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And Now for Something Completely Different: Critical Approaches to Monty Python
Examining Monty Python’s enduring status as an unconventional, anti-authoritarian comedy touchstone, this book reappraises Python’s comedy output from the perspective of its 50 years of cultural circulation. Reconsidering the group’s originality, impact and durability, a range of international scholars explores Python’s influences, production contexts, frequently controversial themes, and the cult status and forms of fandom associated with Python in the present day. From television sketches, including The Funniest Joke in the World, Hell’s Grannies, Dead Parrot and Confuse-a-Cat , to the films Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life , to songs from the albums and live shows, this book is a ground-breaking critical analysis of the Monty Python phenomenon.
256 pages, Hardcover
Published October 20, 2020
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June 22, 2025
And Now for Something Completely Different, screen foreplay and conception Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin
10 out of 10
Monty Python is the best comedy team ever, if you ask this cinephile and surely many others.
Monty Python's Life of Brian is probably the best comedy ever.
And Now for Something Completely Different...is hilarious, splendid, even when the humor can create more than uneasiness...
Take the parrot sketch, one of the best scenes, where the character Of John Cleese comes to return the pet to the shop, where the assistant is played by Michael Palin, who keeps saying that the animal is resting or that it moved - when he hit the cage - when we can see that the bird is just stuffed.
That makes for amusing and unhappy viewing for those who own a macaw - I have two and Balzac is exactly the blue and gold from the motion picture.
However, the shop assistant finally offers to change the dead parrot that went to meet his maker in the language of the customer, but he only has a slug...
Just as he ends this weird offer of replacement, he states that he has always wanted to be a...lumberjack.
A special one at that, wearing high heels and women's clothes...to be a girlie, just like his dear papa.
In another sketch, the same divine duo talk about career planning, where the Michael Palin personage is an account who wants to change jobs and be a...lion tamer.
When John Cleese as a consultant explains what a lion is and what taming the wild beats entails, the accountant backtracks.
The best joke in the world is invented, but it is so powerful that first its author dies, then his mother and the deadly weapon is translated into German and then used in the war.
The blackmail program is another big hit, albeit some of the fare on television may be too close for comfort to what is a big joke in this stupendous comedy.
One of my favorites is the restaurant fight, reminding one of another Monty Python treasure, which had an Indian restaurant as setting and a waiter that bends over backwards to satisfy the clients, kicking himself and abusing his person whenever he feels he is not worthy of the honored guests, which is pretty much always.
In this film, a dirty fork is on the table and when the client asks for it to be replaced, first Terry Jones, then Eric Idle come to take the affair out of all proportion, only to be followed by an ax wielding John Cleese as the cook who is maddened - if we can say that about someone who is already mad - by the request of the guests of the eatery and is bent on making them pay for their absurdity.
A great, if dark, maybe morbid moment of hilarity is offered by the dialogue between Eric Idle and John Cleese characters, as they portray clerks in an office.
One man falls by their window and let's say Idle draws the attention of his colleague who is unperturbed and disbelieved the assertion.
When another man flies by and then yet another, they dispute the identity of the individual and eventually a bet is on, with one arguing that Wilkins is going to be next and the other putting his money against it.
Come on Wilkie...Come on!
One is prompting the man to jump, from afar, while the other is prompting him to stay put...
Extraordinary.
To end this note, there is one more mention, of the apparition of another John Cleese avatar as a robber who wants all the money...
Only he is in the wrong place...this is a lingerie shop.
A phenomenal, dazzling, creative, original, spectacular, provocative, intelligent, often dark, sensational comedy.
10 out of 10
Monty Python is the best comedy team ever, if you ask this cinephile and surely many others.
Monty Python's Life of Brian is probably the best comedy ever.
And Now for Something Completely Different...is hilarious, splendid, even when the humor can create more than uneasiness...
Take the parrot sketch, one of the best scenes, where the character Of John Cleese comes to return the pet to the shop, where the assistant is played by Michael Palin, who keeps saying that the animal is resting or that it moved - when he hit the cage - when we can see that the bird is just stuffed.
