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EDIT NEWS: Monty Python - Press Coverage 1973 |
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Daily Mail, 9th January 1973
THE COILS OF PYTHON...
Monty Python's Flying Circus continues to delight or infuriate BBC 1 viewers, and the latest LP album, confusing titled Monty Python's Previous Record, is selling strongly, writes SHAUN USHER.
But for the first time critics are being sharp about the trend-setting series. More people are ready to admit that some sketches baffle them.
So is the programme within sight of the final punch-line, the Flying Circus grounded for good?
Michael Palin doesn't think so. He writes and performs in Python, and says: 'As far as we are concerned it goes on for as long as it's funny enough to make us laugh.'
But Palin agrees that a chillier, more challenging wind blows round the series these days.
'We're in our third season now, and people are getting used to us,' he argues. 'That's the sad thing, audiences become accustomed to anything in the end, even an anti-format show.'
As for the complaints of mystifying sketches and enigmatic gags, Palin has a disarming reply. 'Well it always worries me a bit, because I don't understand some of the jokes. There are times when none of us is quite certain why we're doing something � it's that kind of programme.' |
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Sunday Telegraph, 21st January 1973
By Philip Purser:
John Cleese's personal style of comedy, which is a manic calm, an apparent sanity held together with one last rusty nut and bolt, might have been tailor-made for a joke version of Sherlock Holmes. I also warmed unexpectedly to William Rushton's Watson, both in Elementary, My Dear Watson, a Comedy Playhouse candidate (B.B.C. 1) written by M. F. Simpson and masterminded by Barry Took.
Unfortunately, there seemed to be at least two different kinds of humour to work, never pulling together quite well enough. Simpson is practically the inventor of that surrealist world in which the most extraordinary circumstances � here, the discovery of five identically slain solicitors � are greeted unblinkingly. Into it fitted, without too much trouble, some more derivative or literary jokes, e.g., Holmes's passion for railway timetables going nicely away; but not much nudging television-sketch touches as the suspect female impersonator or the heavy-handed "Call my Bluff" sequence.
And there was a curious half-hearted attempt to pull the plug out of the whole fantasy when Holmes, eyeing passers-by in Baker Street, said: "I suspect we are a figment of these good people's imaginations, Watson. They've been reading too much Conan Doyle."
The programme in which every kind of nudge and every brand of fantasy were triumphantly juggled together by sheer breathless energy, was Monty Python's Flying Circus (also B.B.C. 1), which coincidentally came to the end of its run the same evening.
What other popular entertainment in the world could have wrapped together in disrepute Edward VII, Wilde, Whistler, Shaw, Richard Attenborough, Pasolini, electrical goods, wife-swapping, the cloth and, oh yes, "Come Dancing"?
In the department of smiles, rather than laughs, Two Old Dears by Ken Levinson (Thames), accurately and rather sweetly caught the love-irritation between sisters-in-law living together; and ought to make a short series. The Likely Lads (B.B.2 [sic]) are back and in good heart. |
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The Times, 28th April 1973
[An early live review!]
MONTY PYTHON
Gaumont,
Southampton
Michael Wade
Monty Python's Flying Circus made its name on television with an all-out comic affront to the human race. Only twice has it ventured to appear live before an audience, the first time being two years ago at the Lanchester Festival, Coventry, for a series of midnight shows, and the second when only three members appeared last summer at a pop festival in Lincolnshire.
Now it has laid its reputation upon the line by choosing to take the pop circuit on and stage 30 shows in 15 different towns. Let it first be stated that the experiment works, judging by the warm and genuine reception it received at the first house last night, attended notably by people of all ages from 12 upwards, underlining that the BBC might have been a bit braver and screened the show earlier in the evening that it did.
In the transition to the theatre much use is made of Terry Gilliam's animated films on a screen at the back of the stage, although those which were made for Python's German TV specials sometimes jar. The best moments are in the acted out sketches, which take on the atmosphere of old-time revue. The stage demands a slower pace than television and it is in the more elongated sketches like Graham Chapman wrestling himself and as Bomber Harris; "Take Your Pork", where Terry Jones as the female contestant competes for a blow on the head from the over-grinning compere, John Cleese; and that old Python favourite, the parrot sketch, which worked best. In fact, the less complicated the approach the more the enjoyment, as in a splendidly pompous lecture about the art of the joke by Chapman illustrated by the boiler-suited Palin, Jones and Gilliam.
Gilliam, usually the group's animation man, makes a suitably zany addition to the team, as does the ubiquitous Neil Innes, recently noticed with Grimms, who repeats one of the songs he uses with that group, "How Sweet To Be An Idiot", and is rewarded by a much more willing audience than in the past.
