Cleese Encounters – Jonathan Margolis, 1992 ★½

Man of the Middle

When I first watched “Fawlty Towers” as a teen, I thought the humor was the awful, demanding people coming to Basil Fawlty’s hotel. I didn’t realize Basil himself was a problem. He seemed a rock of middle-class authority.

Reading Cleese Encounters, I wonder if a teenaged John Cleese might have seen him the same way.

All The Words, Vol. Two – Monty Python's Flying Circus, 1989 ★★★

Monty Python: The Spam Years

Genius is hard to capture, and hard to sustain. The impulse to keep doing what works often misleads; so too can the desire to change things up. If you do something that makes a large portion of your audience uncomfortable, the challenge can be that much greater, particularly if you are dependent on government sponsorship while honing your craft.

All this comes into play when reviewing this second, final volume of one of television comedy’s most legendary achievements, “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” Vol. Two collects transcripts for the last 22 episodes of the famous series, those airing from December 1970 to December 1974.

All The Words, Vol. One – Monty Python's Flying Circus, 1989 ★★★★

Python... Before the Big Screen

Loving good old Monty Python comes easy, but it’s a sign of age when you hear what it is about Python people love. For many, debate centers around cinema. Arthur? Brian? Perhaps some wafer-thin love for Mr. Creosote?