What happens when six extraordinarily clever men decide that television comedy has become entirely too sensible?
On October 5, 1969, Monty Python’s Flying Circus arrived on BBC television—and comedy would never be quite the same again.
In this premiere episode of Monty Python Companion, Chesterton Radio explores the improbable origins of one of the most influential comedy groups in history.
Meet Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. Discover how Oxford, Cambridge, the BBC, David Frost, and the wonderfully anarchic world of British radio comedy helped bring the Pythons together.
From Spike Milligan and The Goon Show to the revolutionary sketches that abandoned punchlines, mocked bureaucracy, demolished respectable conventions, and occasionally involved a very large foot, we explore the peculiar genius behind the Flying Circus.
And there’s a distinctly Chestertonian question lurking beneath all this magnificent foolishness:
What would G. K. Chesterton have made of Monty Python?
The great defender of paradox, nonsense, laughter, and the absurdity of modern seriousness might have found some unexpected kindred spirits among the Pythons. After all, sometimes the best way to expose a ridiculous world is to become even more ridiculous.
Expect surprising stories, British eccentricity, comic history, and the occasional philosophical observation—strictly limited, of course, by the Ministry of Silly Walks.
This is Monty Python Companion. And now for something completely different.
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Coming Next: Monty Python Companion No. 2 — The Dead Parrot and the Art of the Argument.
Because this parrot is not merely resting.