That makes for amusing and unhappy viewing for those who own a macaw - I have two and Balzac is exactly the blue and gold from the motion picture.
However, the shop assistant finally offers to change the dead parrot that went to meet his maker in the language of the customer, but he only has a slug...
Just as he ends this weird offer of replacement, he states that he has always wanted to be a...lumberjack.
A special one at that, wearing high heels and women's clothes...to be a girlie, just like his dear papa.
In another sketch, the same divine duo talk about career planning, where the Michael Palin personage is an account who wants to change jobs and be a...lion tamer.
When John Cleese as a consultant explains what a lion is and what taming the wild beats entails, the accountant backtracks.
The best joke in the world is invented, but it is so powerful that first its author dies, then his mother and the deadly weapon is translated into German and then used in the war.
The blackmail program is another big hit, albeit some of the fare on television may be too close for comfort to what is a big joke in this stupendous comedy.
One of my favorites is the restaurant fight, reminding one of another Monty Python treasure, which had an Indian restaurant as setting and a waiter that bends over backwards to satisfy the clients, kicking himself and abusing his person whenever he feels he is not worthy of the honored guests, which is pretty much always.
In this film, a dirty fork is on the table and when the client asks for it to be replaced, first Terry Jones, then Eric Idle come to take the affair out of all proportion, only to be followed by an ax wielding John Cleese as the cook who is maddened - if we can say that about someone who is already mad - by the request of the guests of the eatery and is bent on making them pay for their absurdity.
A great, if dark, maybe morbid moment of hilarity is offered by the dialogue between Eric Idle and John Cleese characters, as they portray clerks in an office.
One man falls by their window and let's say Idle draws the attention of his colleague who is unperturbed and disbelieved the assertion.
When another man flies by and then yet another, they dispute the identity of the individual and eventually a bet is on, with one arguing that Wilkins is going to be next and the other putting his money against it.
Come on Wilkie...Come on!
One is prompting the man to jump, from afar, while the other is prompting him to stay put...
Extraordinary.
To end this note, there is one more mention, of the apparition of another John Cleese avatar as a robber who wants all the money...
Only he is in the wrong place...this is a lingerie shop.
A phenomenal, dazzling, creative, original, spectacular, provocative, intelligent, often dark, sensational comedy.
January 12, 2026
I am a Monty Python addict. The work of the six legendary comedy performers and creators is legendary, and has been part of my life since I was about ten years old. I saw 'Monty Python's Life of Brian' when first released, have met Michael Palin, been on TV demonstrating my supposed knowledge of the television series and consumed hours and hours of text, film and audio from all members of the team. They will always be legends in my opinion, so I have no problem whatsoever in acknowledging the potential for serious critical study of the team's collaborative work. And Now for Something Completely Different: Critical Approaches to Monty Python edited by Kate Egan and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock is a very worthy and mostly successful book that provides an assemblage of essays that examines to cultural, critical, intellectual and represenational constructs that underpin Monty Python as a collaborative compositional phenomenon, and whilst there are some questionable individual points made by the contributors, I believe this is an eminently successful tome. The individual authors have all offered their own validation of the integrity of Python as a creative idea and phenomen, and in the process provided a engaging and academically informed avenue for an intellectual apprreciation of the writers and their work.
There are numerous strands that run through most of the essays, in one way or another, and these include the influences that worked upon the imagination of the Python writers, the manner in which their comedy can be explained in terms of philosophical, social and/or cultural paradigms, how the various texts have been received by audiences, and the meaning of their work in toto, Some of the essays included in the volume are more successful than others, and also some are more academically complex than others. Having said that, they all demonstrate a willingness and capacity for serious discourse on the Python's work that, as a result, confirms the importance of their corpus in such a way as to validate their writing in a similar way as one might more canonical literary and dramatic texts.
