Holy Flying Circus

[BillBrasky]

I could have put this in the British comedy thread, but I thought it was interesting enough that I'd give it its own thread, so that more people will read about it. This is a "dramatisation" (i.e. a fictionalized version of actual events) due to air on BBC4 next Wednesday the 19th. It concerns the events that took place after "Monty Python's Life of Brian" was released in the United Kingdom. Here's the press release description:

In 1979, the film Monty Python's Life Of Brian caused outrage around the world. The film depicted the life of Brian Cohen, a first-century Judean who is mistaken for the Messiah after joining an anti-Roman group.

Nuns with banners picketed cinemas, councils banned the film without even seeing it and the religious group Festival of Light organised a concerted campaign against the film, trying to get it banned.

Against this backdrop Michael Palin and John Cleese found themselves facing prominent society figures Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark, Mervyn Stockwood, in a television debate in front of a live studio audience to defend their film against charges of blasphemy. But who won?

Written by Tony Roche ("In The Loop", "The Thick Of It"), Holy Flying Circus is a fantastical re-imagining of the controversy surrounding the release of Life Of Brian. Witty and humorous in tone, the comedy drama incorporates surreal cutaways including puppetry and animation in telling its narrative.

So this is pretty cool; it's a bit like "Frost/Nixon", except it's about something I actually care about. I can't really think of too many other movies that have been made featuring actors playing the roles of famous sketch comedians who are still alive, except for "Wired" I guess, which I've always heard was terrible. And, as you can see from the preview clips below, the actors they hired to play the roles all do a pretty good job of impersonating the real people.

Here's a clip where John Cleese and Michael Palin are arriving at the BBC preparing to go on the "Friday Night Saturday Morning" program:



And here's a clip of all the Pythons gathered together in the office of Barry Atkins, discussing whether they want to release the film with an "X" certificate:



And I guess this is some kind of fantasy sequence where Terry Jones is playing Michael Palin's "wife":



And, if you've never seen the real clip of Cleese and Palin defending the film against the Bishop of Southwark and Malcolm Muggeridge, here it is:

[Trikywu]

I wonder if George Harrison is portrayed in this.

[BillBrasky]

This was mostly pretty entertaining, although it was presented in a very jokey, trying-to-be-like-Monty-Python way (a lot of pointing out of the anachronisms in the script and stopping for breaking the fourth wall moments), and some scenes that felt out of place and shouldn't have been in there at all (Cleese and Palin having a light saber duel??) But the scenes that were played straight were very interesting, and the impressions of the various Pythons were uniformly good. As an added bonus, BBC4 showed the entire "Friday Night Saturday Morning" program as it originally aired in full after the film, which is also available on thebox.bz and probably more interesting to watch from a fan standpoint than the actual movie.

[BillBrasky]

For anyone who never saw this and wanted to, they are going to be showing it on the Ovation cable network (? - Check your cable provider to see if you get this channel, I guess) this Saturday at 10 PM:

http://www.ovationtv.com/schedules?d...d=33836&week=0

[madhatter99]

This was one of the best programs I saw last year, i'm a big pythons fan so I was slightly worried about what this show was going to be. It was really well done I think they struck the right tone and it had some great abusrdist moments.