Well at least we didn’t hear yet again about Terry Jones having to pay his mortgage. BBC Imagine’s inevitable Monty Python doc was on a hiding to nothing. What hasn’t already been said about the veteran comics since they announced their imminent O2 Arena dates last November? The clue was in the title. It did, after all, promise us something rather similar.
What Alan Yentob had up his designer jacket sleeve was enviable access. He followed all the Pythons around and gently tweaked them as they pursued their various solo projects around the world. Terry Gilliam seemed consumed by a weird cocktail of confidence and self-doubt, Eric Idle ran meetings via Skype. Michael Palin was making a BBC drama in Yorkshire (bet it was hard to negotiate access there…). John Cleese was doing his Alimony tour in Singapore and Terry Jones was directing Simon Pegg in a movie.
One could guess at possibly a few simmering grievances beneath the surface, but what was clear was that they were all delighted to be making a packet out of the forthcoming ten shows. And they did seem to be having a jolly time during read-throughs of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch. We discovered that John Cleese has massive cats. Maybe he is doing the reunion to buy cratefuls of Whiskas.
We didn’t really learn much new about the group, if there is anything new to learn. Though we did find out that Graham Chapman may appear via the magic of film at the live shows. Michael Palin was very nice about the late Python. There were occasional gems here – such as the story that the show's insurers only pay out if two of them die – but there was a heck of a lot of padding and a lot of funny-but-familiar clips to wade through.
The best moment was probably seeing pictures of the elaborate sets which looked tantalising. For the first time, I felt excited about seeing the show. Oh, and there was a clip from Gilliam’s latest movie, The Zero Theorem, in which David Thewlis appears to have modelled his back-to-front hairstyle on the one currently sported by Neymar. Maybe there is something in that. Lest we forget, Gilliam did previously make a film called Brazil.
Imagine...Monty Python: And Now For Something Rather Similar is on iPlayer.