Funnily enough, perhaps one of the least successful entries in this volume is the editors' introduction. Providing both a summary of the Python's collaborations, as well as a map for their volume, it has some concerns as to how well the two editors actually know their subject. When they state (relying on another book that I stll have to read) "Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Eric Idle similarly met at Cambridge University as part of the Cambridge University Footlights dramatic club, and Chapman, Cleese and Idle then met American Terry Gilliam in New York City while on tour with the Footlights (Landy 2005: 6–13)" there are problems here, in that Footlights was not a dramatic club (more a club for producing comedic reviews) and Idle's initial meetings with Cleese, Chapman and Gilliam was not as outlined here. A book such as this, with a nominal academic integrity, must have the correct information and histories as part of its narrative, and to make an error such as this doesn't. Thankfully the rest of the introduction, as well as the separate essays, doesn't make too many other major errors, and the book as a whole is onformed by some comprehensive and valid research and source materials.
Additionally, it should have been noted in the introduction that as the Pythons were a team, and their work was presented as such, points considering the contributions, concerns and stylistic aspects of Palin, Jones, Chapman, Cleese, Idle and Gilliam should have been raised, as well as some kind of statement as to the construct of 'Python' per se. If one is to write about an amorphous collective cultural creative identity as embodied in 'Python', it seems most appropriate to question what this means, and how the amalgam of six different composers synthesises into a specific comedic unity.
One of the most important aspects of Python that is generally presented with success is the link between the Pythons and their work and that of Spike Milligan. The debt owed by the former to the latter is explicitly made again and again, and there are some interesting comments as to what and how the Pythons adapted the work of the man most responsible for 'The Goons'. Take as a case in point this analysis of how the Pythons reflect and divert Milligan's previous comedic use of puddings:
When juxtaposing this The Goon Show episode with episode 7 of the fi rst series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, revolving around a blancmange invasion of planet Earth, a significant generic shift is apparent. The theme of the two programmes is essentially the same: an attack involving puddings; the generic positioning of the two, however, highlights some of the differences explored further below. Whereas the Goons chose a Second World War setting, the Python team did their version of pudding throwing as a science fiction spoof: the Python pudding story lampoons contemporary science fiction and fantasy programmes, such as Doctor Who or The Twilight Zone; there are not even subtle references to the Second World War.
In a later essay Milligan is sidelined by the contributing author, in discussing how his play 'The Bed Sitting Room' informed the Pythons' work.
The Pythons’ absurdist-surrealist tendency is also apparent in Richard Lester’s 1960s output, ranging from both Beatles films (A Hard Day’s Night, 1964, and Help!, 1965) to the post-nuclear comedy The Bed Sitting Room (1969). Particularly the latter appears as very Pythonesque, especially since Lester fuses absurdist comic elements with tragic-nihilistic dimensions as the narrative is principally centred upon ‘the theme of human alienation brought about by social annihilation’ (Sinyard 2010: 74). The breakdown of social hierarchies and its absurd, at times highly bizarre consequences – a certain Mrs Ethel Shroake becomes queen and ‘[t]he Prime Minister is selected on the basis of his inside-leg measurement’ (ibid.: 75)."
The focus on Richard Lester has merit, but to not even mention Milligan's name seems patently absurd. Lester was a key collaborator of Milligan's, and both he and The Beatles derived much of their comedic sensibilities from him. In fact, it might have been interesting to include an essay on the creative bonds formed between these three British pop culture phenomena.
It was interesting to read some of the essays in their analysis and discussion of the Pythons as a conduit for or representation of particular theories pertaining to humour, absurdity and surrealism. Kafka, Beckett, Bergson and Bahktin all get mentions in more than one essay, and to my mind the relevant academics make very valid points. For example, when discussing the gas cooker sketch from Series Two, the essayist states:
This sketch has similarities to the writing of Kafka not only in that it highlights how the individual may be caught in a ludicrously officious bureaucratic process, but also by the fact that in the scenario of this sketch and much of Kafka’s fiction, the citizen becomes a victim in an irrational trap from which they cannot escape."
This is a totally relevant and appropriate critical observation, and considering how often the Python's spoke to or of office bound or bureaucratic figures in their sketches (e.g. the Ministry of Silly Walks, the Society for Putting Things on Top of Each Other, etc) one can readily appreciate the congruities of what is 'Kafkaesque' and what is 'Pythonesque'.
