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Monty Python

The Basics

For humour that was considered incomprehensible, subversive, even dangerous, when it was first unleashed on the world, "Monty Python" has travelled – and endured – remarkably well. It is for many Americans the touchstone example of English craziness, of our ability not just to laugh at ourselves, but to point out as we do that we are even weirder as a people than it looks at first sight.

Monty Python (silhouette white)
The show began life as Monty Python's Flying Circus in 1969, bravely commissioned by BBC editors who hadn't the faintest idea what they were going to get. Its team of six comic performers (plus the essential Carol Cleveland) created over the course of four series a whole set of caricatures, and unforgettably silly situations, that have passed into the annals of British entertainment.

Its combination of absurd sketches without punchlines, parody songs and manic animations was a wholly original formula, and one that broke new ground in what it was possible for TV comedy to do. What's your favourite sketch?