'This joke is deceased'

Spectator, The, Sep 4, 1999 by Barrett, Ed

Monty Python never was ground-breaking and, thirty years on, it is still a magnet for bores, says Ed Barrett

MONTY PYTHON's status as a national treasure has blinded people to its shortcomings and created a tedious tradition of puerile, half-baked humour dressed up as surreal comedy. Now the whole dreary thing is about to get a kick-start from the BBC, which plans to present a special Monty Python night to celebrate the show's 30th anniversary. They promise two documentaries (one telling the stories behind the sketches, another revealing the locations where they were filmed), a batch of recently discovered clips from a special German edition, and new material from the temporarily reunited team. Python fans are busy setting the Internet ablaze.

Thirty years ago, who would have thought it would come to this? When Monty Python's Flying Circus was first broadcast, on 5 October 1969, the portents were not good. The shows were recorded in front of a studio audience consisting mainly of coach parties of bemused old ladies from the provinces. The BBC was equally unsure what to make of it, putting it out at irregular times late on Sunday nights. In the Midlands it was replaced by a farming programme after a few episodes. Initial reviews were mostly lukewarm.

Despite these handicaps - or perhaps because of them - Python built up a cult audience. Sketches such as `The Dead Parrot' and `The Ministry of Silly Walks' acquired a word-of-mouth fame beyond the show's natural constituency, and the second series, helped by an earlier, midweek slot, achieved mainstream success. The tricksy editing and Terry Gilliam's unfunny but technically accomplished cartoons helped create the impression that it was all very daring and ground-breaking. At the same time, its reassuringly familiar dramatis personae - accountants, officious policemen, headscarf-wearing housewives - ensured that everybody could identify with it. Even the stuffiest suburban soul could loosen his tie, knock back his G&T and chuckle along as his values were affectionately mocked.

Although the Python team rose to fame in the 1970s, they were one of the last flowerings of 1960s culture. And, just like the Carnaby Street dandies in their Victorian outfits, they represented an ambivalent celebration of British life, rather than a threat to it. Dick Lester had pulled off a similar trick in his self-consciously zany Beatles films. Both the Beatles and Python were hugely popular in America, where they were admired more for their English charm than their sardonic wit.

In England, Python was afforded greater intellectual importance. When sketches ended abruptly, with a shooting, or a 100ton weight falling from the sky, or a camera turning round to show the studio, or credits appearing midway through a programme, these cheap tricks were saluted as Brechtian devices or surrealist statements. In reality, they were there to disguise the lack of proper sketch endings, or simply to pad the programme out. By the third series, the show's increasingly formulaic nature prompted John Cleese to quit.

These days, though, such shortcomings are rarely mentioned. Nostalgia rules. The Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy describes Python as crucially important to the development of comedy `on a global scale', and this view is by no means untypical. Conventional wisdom would have us believe that Python tore up the rulebook of traditional comedy.

Certainly, Python's influence can be clearly seen in The Young Ones, Stephen Fry, Paul Merton, Reeves and Mortimer, Al Murray and practically every other comedy act of the past 20 years. On the other hand, Python's reputation for innovation is greatly overstated. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore had nailed down most of the themes for two-man sketches. Marty Feldman's overthe-top characters had already taken bizarre insinuation and extreme aggression to areas which Python would later explore. And, in 1969, Spike Milligan's much-maligned dispensed with the accepted sketch format and produced the nearest thing to anarchy ever seen on British television. In fairness the Python team openly acknowledge their debt to other comedians -- particularly Milligan, whom they had worshipped as schoolboy Goon fans.

Python's reputation as a scourge of bourgeois values is even less justified. Most of their supposedly 'offensive' material was puerile rather than satirical. The lampooning of transvestite Army officers was sad rather than bad, while their attempts at political satire made Mike Yarwood seem threatening. Admittedly, the BBC objected to some of the more unsavoury topics, such as masturbation and necrophilia. There were occasional complaints from Mary Whitehouse about the show's supposed 'sadism' and, later, there were religious controversies over the feature films The Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life. All in all, though, it was about as subversive as a Harry Secombe raspberry. For every disgusted viewer there were many more who were simply irritated or bored, and many more still who reached for the `off button.