It also seems rather funny, in a postmodern way, to see Henri Bergson referenced in this volume, when the Pythons were known to use his name as a means to get laughs:
"Henri Bergson’s argument that ‘humour is born in moments where the life-force is momentarily usurped or eclipsed by an involuntary manifestation of automatism or reduction of the body to a lifeless machine’ (see Stott 2014: 27). But the dialogue is icing on the silly cake as it were, making it clear that we are to regard the scene as comic rather than tragic.
Sometimes the essayists go overboard in their analysis, creating something which is (to my mind at least) too much of an intellectual over-complication that deserves its own Pythonesque piss-take:
"...House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and Senator McCarthy’s red scare moral panic and witch hunt in 1950s America, which extended to Hollywood and the arts (e.g. Wisconsin-born fi lmmaker Joseph Losey, for instance, famously went into British/European exile). As his alter ego, Bicycle Repair Man, F. G. Superman sports a simple, practical worker’s outfi t and pursues manual labour commonly associated with communist ideology. However, the contradictory and volatile nature of the Cold War conflict – particularly in the early 1960s pre- and post-Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 – is underscored through a juxtaposition of both clashing ideological stances: despite Bicycle Repair Man’s unadorned worker attire and helpful, selfl ess demeanour, the over-the-top conservative, biased, and even fascist, voice-over commentary claims that he is not only always prepared to repair bicycles"
Such over-cerebral wankerish statements are thankfully sparse, whereas there are some really useful comments made on what the Pythons achieved, and their more immediate and clear meaning for many. The following comments as to the non-television texts are definitely valid, though to what extent can be debated:
"For many, The Meaning of Life is indicative of the ‘ending of Python’, its ramshackle assembly and overblown style not a show of fi repower but of exhaustion, as if the machine had run out of fuel. As such, then, the link between The Meaning of Life and the rest of the Python oeuvre is that it functions as a tail, a loose end."
"And indeed, some might argue for a correlation between the increasing reliance on musical elements in later Python projects (particularly The Meaning of Life [1983] and the Contractual Obligation Album [1980]) and a degree of creative exhaustion."
Both of these statements offer relevant insights into not just how Python's latter work may be received, but also prompt one to question whether in fact these are true. It is rather intriguing from a fan;s perspective to contemplate these ideas, and interrogate them for their truthfulness.
One of the most perceptive and provocative statements made in this book's essays is that which says the following:
"Nevertheless, one marker of fandom that applies as equally to Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner, 1987) as it does to The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) and They Live! (John Carpenter, 1988) is the ability to quote key lines as a form of bonding with other like-minded fans. To fans of these films, ‘This one goes to eleven’, ‘As you wish’, ‘Here’s Johnny!’ and ‘All out of chewing gum’ are passwords that admit one to a select community. Quoting a line to someone else who grasps the allusion and shares the speaker’s enthusiasm establishes a bond. And one quotation begets many: if you are fan of one or more of these films, you may now be mentally rehearsing other lines. In this way, a universe is reconstructed out of pregnant shards, each of which carries with it the DNA of the whole. The breakability of the film into individual lines allows for its communal reconstruction – as well as for the communication of a kind of shared affect of affectionate or passionate regard."
This analysis, provided by editor Jeffrey Weinstock, makes a lot of sense and offers a clear pathway into understanding how the Pythons created meaningful engagement for their fans. The resonance of their writing, their verbiage, is a key means for people to find them not just funny but also memorable.
This review has gone on long enough, and I've probably committed the sin of making too much out of what is a rather niche academic text. So, before a 10 tonne weight fall son my head I'll close with this; And Now for Something Completely Different: Critical Approaches to Monty Python is an essential read for serious Monty Python fans, and can also be used a contraceptive.
There are numerous strands that run through most of the essays, in one way or another, and these include the influences that worked upon the imagination of the Python writers, the manner in which their comedy can be explained in terms of philosophical, social and/or cultural paradigms, how the various texts have been received by audiences, and the meaning of their work in toto, Some of the essays included in the volume are more successful than others, and also some are more academically complex than others. Having said that, they all demonstrate a willingness and capacity for serious discourse on the Python's work that, as a result, confirms the importance of their corpus in such a way as to validate their writing in a similar way as one might more canonical literary and dramatic texts.
