If we are to believe John Cleese, who has lately morphed into the classic old man yelling at a cloud, the reason that Monty Python hasn’t been shown on the BBC for nigh-on 20 years is that it’s “too funny”. The only explanation, he told a simpering Nick Robinson on the Today programme, is that “it might not contrast well with some of the comedy they’re doing now”. He went on to cite the 90s sitcom Men Behaving Badly, once voted the funniest comedy of all time, as an example of forgettable programming. “Have you ever heard of it since?” he asked, witheringly.
It is a common complaint among once brilliant entertainers to pine loudly for the supposed good old days when art was interesting and edgy, and to deem everything that came after them to be inferior. Barely a day goes by without a Gallagher brother bitterly badmouthing younger, more successful musicians; see also Will Self declaring the novel “doomed”.
There’s no denying the weight of Monty Python’s cultural contribution. My own mental picture of Cleese is still as the bowler-hatted civil servant with elasticated legs, half dancing, half goose-stepping down the street in the Ministry of Silly Walks, or as the expostulating customer in the Dead Parrot sketch holding said bird upside down and proclaiming it “an ex-parrot”. At their absolute peak, the Pythons were outrageously funny, the high benchmark of surrealist humour. But, on the rare occasion that I return to them now, my appreciation is different. Some of the sketches stand up; others do not. They no longer make me hoot, and sometimes make me cringe. This is the way with comedy. It recalibrates and evolves. It’s what it’s meant to do.
Cleese is right that Men Behaving Badly hasn’t aged well. But that’s not due to its inferiority so much as being product of a time when it was apparently hilarious for men to behave like lobotomised idiots owing to a newfangled concept called irony. Like it or loathe it, it was a direct response to the culture into which it was born.
Today we have Nanette, the masterwork from Hannah Gadsby currently on Netflix, a brave, brilliant and righteous piece of standup that deconstructs comedy – confronting the sexism and homophobia Gadsby has faced – while operating within its most traditional format. Right now, it looks like a game-changer, but you can just picture Cleese in that audience, mouth like a cat’s bum, prattling on about political correctness – note his grumble on Today about not being allowed to say the word “poof” – and asking where the gags are.
It hardly needs saying that contemporary TV comedy is in rude health– should you need pointers, let me refer you to Catastrophe, Derry Girls, Gameface, Fleabag and Mum – and that viewers are spoiled for choice. Cleese feeling slighted that Python is no longer aired on the BBC is obviously daft given that The Meaning of Life, The Life of Brian and all 45 episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus are available on Netflix. But it’s also rather sad.
Recently the BBC’s head of comedy, Shane Allen, caused ripples of umbrage when he remarked that, in a drive towards diversity, the white, Oxbridge-educated likes of Monty Python’s Cleese and Michael Palin probably wouldn’t get a look-in now. Cleese was predictably irate, but his entitlement regarding Python and its legacy makes Allen’s point for him.
No comic, no matter how heavyweight, is entitled to be on television 45 years after their heyday. Cleese recently told Emily Maitlis on Newsnight that he is leaving the country. Who’d like to help him pack?