Pythons vs. reality

[evilC]

Which of the Monty Python (TV) sketches were based on contemporary real-life events?

I know the 'Hungarian phrase book' sketch was. The policeman having sex with strangers ("Yeah, alright then!") was too, I believe. Also, wasn't the Judge knowing the details of a sex doll also a comment on corruption and sex scandals amongst the judiciary at the time?

Y'see, I was just a bit too young to have understood all the references at the time. However, I think that people these days forget that Python wasn't just random abstraction - that it was just as much topical satire. Thus, I'm keen to know how many of the sketches were fact-based. Anyone?

[Jah Womble]

Pythons vs. reality

Ethel the Frog (itself a Panorama send-up) featuring Doug and Dinsdale Piranha was obviously a parody of gangland Britain in the sixties - in particular, the Kray twins.

[Commodore]

Pythons vs. reality

The timing of the Piranha brothers piece coincided with the conviction of Ronnie & Reggie Kray but it was still delivered with delicious absurdity. On the audio recording a gangster voiced by Michael Palin interrupted the sketch by saying that it had gone on for a little bit too long, perhaps as a nod to when it was originally broadcast.

I'm sure that the Sex Doll judge was Not The Nine O'clock News with Rowan Atkinson as the judge. NTNOCN was way more topical than Python.

[Jah Womble]

Pythons vs. reality

Yes, it was (in both cases), but that was NTNOCN's specific purpose. Python was (sub)consciously far more surreal/absurdist.

[evilC]

Pythons vs. reality

Commodore wrote: I'm sure that the Sex Doll judge was Not The Nine O'clock News with Rowan Atkinson as the judge. NTNOCN was way more topical than Python.

Oh yeah! Sorry - my mistake!

[Satchmo Distel]

Pythons vs. reality

Python and NTNOCN also did parodies of TV and films that were highly topical enough to be 'news' in themselves. Python, for example, did The Wild Bunch, Panorama and Whicker's World, and its repeated use of the BBC logo (usually with Eric Idle voiceover) was a send-up of their employer. NTOCN took that ball and pretty much exhausted it, so it becomes tiresome after a while, and can seem quite badly dated.

NTOCN also did a Life of Brian skit: a TV debate about The Life of Christ, accusing it of blaspheming against Python. Again that was a case in which the media became the news.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Pythons vs. reality

Python did a lot of parodies. For example The earnest Granada doc: "Hells Grannies," and, frequently, contemporary sports reporting, "The ball came... and I kicked it Bwian!"

[Disco Child Ballads]

Pythons vs. reality

There was also that wonderful piss-take of David Frost that they did.

[Guy Profumo]

Pythons vs. reality

evilC wrote: Which of the Monty Python (TV) sketches were based on contemporary real-life events?

I know the 'Hungarian phrase book' sketch was. The policeman having sex with strangers ("Yeah, alright then!") was too, I believe. Also, wasn't the Judge knowing the details of a sex doll also a comment on corruption and sex scandals amongst the judiciary at the time?
Y'see, I was just a bit too young to have understood all the references at the time. However, I think that people these days forget that Python wasn't just random abstraction - that it was just as much topical satire. Thus, I'm keen to know how many of the sketches were fact-based. Anyone?

NtNo'CN, shurely?

Atkinson the judge, Smith the barrister, IIRC.

Edit: Or Jones, perhaps?

EditEdit: As everyone else has pointed out!

[Diable Rouge]

Pythons vs. reality

So, anyone been to these final shows? Watching Gold, it's a mixed bag, like any sketch show, but the Lumberjack Song and Philosophy Football stands the test of time.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Pythons vs. reality

I love Python, but a lot of this hasn't really aged well.

[sw2borshch]

Pythons vs. reality

Cracking piece by Taylor over on the Quietus.

[Diable Rouge]

Pythons vs. reality

Does Cleese have memory problems these days - he made a right bags of the Dead Parrot Sketch, though Palin tried manfully to mind the gap?

[Lucia Lanigan]

Pythons vs. reality

The episodes and series worked sequentially, accumulating references as they went. Compilations and greatest hits things are always going to lose that; they've been ill-served by them.

[Jah Womble]

Pythons vs. reality

Does Cleese have memory problems these days - he made a right bags of the Dead Parrot Sketch, though Palin tried manfully to mind the gap?

He may well have memory problems, but one of the hallmarks of the parrot sketch over the years has been that Cleese deliberately f*cks up in order to make Palin corpse. (That said, the Daily Mail thing didn't really work.)

The live show was (expectedly) hit-and-miss but they crammed plenty in and it served its purpose well. However, I was surprised that certain sketches made the cut, such as all the 'whoops, don't mind me dearie!' stuff that is perhaps best left in the 1970s.

[Gangster Octopus]

Pythons vs. reality

san2sboro wrote: Cracking piece by Taylor over on the Quietus.

Brentford Nylons were still new and exciting in the early seventies in South Yorkshire...

[Stumpy Pepys]

Pythons vs. reality

There's the sketch where Graham Chapman is in full mountain gear, climbing up the high street, which I think was a parody of those televised rock climbs with Joe Brown.

[Satchmo Distel]

Pythons vs. reality

I think you have to separate Python as a concept, which belongs to 1969-79, from Python as a collection of individuals who were always part of the establishment, being Oxbridge educated and (after the BBC stupidly gave them the video rights) very wealthy. Palin and Jones were writing for sitcoms and sex comedies at the same time they were doing Python. They were always Bourgeois as well as licenced satirists.

In addition, anything great that becomes very popular loses much of its original edge, because the audience's recycling of the material dilutes it. Punk had the same problem, as did The Young Ones and so on.

Cleese himself has said he lost interest halfway through the 2nd series. He was effectively in it for the money thereafter, although clearly he worked hard on the first two films, which some people regard as their real legacy. The Python tours, which started back in 1970, were always cash-ins, as were the books and LPs. The Pythons actually started the whole "multiple format" rip-off hyper-capitalism that has dogged pop culture; they anticipated video/DVD completism and the associated vulgarization of their own work by several years.