Monty Python's Flying Circus

Preparation:
The Monty Python crew already had an idea on exactly what they wanted to do for the show. Like most comedy sketch shows back then, the comedians would end the show with a punchline. The Flying Circus instead would not. They decided that they wouldn't end the sketches in a traditional manner. They also decided that every sketch wuld be completely different from each other. And Gilliam's animations would help transition from one sketch to another by having his animations put in between each sketch. Jones, Palin and Gilliam were pretty much responsible for the overall presentation of the show.

When the Crew began writing, they would separate and it would start from 9AM and ended at 5PM. Cleese and Chapman wrote together as well as Jones and Palin. Idle wrote alone. After the writing the crew would come together with Gilliam to exchange their ideas on what to put on the show. If the majority of the group liked it, then they would put it in the show. The crew also regarded themselves more as writers rather than actors wanting screentime. They were more into the quality of what they wrote rather than the fame that each member would achieve later on in their life.

The Flying Circus:
The show had a lot of tradtional stuff of their own going on. Such as Palin's "it's" man where he dressed up in a Robinson Crusoe garb in the opening sequence rather than the title starting like every show did. He would make a long and torturous journey to only end up saying "It's..." only to be cut off by the Flying Circus title sequence.


(Michael Palin as the "It's" man)

The show also would tend to have characters walk in that had nothing to do with the show. One character is Chapman's "colonel" character, who would wal into the sketch to stop it because it was getting "far to silly" or Jones' "armored knight with a rubber chicken" who would come into the sketch and hit the character with a rubber chicken if the sketch was getting to silly.

Gilliam's animations were totally new and very surreal. The collage stop motion style animations would usually have cut outs from famous works of art, most of which are from the victorian era. Gilliam's artwork and style are a trademark of the series.

The Monty Python show would also build on and extend on the great tradition of british cross dressing comedy. They would write funny roles for women in the sketches and then wear women's cloting and do the sketch themselves speaking in falsetto.

Some of the more famous sketches are:
"Dead Parrot" "The Lumberjack Song" "Spam" "Nudge Nudge" "Mosquito Hunter" "The Spanish Inquisition" "Upper Class Twit of the Year" or "The Ministry of Silly Walks" These are just a few examples of good sketches from the show.

After The Flying Circus:
Cleese left after the end of the third series of the show saying that he did not have anything fresh to offer for the show. Clesse claimed that only two of the sketches from the third series were totally original and the others were bits and pieces from the other episodes. He also said the Chapman was hard to work with since he was an alcohlic. The group carried on after the third series and made a "half-series" for the show and ended it on 1974.

The show became widely popular afterwards with sketches for the Flying Circus showimg up on other stations and also being broadcasted on American channels as well.