Reviews

Out of all the Secret Policeman's Balls, this one is the most entertaining and funniest. This is usually the one I watch because it has my favorite comedians all together in top form. Eleanor Bron is great in the "Dear God" sketch, with her rambling dialog being very entertaining. "Cheese Shop" wasn't as good as the Python version, but you can't really expect that....they pull it off very nicely, though. The "Pregnancy" sketch is a nice short one. That Eleanor Bron is really good.

Notable praise goes to Rowan Atkinson, though. Considering that this was even before "Not the Nine O'Clock News" first being broadcast, this must have been a real important night for him. His "Schoolmaster" sketch is a delight. Also, him in Dudley Moore's shoes for the "End of the World" sketch makes it take off. For once, someone other than Peter Cook is the funniest part of a sketch! He also handled the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch very well with other Pythons. Kudos for Rowan Atkinson; this is his breakthrough moment in comedy.

But you can't watch this and say that Peter Cook didn't steal the show because he quite simply steals every show! The "Interesting Facts" sketch really blew the whole thing open at the beginning. Cleese never laughs during a sketch, but Cook gets him to. Cook always leaves them in stitches. But, the real shining moment of the night is the "Entirely a Matter For You" sketch lampooning the Jeremy Thorpe case. If you don't know about the case before watching it, do the research. It'll actually make it funny. It's actually one of the funniest sketches ever made. It's sooooo perfect and Peter Cook is in top form during this. Just another reason of a million why Peter Cook was such a genius. You really don't know comedy if you don't know about Peter Cook.

Such a fantastic DVD that I watch constantly. It's brilliant, just brilliant!!!

Usually I would give something like this a 10/10. I dock it two for a couple of reasons. First, I was never much for the Dame Edna character by Barry Humphries. Didn't find it too funny. Second, the fact that some of the sketches were chopped up really bothered me. In particular, Peter Cook's "Sitting on the Bench" miner sketch had about half of it cut out. Bothersome...you can see it in the "Beyond the Fringe" DVD in full, though. Other than that, there are moments of unparalleled hilarity. The courtroom sketch is a mish mash of Monty Python's courtroom sketched rolled up into one. And the result is marvelous, with Peter Cook as the defendant. "Dead Parrot" is also a real treat, with Michael Palin cracking up in the middle of the sketch...pure classic. Eleanor Bron's sketch is great. The rendition of "So That's the Way You Like It" was great. It seemed as if Terry Jones was made for that sketch. However, the best part of this whole video is Peter Cook's "Not An Asp" sketch. Once again, he gets the foil (John Fortune) to "corpse." He even corpses a bit himself. He is god, old Cookie... All in all, a great video, probably too short, the backstage bits are great, though. Great stuff, watch more British comedy!!!

Never before had there been such a show that had broken as many conventions on television as "Monty Python's Flying Circus." Looking at American television during the '60s, it seemed obvious which country was coming up with better comedy material. With shows like "Not Only...But Also," "That Was the Week That Was," "Q," "At Last the 1948 Show," and "Do Not Adjust Your Set" already in tow, it was Python that served as the true breakthrough for British television. Shows such as "Saturday Night Live," "Mr. Show," "Mad TV," "Family Guy," and "South Park" owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to "Monty Python's Flying Circus." The main strength of the show is that it mainly doesn't side too much with making topical comedy. Of course, there are moments where they satirize certain British figures (many of them I would have to look up to get the joke), but on the whole, it seems as if they start with a clean slate every time they make a sketch. There are absolutely no boundaries and no levels of expectation. It could be safe to say that they were at a complete advantage considering that they had free license to make sketches out of literally whatever came to mind at any given moment. With that, the possibilities were endless. The most unique factor of the show is the fluidity of each episode due to the stream-of-consciousness approach magnified by anti-climactic sketches that abandoned the pigeon-holing punchline and the innovative animation by Terry Gilliam. Each episode was as much a mind-trip as it was a comedy revue. Characters would sabotage sketches to make way for new ones, or a piece of animation would appear in a background and be zoomed in for a link to another sketch. It was all very cerebral and extremely innovative. Another important factor is the level of intelligence on the show. You don't feel like you're being dumbed down at all when you watch the show. At times, I actually learned something new from watching the show. I'd do a little research to better understand a sketch and find something very interesting that I would have never known about otherwise. Overall, the show is absolutely brilliant and it should been watched by more people, even though that will never happen. Monty Python is a comedy troupe that has more of a cult following than established fanfare. A lot of people can be put off by the genuine silliness of the show. As a whole, British comedy is actually much sillier than American comedy. Others find it just too strange and abstract. Of course, there are moments when one would be singled out because the humor is directed at British audiences a little too much. Nevertheless, there is usually one sketch at least that will get one laughing, and with that, its a good program to at least try out.