such as Judd Apatow, Hank Azaria, David Hyde Pierce, Matt Stone, Trey Parker and Luke Wilson, whose father was active in bringing the Pythons to American TV viewers.

Both these documentaries are excellent and worth watching even for die-hard fans like me. Accompanying these are two shorter features, the first has Terry Gilliam talking you through the four different animated title sequences and the other is a pre-show skit that introduces the episode as "a party political broadcast on behalf of the Conservative and Unionist party" which was removed as they thought it may influence the result of the General Election.

Conclusion

I was introduced to Monty Python at an early age when my parents recorded Monty Python and the Holy Grail from the TV and it was a film that I fell in love with and watched endlessly, learning every line. They also had the cassette of Live at Drury Lane which they heavily censored, removing the bulk of the expletives, and again I listened to the recording so much I knew it off by heart. Strangely though, I only saw a few of the TV episodes and had several of the early ones on VHS.

Watching this, it occurred to me how much more there was to Monty Python's Flying Circus than 'The Parrot Sketch', 'The Lumberjack Song', 'The Ministry of Silly Walks', 'The Spanish Inquisition' and 'Spam'! Monty Python's Flying Circus ran for four series and nearly didn't last that long as John Cleese apparently felt that they were running low on material, wanted to leave after the second series and had to be convinced to stay on for the third. By the fourth series, Cleese had left to realise an earlier idea he had about a Torquay hotelier and Chapman's appearances were infrequent due to his alcoholism. Despite this, the last series contains some excellent writing and, although not as anarchic as the previous three, is a very good series with some brilliant skits.

The only way of owning these in the past was to buy them separately or splash out and buy one of the complete collections from the US. This re-release of the four series is welcome and the addition of a revealing bonus disc makes this a must buy for any Python fan who doesn't own the TV shows already on DVD.