TV Reviews : 20th Anniversary Specials by Monty Python Troupe

As the BBC logo crawls across the screen, the announcer warns that the program may not be suitable for the family viewing because “it contains scenes of violence involving peoples’ heads and arms getting chopped off. . . . There are also scenes with naked women. . . . At one point you can see a pair of buttocks. . . .”

Right off we recognize the rude and rapacious troupe known as Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which commemorates its 20th anniversary in two hourlong specials being launched on Showtime tonight and Saturday, both at 10 p.m., with repeats through the month.

Tonight is heavy reminiscing by the troupe, less the late Graham Chapman; Saturday is naughty bits from the 45 Pythonian episodes (less, for some reason, the parrot sketch; we should sue for dereliction of humor!).

The Pythons are never likely to reassemble again because that was then and this is now and they all are chasing their own greatnesses. In their time, they defined a new humor--and what is intriguing in these reflections is their own paltry attempts to define themselves. How do you explain silly? What is the essence of humor in Eric Idle’s puzzler, “What is brown and sounds like a bell?” (Answer: “Duuuuuuung.”)

Recalls Michael Palin, their best time was “before we got self-conscious and people started making critical interpretations about how we ‘thrust aside the barriers of comedy’. . . . We were just a sniggering little group!”

They remember their creative time of “writing and arguing,” of “shrill voices and people stomping out,” usually with John Cleese the major hostile. He teamed with the more congenial Chapman; Palin and Terry Jones Cconspired together; Idle wrote his verbal shtick by himself; Terry Gilliam was likewise off by himself, clipping up great works of art into stream-of-conscious animations and sitting under a blanket doing disgusting noises for the soundtrack.

“Only one thing we were all agreed on--that the show would never work in America,” says Idle. “We were all solid on that.”