Funnily enough, perhaps one of the least successful entries in this volume is the editors' introduction. Providing both a summary of the Python's collaborations, as well as a map for their volume, it has some concerns as to how well the two editors actually know their subject. When they state (relying on another book that I stll have to read) "Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Eric Idle similarly met at Cambridge University as part of the Cambridge University Footlights dramatic club, and Chapman, Cleese and Idle then met American Terry Gilliam in New York City while on tour with the Footlights (Landy 2005: 6–13)" there are problems here, in that Footlights was not a dramatic club (more a club for producing comedic reviews) and Idle's initial meetings with Cleese, Chapman and Gilliam was not as outlined here. A book such as this, with a nominal academic integrity, must have the correct information and histories as part of its narrative, and to make an error such as this doesn't. Thankfully the rest of the introduction, as well as the separate essays, doesn't make too many other major errors, and the book as a whole is onformed by some comprehensive and valid research and source materials.
Additionally, it should have been noted in the introduction that as the Pythons were a team, and their work was presented as such, points considering the contributions, concerns and stylistic aspects of Palin, Jones, Chapman, Cleese, Idle and Gilliam should have been raised, as well as some kind of statement as to the construct of 'Python' per se. If one is to write about an amorphous collective cultural creative identity as embodied in 'Python', it seems most appropriate to question what this means, and how the amalgam of six different composers synthesises into a specific comedic unity.
One of the most important aspects of Python that is generally presented with success is the link between the Pythons and their work and that of Spike Milligan. The debt owed by the former to the latter is explicitly made again and again, and there are some interesting comments as to what and how the Pythons adapted the work of the man most responsible for 'The Goons'. Take as a case in point this analysis of how the Pythons reflect and divert Milligan's previous comedic use of puddings:
When juxtaposing this The Goon Show episode with episode 7 of the fi rst series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, revolving around a blancmange invasion of planet Earth, a significant generic shift is apparent. The theme of the two programmes is essentially the same: an attack involving puddings; the generic positioning of the two, however, highlights some of the differences explored further below. Whereas the Goons chose a Second World War setting, the Python team did their version of pudding throwing as a science fiction spoof: the Python pudding story lampoons contemporary science fiction and fantasy programmes, such as Doctor Who or The Twilight Zone; there are not even subtle references to the Second World War.
In a later essay Milligan is sidelined by the contributing author, in discussing how his play 'The Bed Sitting Room' informed the Pythons' work.
The Pythons’ absurdist-surrealist tendency is also apparent in Richard Lester’s 1960s output, ranging from both Beatles films (A Hard Day’s Night, 1964, and Help!, 1965) to the post-nuclear comedy The Bed Sitting Room (1969). Particularly the latter appears as very Pythonesque, especially since Lester fuses absurdist comic elements with tragic-nihilistic dimensions as the narrative is principally centred upon ‘the theme of human alienation brought about by social annihilation’ (Sinyard 2010: 74). The breakdown of social hierarchies and its absurd, at times highly bizarre consequences – a certain Mrs Ethel Shroake becomes queen and ‘[t]he Prime Minister is selected on the basis of his inside-leg measurement’ (ibid.: 75)."
The focus on Richard Lester has merit, but to not even mention Milligan's name seems patently absurd. Lester was a key collaborator of Milligan's, and both he and The Beatles derived much of their comedic sensibilities from him. In fact, it might have been interesting to include an essay on the creative bonds formed between these three British pop culture phenomena.
It was interesting to read some of the essays in their analysis and discussion of the Pythons as a conduit for or representation of particular theories pertaining to humour, absurdity and surrealism. Kafka, Beckett, Bergson and Bahktin all get mentions in more than one essay, and to my mind the relevant academics make very valid points. For example, when discussing the gas cooker sketch from Series Two, the essayist states:
This sketch has similarities to the writing of Kafka not only in that it highlights how the individual may be caught in a ludicrously officious bureaucratic process, but also by the fact that in the scenario of this sketch and much of Kafka’s fiction, the citizen becomes a victim in an irrational trap from which they cannot escape."
