Word: python
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...moves from east to west. New York comics hit the big time and move west to Hollywood, British humor sweeps westward across the Atlantic to the East Coast. Since the Second World War this ageless migration has been performed by Peter Sellers, Beyond the Fringe and most recently, Monty Python's Flying Circus...
...Monty Python followed the outlines of the career of Rowan & Martin--a TV-based act that started out strong and, under the pressure of success and the need to produce a show week after week, grew less funny. But so far Americans haven't had to deal with Monty Python in eclipse, when mutilated cat jokes get as predictable as buckets of water. What's available now--four superb records, one incredibly funny movie, and a series of 14 fairly good one-hour TV shows that will be aired on Channel 2 this spring--is vintage Monty Python, which...
...Monty Python's Flying Circus is a group effort centered around John Cleese, who, like the rest, is sliced from the Oxbridge fruitcake mold. There are some barriers to enjoying it--Monty Python's humor is based on a parody of British television, and although American TV is close enough for us to know what they're getting at, a lot of this stuff is bound to just pass us by. For some reason that may have to do with cultural heritage or perhaps their educational system, British audiences seem to respond most enthusiastically to jokes about transvestites and mutilated...
...first Monty Python album (with a big foot crushing a TV screen on the cover) includes the immortal "Dead Parrot" sketch. Unfortunately it's an import and so more expensive than the ordinary record; this is compensated for, though, by the availability of MP's subsequent two albums as $1.99 cut-outs. These are both classics and include the "Argument Clinic," "Budgies," "Spam," "The Undertaker," "The Travel Agent," "How Long is it?" and Karl Marx on a quiz show. Each contains at least one run of five or six superb pieces...
Like most contemporary humorists, Monty Python homes in wherever it spots a cliche so rotten it's ready to split open in an explosion of laughter. They take a line like "I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition" and turn it into a six-minute joke when Cardinal Fang bursts in shouting, "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" and proceeds to torture his victims wih a comfy chair and a soft pillow. During the surfeit of Mary Queen of Scots a few years ago, Monty Python produced a skit that reduced the enigmatic Scotswoman's appeal to its formulaic minimum...