If there was a fault on the first night it was in the control of the cast's radio microphones. A more rock music approach is needed here. No self-respecting road manager would have tolerated some of the sound discrepancies. Python is purposely avoiding London on this tour but it need have no fears, even the blasé London rock audiences would welcome it on this showing. |
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The Sun, 25th August 1973
[The words of the headline have been obscured. All that
can be made out is "IS THE END (something something)
PYTHON?"]
By CHRIS GREENWOOD
Bad news for fans of Monty Python's Flying Circus � prospects of a new series of the award-winning show have taken a nose-dive.
The threat to Monty's future follows John Cleese's decision to bale out after three successful series.
Graham Chapman, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Eric Idle are all prepared to aviate onwards without Cleese.
But so far the BBC are showing little enthusiasm for the idea. The top brass, never really ecstatic about Python lampooning of stuffy British institutions (like themselves), have declared that a fourth series will not be considered unless the remaining Pythoneers do a test show for executive approval.
AWARDS
"That's rather extraordinary when you consider how well known we are and how many awards we've won," Terry Jones told me, barely hiding his exasperation as we discussed the Circus's future.
"The BBC seem to think that, without John Cleese, there is no more Monty Python.
"Well, with due respect to them � and John � the rest of us think this is just not the case.
"Monty Python is not any one person. Everyone contributes to the overall effort. If one man in a five-man team pulls out, you'd surely think the other four can go it alone.
"We reckon we can if we are given the chance!"
John's reasons for leaving Python are frank enough.
"I'm bored," he says. "I've been doing these sort of sketches now for years. Before Monty Python, it was At Last The 1948 Show.
"I'm still very friendly with the rest of the Python chaps, and I know a lot of people are going to be very disappointed if there are no more shows. But the time has come for a change."
One spark of hope for millions of Python addicts is that the team are almost sure, through prior contract, to get together once more next spring to work on a sequel to their first film, And Now For Something Completely Different.
And it is possible that, given the right offer, a Cleese-less circus could spring up again on commercial television.
Says Terry Jones: "Frankly, I think the BBC would be glad to see the back of us. We've been a severe embarrassment to them for years." |
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The Spectator, 13th 0ctober 1973:
Television
NOT NOTABLE
Clive Gammon
Let us deal with various ladies to begin with. Notably there was Diana Ross in Show of the Week on BBC 2. Why did I write 'notably'? It just slipped itself in, thereby proving that I am as susceptible as anyone else to brainwashing. Because Miss Ross, as a television artist anyway and I suspect in other ways too, is notably not notable, a thin lady with a thin voice and little else besides, ghastly knowing, practised manner, an unappealingly patronising way with an audience and clearly an invisible belief that the minutiae of her private life are as fascinating to us as to her. Other objections: the repellent way she thrust the indifferent musicians who accompanied her to the attention of her audience; the constant referring to her inadequate representation of Billie Holiday in Lady Sings The Blues. Lord, what would they say, did their poor Billie walk that way?
Earlier, Reporter at Large (BBC 1 � David Dimbleby at the Dublin Horse Show) was in better form than last week with some neatly observed social nuances, Dimbleby sensibly laying off the antics of the Galway Blazers at the Shelbourne or wherever and featuring such ladies as the one from the Irish Times (did I get that right?) who poured a load of somewhat catty scorn on other ladies who dressed up and aped the British, so she said. I didn't fancy them much, either, to tell you the truth, especially the petulant miss who laid it spitefully on her horse when it refused a jump.
Now for some funny stuff. I'd really thought that Casanova '73 would have been unrivalled this autumn for basic nastiness but now along comes Men of Affairs from HTV as a very serious challenger. A bad piece of judgement by Warren Mitchell to take on this sad rubbish and a bad piece of judgement by me, too, to miss Softy Softy: Task Force on its account, even in the decadence of this once-proud series.
More hopefully, I looked at Monty Python's Fliegender Zircus (BBC 2), a programme of somewhat odd antecedents, having first been made for West German telly, which accounted no doubt for the slow pace of the last and major part, the Grimm-ish fantasy about an unpleasant king, queen and princess. Heavy-going and puddingy and just right, I expect, for its original audience. The true Monty Python touch, though, came through with the splendid piece about the hen mines in North Dakota and the man with the white mouse reserve in Bavaria. Also the mouse stampede.
Ashamedly, I have to confess that through an administrative error not of my making (the roast lamb was served up late) I missed all but the last few minutes of Gerald Scarfe's superb animated pictures on Second House (BBC 2). Often I find Scarfe's cartoons over-stressed and counter-productive but, what I saw of his brilliantly fluid film of contemporary American phenomena made me wish I'd settled for cheese on toast. |
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© 1973 various authors | |
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