At last the origins of Python
Two new releases from the BFI represent the missing links in the evolution of surreal British television comedy, featuring proto-Pythons and soon-to-be Goodies in skits and sketches galore
At Last the 1948 Show / Do Not Adjust Your Set
UK 1967-1969
BFI £24.99 each (DVD)
Seemingly out of nowhere in 1969 sprang Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and in 1970, The Goodies. Unless, of course, you’d been avid listeners to I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again, the wonderful 1960s BBC radio show featuring Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Graeme Garden, David Hatch, Jo Kendall and Bill Oddie. But what were the links between ISIRTA and the later TV madness? How did we get from Angus Prune and Lady Constance de Coverlet to the Dead Parrot and Kitten Kong?
The answer lies mainly in these two sets of DVDs from the BFI, bringing together the most complete versions since their original broadcast of At Last the 1948 Show (1967) and
Do Not Adjust Your Set (1967-69) – far more episodes than on the Boulevard releases in 2005. One of the many remarkable things about watching these shows half a century later is how you don’t even notice that they are in blackand-white! At Last the 1948 Show featured Cleese, Brooke-Taylor, future Python Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman, with The Lovely Aimi MacDonald introducing sketches – and using the later Python catchphrase “And now for something completely different” in the very first episode.
There are many other links, both backwards and forwards, between the shows. “The Four Yorkshiremen” didn’t originate with Python, as is commonly thought, but in 1948. ISIRTA fans will remember the “John and Mary” sketches with John Cleese and Jo Kendall as two terribly posh but dysfunctional lovers saying goodbye; Jo Kendall makes a few guest appearances in 1948 including one sketch with the classic John and Mary lines, “Oh John, once we had something good and pure and wonderful. What’s happened to it?” “You spent it all.” And there’s one link which runs from ISIRTA through 1948 to Python: the Ferret Song, with John Cleese solemnly (and quite beautifully) singing “I’ve got a ferret sticking up my nose (He’s got a ferret sticking up his nose), I’ve got a ferret sticking up my nose, How it got there I can’t tell, But now it’s there it hurts like hell, And what is more it radically affects my sense of smell (His sense of smell)...” It’s a joy to hear.
Looking back on 1948 from the present day, in the many DVD extras, Cleese says: “We were fed up with clichés, with sketches which started in a particular way and which finished with a punchline. We wanted to break away.” Cleese and Chapman were to go on to Python, while BrookeTaylor was joined by old ISIRTA colleagues Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden in The Goodies. Marty Feldman, who had previously been a writer rather than a performer (the silly names of characters in 1948 are familiar from Round the Horne, which he co-wrote with Barry Took), took his own form of creative craziness into his own TV show. And to go full circle, Garden and Brooke-Taylor are still regulars today on Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.
The rest of the future Pythons are in the other series released by the BFI, Do Not Adjust Your Set: Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, along with Denise Coffey (taking full part in sketches, not just introductions) and David Jason – and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Tim BrookeTaylor appears in one episode as a last-minute replacement for an ill Palin. The second series included some animations by the final future Python, Terry Gilliam.
DNAYS was broadcast at 5.30 pm, and was aimed at the preearly evening News children’s audience, though it was quickly adopted by students. The sketches tend to be weaker than in 1948, though the humour is often warmer – and certainly not as manic. One episode ends with a touch of satire: the cast singing “I’m Baking Britain”, a skit on the current political and social campaign “I’m Backing Britain”. Every programme featured a new episode of “Captain Fantastic”, with David Jason playing an inept superhero detective. From today’s viewpoint this is embarrassingly awful, but it had its own spin-off show after DNAYS finished. Jason shines far better for his slapstick comedy, prefiguring his famous falling-through-the-bar as Del Boy; he also does a surprisingly brilliant impersonation of Sixties game show host Hughie Green.
The highlight of every episode was the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, with Viv Stanshall, Neil Innes and the other members giving wonderfully surreal performances. The extras on the DVDs include interviews with several of the Bonzos, as well as some of the cast.
What strikes you now, 50 years later, is how young they all were at the time. Producer Humphrey Barclay (who also produced ISIRTA) says: “We had free rein. We behaved ourselves and had a lovely silly time.” He continues: “Nobody told us what to do. It was the most extraordinary era of trust… We were given an open playground.”
Michael Palin seems to sum up the experience of working on both series: “A very joyful comedy”.
David V Barrett
★★★★★
“I’ve got a ferret sticking up my nose, how it got there I can’t tell”