The Anorak Zone Forums

[Anorak]

I started this converse on Oh Gee a long time ago, where I was told that it doesn't matter what I think, they're great because AA Gill says so.

Personally, I never really got it. I get the jokes and why they work, but.......... I just don't find 'em that funny. As performers they're not all that, and I think they're extremely overrated. For the same vein of humour performed better then there's always Spike Milligan's Q.

Maybe I'm just blind to 'em... I've never got, for example, why a posh bloke shouting (Cleese) is funny.

They're okay, but I'm not raving about 'em... what say YOU?

[Paul_R]

If you were part of Footlights it seems, the BBC gave you a TV show. Simple as that. Apart from the very occasional laugh, Monty Python is akin to torture. It's mostly unsophisticated weak humour, very derivative, and atrociously performed. It's a comedy Pink Floyd - 'posh university' types amusing each other, but not me. People always think of the parrot sketch and misremember it actually being funny.

[Pex]

What I find very funny are the least subtle jokes, like the barber whose murderous urges are betrayed by the way he uncontrollably says 'Artery. Spurt. Murder' after the word 'cut'. Or the excerpt from 'Sam Peckinpah's "Salad Days"' .

[Lance]

I've always felt their reputation is over-rated. There's some great stuff, but they're not (and never were) our greatest ever comedy ambassadors. They have just as many misses as hits. Maybe more.

[frillyshirtcyberman]

Like all sketch comedy, it has hits and misses.

Most of my friends never laugh at anything (except the hell's grannies, the bishop and the man turns into a scotman sketches.... those always made them laugh).

I tried to get them hooked but to no avail

[Edzeppelin]

At times brilliant, at others less so. It did a lot with the limited resources of '60s TV.

[GriggGrigger]

Does nothing for me. I think I laughed once during an episode, but I might be misremembering.

[vector-victor]

I like it a lot. I have fond memories of sitting down with my dad and my brother and laughing
ourselves silly at "Number 1-the larch" and The Man with Three Buttocks.

While I agree with with the Anorak about Spike Milligan's Q,remember that only had Milligan
as a comedy brain as opposed to Python's sextet. Also remember Milligan had an unpleasant
fondness for nasty Bernard Manning-style racism ( Q has a sketch
with a Jewish Woman with a huge nose playing
a cash register like a piano) something Python tended to avoid.

While we're on the subject, anybody else like Cook & Moore's "Not Only...But Also"?

[Paul_R]

Yes, much more so than Python. The Goodies also deserve a mention here as a funnier example of the Footlights clique.

[Marlo]

I liked it a lot when I was a teenager, having heard audio recordings and not seen much of the television show apart from their first film. It appealed to my intellectual vanity: I first heard of Hardy, Proust and La Fontaine (I'm not sure who he is to this day). There were a few great laughs and lots of stuff which was quotable - it seemed more appealing to me to quote Python than say Dad's Army or Sgt Bilko (both of which I liked even then). It was something for me and my friend to indulge in.

Now? Is it funny? All the clever stuff isn't funny and probably never was. The silly stuff is what makes me laugh nowadays. Well, a bit. I think the performances are pretty good, with Palin the funniest. The girl at work today said she hated comedy. 'It's so unfunny.' It actually made a lot of sense. TV comedy isn't that funny. Stand-up isn't that funny. Films aren't that funny. People with careers to make you laugh - what a weird thing that is. The whole industry is overrated.