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Satirical Sketches – Obvious vs. Subtle
Political or satirical sketches have a bone to pick. They can pick that bone in an obvious way, with overt references to its target, or they can take a more subtle route. Let’s take an…
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Monty Python’s Flying Circus – Flouting the Rules? (Part 2)
Last time, we learned about the fledgling careers of the pre-Python Pythons. They’d spent most of the 1960s as jobbing writer-performers, getting into the spirit of that decade and gently pushing against the standard boundaries…
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Monty Python’s Flying Circus – Flouting the Rules? (Part 1)
Late one night in October 1969, a new show arrived on British TV. It was called Monty Python’s Flying Circus and despite arriving without much fanfare – it went out on a Sunday barely an…
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Not the Nine O’Clock News – Shockingly Conventional
In the UK of the late 1970s, TV sketch comedy was a rather cosy place. It was a world represented by the likes of The Two Ronnies, Morecombe & Wise, and Mike Yarwood – people…
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A Funny Sort of History
Stories from the history of comedy