Monty Python (sometimes known as The Pythons) were a British surreal comedy group who created their sketch comedy show Monty Python's Flying Circus, that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series. The Python phenomenon developed from the television series into something larger in scope and impact, spawning touring stage shows, films, numerous albums, several books, and a stage musical. The group's influence on comedy has been compared to The Beatles' influence on music.
Broadcast by the BBC between 1969 and 1974, Flying Circus was conceived, written and performed by its members Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. Loosely structured as a sketch show, but with an innovative stream-of-consciousness approach (aided by Gilliam's animation), it pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in style and content. A self-contained comedy team responsible for both writing and performing their work, the Pythons had creative control which allowed them to experiment with form and content, discarding rules of television comedy. Their influence on British comedy has been apparent for years, while in North America it has coloured the work of cult performers from the early editions of Saturday Night Live through to more recent absurdist trends in television comedy. "Pythonesque" has entered the English lexicon as a result. [1]
The Flying Circus' sketches drew heavily on canonical works of drama, literature, and film by such authors as Shakespeare, Proust, and Bronte, but emptied them of their revered mode of presentation and interpretation, often turning them into nonsense.
The sketches also highlight the absurdity of the media's often seeking "new" forms to make older artistic works accessible to audiences. Once again, the Pythons challenge the pretentiousness of television (particularly the BBC and public television) in their recycling of masterpieces as an osentsible means to "elevate" lowbrow taste to the level of "middlebrow" culture. These sketches of classic texts are self reflexive about relations among the arts, television, and especially the BBC, in insisting on the importance of "masterpieces."
The sketches expose the pretentiousness of television in its recycling of masterpieces as a supposed means to "elevate" taste, deflecting lowbrow inclinations, and as a counter to the banality of much programming. [2]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python
[2] Monty Python's Flying Circus, by Marcia Landy