This is a totally relevant and appropriate critical observation, and considering how often the Python's spoke to or of office bound or bureaucratic figures in their sketches (e.g. the Ministry of Silly Walks, the Society for Putting Things on Top of Each Other, etc) one can readily appreciate the congruities of what is 'Kafkaesque' and what is 'Pythonesque'.
It also seems rather funny, in a postmodern way, to see Henri Bergson referenced in this volume, when the Pythons were known to use his name as a means to get laughs:
"Henri Bergson’s argument that ‘humour is born in moments where the life-force is momentarily usurped or eclipsed by an involuntary manifestation of automatism or reduction of the body to a lifeless machine’ (see Stott 2014: 27). But the dialogue is icing on the silly cake as it were, making it clear that we are to regard the scene as comic rather than tragic.
Sometimes the essayists go overboard in their analysis, creating something which is (to my mind at least) too much of an intellectual over-complication that deserves its own Pythonesque piss-take:
"...House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and Senator McCarthy’s red scare moral panic and witch hunt in 1950s America, which extended to Hollywood and the arts (e.g. Wisconsin-born fi lmmaker Joseph Losey, for instance, famously went into British/European exile). As his alter ego, Bicycle Repair Man, F. G. Superman sports a simple, practical worker’s outfi t and pursues manual labour commonly associated with communist ideology. However, the contradictory and volatile nature of the Cold War conflict – particularly in the early 1960s pre- and post-Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 – is underscored through a juxtaposition of both clashing ideological stances: despite Bicycle Repair Man’s unadorned worker attire and helpful, selfl ess demeanour, the over-the-top conservative, biased, and even fascist, voice-over commentary claims that he is not only always prepared to repair bicycles"
Such over-cerebral wankerish statements are thankfully sparse, whereas there are some really useful comments made on what the Pythons achieved, and their more immediate and clear meaning for many. The following comments as to the non-television texts are definitely valid, though to what extent can be debated:
"For many, The Meaning of Life is indicative of the ‘ending of Python’, its ramshackle assembly and overblown style not a show of fi repower but of exhaustion, as if the machine had run out of fuel. As such, then, the link between The Meaning of Life and the rest of the Python oeuvre is that it functions as a tail, a loose end."
"And indeed, some might argue for a correlation between the increasing reliance on musical elements in later Python projects (particularly The Meaning of Life [1983] and the Contractual Obligation Album [1980]) and a degree of creative exhaustion."
Both of these statements offer relevant insights into not just how Python's latter work may be received, but also prompt one to question whether in fact these are true. It is rather intriguing from a fan;s perspective to contemplate these ideas, and interrogate them for their truthfulness.
One of the most perceptive and provocative statements made in this book's essays is that which says the following:
"Nevertheless, one marker of fandom that applies as equally to Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner, 1987) as it does to The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) and They Live! (John Carpenter, 1988) is the ability to quote key lines as a form of bonding with other like-minded fans. To fans of these films, ‘This one goes to eleven’, ‘As you wish’, ‘Here’s Johnny!’ and ‘All out of chewing gum’ are passwords that admit one to a select community. Quoting a line to someone else who grasps the allusion and shares the speaker’s enthusiasm establishes a bond. And one quotation begets many: if you are fan of one or more of these films, you may now be mentally rehearsing other lines. In this way, a universe is reconstructed out of pregnant shards, each of which carries with it the DNA of the whole. The breakability of the film into individual lines allows for its communal reconstruction – as well as for the communication of a kind of shared affect of affectionate or passionate regard."
This analysis, provided by editor Jeffrey Weinstock, makes a lot of sense and offers a clear pathway into understanding how the Pythons created meaningful engagement for their fans. The resonance of their writing, their verbiage, is a key means for people to find them not just funny but also memorable.
This review has gone on long enough, and I've probably committed the sin of making too much out of what is a rather niche academic text. So, before a 10 tonne weight fall son my head I'll close with this; And Now for Something Completely Different: Critical Approaches to Monty Python is an essential read for serious Monty Python fans, and can also be used a contraceptive.
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