Review of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969)
Fairly integrated skits on diverse topics.
Absurdist comedy developed by a self-contained team of writer-performers. Written by all the Pythons plus Douglas Adams and Neil Innes, both near the end.
I’m sure this was brilliant and revolutionary in the early seventies, and many skits are still pure gold. However, much of it is slow, repetitive and predictable. Take the “It’s!” guy, for example; that was a good joke in the very first episode. Recycling it did not reach a point of bathos where it got funny again. Cleese had the good sense to pull out, provoking a historic mercy killing.
References here: Skäggprogrammen (1963), The Meaning of Life (1983), Varan-TV (1997), Gravity Falls (2012), Parasite (2019).