Quote: Chappers @ June 25 2013, 8:47 PM BST

I think that's probably what I meant. And then the films were a lot more disciplined rather than letting sketches tail off without a punchline.

And before that I'd watched Do Not Adjust Your Set as a kid.

(I really must stop starting sentences with "And".)

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Hey, I used to love "Do Not Adjust Your Set".

I remember how popular the Python records were too.

Did you watch "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In"?

I even remember "That Was The Week That Was", though I was very young at the time.

Quote: George Kaplan @ June 26 2013, 11:45 PM BST

Hey, I used to love "Do Not Adjust Your Set".

I remember how popular the Python records were too.

Did you watch "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In"?

I even remember "That Was The Week That Was", though I was very young at the time.

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Yes I watched both of those. R & M was must watch and like you I only saw TW3 occasionally when I was allowed to stay up late.

Probably a bit over my head and only subsequently realised how sexy Millicent Martin was.

Quote: Chappers @ June 27 2013, 12:01 AM BST

Yes I watched both of those. R & M was must watch and like you I only saw TW3 occasionally when I was allowed to stay up late.

Probably a bit over my head and only subsequently realised how sexy Millicent Martin was.

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Goldie Hawn wasn't too shabby then either.

Quote: George Kaplan @ June 27 2013, 12:07 AM BST

Goldie Hawn wasn't too shabby then either.

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I preferred Judy Carne.

Just rewatched the first three series on YouTube, after many years without seeing them. For me, that rewatching blows any argument about the Pythons being rated out of the water. Even the fourth series, without John Cleese, which I hadn't seen before and which I've got through save the last one and a half episodes, still has its moments, although not quite up to the standard of its predecessor series.

One of my all-time Python faves! Conrad Pooh's Dancing Teeth!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVgAzbuKjZY

Quote: MrIntelligent Dude @ December 11 2010, 3:37 PM GMT

Here's the thing: I've watched Python when it used to be on all the time on British TV. I even watched the spin-off films too. They just aren't funny. Not one bit.

I watched Life of Brian and Holy Grail and almost fell asleep because they bored me to tears. I've noticed one thing with the Python team: they try too hard to be funny. As a result, the 'comedic' deliveries look forced and unnatural, and, therefore, not humourous at all.

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Wow, I suppose influencing generations of comedians from here to Timbukta doesn't come into it at all. Or the fact it's still being shown on TV somewhere 40 odd years later.

Why was MrIntelligent Dude banned anyway?

Yes as Tim said I would like to know why he was banned also, I understand he may have annoyed some people with his opinions on Python, but grounds for banning surely not?

Quote: bob4apples @ July 28 2013, 12:56 PM BST

Wow, I suppose influencing generations of comedians from here to Timbukta doesn't come into it at all. Or the fact it's still being shown on TV somewhere 40 odd years later.

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Except it wasn't really Monty Python who did the influencing, was it? It was Spike Milligan and his "Q" series. The Pythons have admitted in a number of interviews that it was Milligan's surrealist, albeit *very* low-budget, sketch show that showed them the way. Monty Python were basically a Spike Milligan tribute act, with the unusual feature of having managed to finagle a bigger budget out of the BBC. (Possibly by dint of not being Spike Milligan, who was, by all accounts, not an easy man to work with.)

I suspect another problem with the original Monty Python TV series is that its pacing is glacial by modern standards, while the tools -- PAL colour TV technology had only just been introduced in 1969 and the equipment looked it -- were big, clunky and unrefined. Given the tight deadlines involved in TV production, it's clear many sketches suffered from being rushed.

So... slow pacing, sketches that frequently outstay their welcome, and overlong setups that telegraph their punchline long before that punchline actually hits. There's also a very ragged edge to much of the writing itself that suggests that time was a problem for the writers too, preventing them from giving it that final polish and sheen.

(Spike Milligan's "Q" series suffers from the same problem, but part of the humour was in guessing where Spike would corpse. He was a great comedy writer, but was a much worse actor than any of the Pythons.)

Modern audiences are also so familiar with many joke formulae today that they can literally see many jokes coming. (E.g. Bill Bailey's deconstruction of the "Three men walk into a pub..." format: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GxI-6544z8 -- a joke about a joke format.)

Moviemaking was much more advanced technically than (PAL) TV technology. Furthermore, instead of trying to fill 6 hrs. 30 min. with sketches in an exhausting and draining race against the clock, you've only got 90 minutes to fill, and all the time in the world to fill it as you don't (normally) start filming until the script is done, approved and green-lit.

("Holy Grail" obviously didn't follow this path and that explains much of what *doesn't* work in that film. Its success comes from the fact that the quality of many individual sketches is so high, but as a *movie*, it never quite manages to exceed the sum of its parts. "Life of Brian" is easily the best movie the Python team made together. "Meaning of Life" works if you treat it as what it is: essentially an extended TV episode with a big budget. But it's no more a traditional movie than "And Now For Something Completely Different", despite having an overall theme.)

Simply put: we're a lot better at producing TV comedy, while audiences are also a lot more aware of how comedy works. 40 years ago, Monty Python's Flying Circus' hit:miss ratio might have been closer to 60:40 by contemporary standards, but that standard was set a lot lower than it is today. Today's audiences expect much more.

