50 Years of Something Completely Different

It's...

...50 years since Monty Python's Flying Circus began.

It arrived fully-formed on BBC television in the shape of the first episode, featuring such sketches as Italian lessons for Italians, 20th century painters on bicycles, and The Funniest Joke in the World.

"Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!"

Monty Python's Flying Circus didn't grow into its 'Pythonesque' humour, it was all there from the very beginning. Perhaps this is to do with the fact that the first programme broadcast was really the third one they made, but I think it is more because their style was not utterly new for this series, but a continuation of the style already in progress in their earlier radio and TV series I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, At Last the 1948 Show and Do Not Adjust Your Set.

This helps explain why the BBC management let them go straight into a 13 episode season instead of requiring a pilot - and it is hard to imagine a show starting out in the modern TV landscape leading with something as baffling as It's Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, where Mozart (John Cleese) introduces clips of the deaths of famous historical characters.