Who are “the Beatles of comedy” because of their unique style and unprecedented talent?
Click start to play today’s Crossword and test your knowledge of the British surreal comedy troupe Monty Python.
The Pythons, as they are collectively known, have often been compared to the Beatles, for their far-reaching influence on the art of making people laugh. Almost every successful comedy show since Monty Python – from Saturday Night Live to the Simpsons – has felt their impact.
The Pythons’ unorthodox style of comedy hit television screens in the BBC sketch comedy show Monty Python’s Flying Circus in 1969, and snowballed into a cultural phenomenon over the next 44 episodes.
All the members of the group were highly educated, with Michael Palin and Terry Jones graduating from the University of Oxford and Eric Idle, John Cleese and Graham Chapman being former students of the University of Cambridge in the UK. They blended silliness with intellectual concepts in their loosely structured sketch show, and used an innovative stream-of-consciousness approach to push the boundaries of what was acceptable at the time.
The Pythons were in complete creative control of their show – they wrote and performed it in its entirety. According to a December 2003 report in the US-based news website CNN, one of the issues they noticed with previous comic sketches was that while the body of comedic work would be strong, writers would often struggle to find a punchline hilarious enough to end on, and this anticlimax at the end of the sketch would detract from its overall quality.
So, the Pythons decided they wouldn’t ‘cap’ their shows in the traditional manner. In one memorable moment from the early episodes of their Flying Circus series, Cleese turns to Idle as the sketch descends into chaos, shrugs and says: “This is the silliest sketch I’ve ever been in”, and walks off the set.
The members of Monty Python went on to act in films like 1971's And Now for Something Completely Different and 1978's Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In 1988, Monty Python received the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema.
Decades later, even today, the Pythons are still remembered fondly by fans around the world for their observational sketches and innovative sense of humour.
What’s your favourite Python episode? Play today’s Crossword and let us know at games@gulfnews.com.