And now, I really must stop procrastinating.

Quote: George Kaplan @ June 27 2013, 12:07 AM BST

Goldie Hawn wasn't too shabby then either.

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Always found her deeply annoying. And those films - oh dear.
And now she has passed the torch on to her daughter, another untalented rom-com merchant.

Some one must end her unholy line.

Quote: stimarco @ August 6 2013, 2:53 AM BST

Except it wasn't really Monty Python who did the influencing, was it? It was Spike Milligan and his "Q" series. The Pythons have admitted in a number of interviews that it was Milligan's surrealist, albeit *very* low-budget, sketch show that showed them the way. Monty Python were basically a Spike Milligan tribute act, with the unusual feature of having managed to finagle a bigger budget out of the BBC. (Possibly by dint of not being Spike Milligan, who was, by all accounts, not an easy man to work with.)

I suspect another problem with the original Monty Python TV series is that its pacing is glacial by modern standards, while the tools -- PAL colour TV technology had only just been introduced in 1969 and the equipment looked it -- were big, clunky and unrefined. Given the tight deadlines involved in TV production, it's clear many sketches suffered from being rushed.

So... slow pacing, sketches that frequently outstay their welcome, and overlong setups that telegraph their punchline long before that punchline actually hits. There's also a very ragged edge to much of the writing itself that suggests that time was a problem for the writers too, preventing them from giving it that final polish and sheen.

Now I shall direct you to the banner just below advertising the 'highly influential 1970s sketch show'

(Spike Milligan's "Q" series suffers from the same problem, but part of the humour was in guessing where Spike would corpse. He was a great comedy writer, but was a much worse actor than any of the Pythons.)

Modern audiences are also so familiar with many joke formulae today that they can literally see many jokes coming. (E.g. Bill Bailey's deconstruction of the "Three men walk into a pub..." format: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GxI-6544z8 -- a joke about a joke format.)

Moviemaking was much more advanced technically than (PAL) TV technology. Furthermore, instead of trying to fill 6 hrs. 30 min. with sketches in an exhausting and draining race against the clock, you've only got 90 minutes to fill, and all the time in the world to fill it as you don't (normally) start filming until the script is done, approved and green-lit.

("Holy Grail" obviously didn't follow this path and that explains much of what *doesn't* work in that film. Its success comes from the fact that the quality of many individual sketches is so high, but as a *movie*, it never quite manages to exceed the sum of its parts. "Life of Brian" is easily the best movie the Python team made together. "Meaning of Life" works if you treat it as what it is: essentially an extended TV episode with a big budget. But it's no more a traditional movie than "And Now For Something Completely Different", despite having an overall theme.)

Simply put: we're a lot better at producing TV comedy, while audiences are also a lot more aware of how comedy works. 40 years ago, Monty Python's Flying Circus' hit:miss ratio might have been closer to 60:40 by contemporary standards, but that standard was set a lot lower than it is today. Today's audiences expect much more.

And now, I really must stop procrastinating.

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Quite a long winded reply. Just a few things though.

First, why is the 'parrot' sketch so revered as the best ever? There are many others too. Not saying Milligan and Q wasn't an influence on them, of course it was. But MP's sketches are always considered in any 'Greatest Ever' compilations. Spike hardly ever features. And to call them a Spike Milligan tribute act is pretty well...laughable and quite insulting!

And when non-British people are asked about British comedy, they don't say Spike Milligan, do they? They say Monty Python. As for producing comedy by modern standards, that's not really the issue. And we produce a lot more rubbish than good. Not much comedy now would stand the test of time like Python certainly has (in UK comedy). Modern audiences are used to the jokes because they have heard something similar from other performers who were also influenced by Python!

You mention rushed sketches and deadlines affecting quality, but then every show under pressure you can think of can be accused of that. Some that don't even have deadlines are badly done. Probably one of Python's problems was there were 6 people fighting over their content. Some double acts have trouble working together, so 6 must have been a real nightmare.

As for their 'movies', Meaning of Life was non-plot, a collection of sketches essentially. Not a slightly conventional narrative like Life of Brian. Holy Grail was more of a combination of both since there was a quest. But that was kind of the point, right?

Quote: bob4apples @ August 7 2013, 6:38 PM BST

As for their 'movies', Meaning of Life was non-plot, a collection of sketches essentially. Not a slightly conventional narrative like Life of Brian. Holy Grail was more of a combination of both since there was a quest. But that was kind of the point, right?

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This discussion runs like diarrhea. But I was very interested in Eric Idle's comments in 'The Making Of 'The Meaning Of Life'': It was criticised for being a series of skits rather than a coherent film, but also Grail and Brian were essentially comic episodes that just looked connected cos they had the same characters. Take a random scene and it's usually just as effective out of context, which isn't true of a traditional narrative. Eric actually toyed with the idea of having one bloke in all the scenes - the same guy getting born in the birth sketch, going to school in the sex education sketch, going to Heaven at the end etc - who knows if this'd've worked differently?

Is this the £10 argument or the £20 one?