ON THIS DAY OCTOBER 5 2023

This Day in History: October 5

Featured Event

1969







The British television series Monty Python's Flying Circus debuted on the BBC and proved to be a watershed for TV comedy around the world.



Monty Python’s Flying Circus
British television series




Monty Python’s Flying Circus, British television sketch comedy series that aired from 1969 to 1974 on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) network and became popular with American viewers largely through rebroadcasts on public television. The unorthodox program enjoyed a unique success and proved to be a watershed not just for British comedy but also for television comedy around the world.
When it first aired, Monty Python’s Flying Circus was unlike anything that had appeared on television, and in many ways it was both a symbol and a product of the social upheaval and youth-oriented counterculture of the late 1960s. Although sketch comedy was nothing new, television had never broadcast anything so surreal, daring, and untraditional as Monty Python, and its importance to television is difficult to overstate. However, the influence of BBC Radio’s The Goon Show (which aired from 1951 to 1960 and featured the character-driven, absurdist humour of Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, and Harry Secombe) on Monty Python’s anarchic approach is undeniable.

Britannica Quiz
Pop Culture Vocabulary Quiz

Monty Python’s free-form sketches seldom adhered to any particular theme and were alike only in their raucous disregard for convention. The introductory title sequence might run in the middle of the show, for example, or be omitted entirely. Over the run of the series, a few characters recurred, but most were written solely for the sketch in which they appeared. The show’s humour could be simultaneously sarcastic, scatological, and intellectual.



The series was a creative collaboration between Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam (the latter was the sole American in the otherwise British group of Oxford and Cambridge graduates). The five Englishmen played most of the roles, with Gilliam primarily contributing eccentric animations. Each of the creators went on to careers in film and television. The series engendered a number of feature films—most notably Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), and Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life (1983)—and major stage works. Monty Python and the Holy Grail was later adapted into the Tony Award-winning musical comedy Spamalot (first produced in 2005). Decades after the show’s initial run, the mere mention of some of its most-loved sketches (e.g., the Cheese Shop, the Pet Shop, the Ministry of Silly Walks, the Spanish Inquisition, Spam, No. 1: The Larch) is still enough to prompt laughter from devoted fans.

Featured Biography

Kate Winslet
English actress







Kate Winslet, in full Kate Elizabeth Winslet, (born October 5, 1975, Reading, Berkshire, England), English actress known for her sharply drawn portrayals of spirited and unusual women.
Winslet was raised in a family of actors. She began performing at an early age, taking small parts in commercials, television shows, and stage plays. Her first major role was in director Peter Jackson’s drama Heavenly Creatures (1994). The film, based on the Pauline Parker–Juliet Hulme case in New Zealand, depicted the obsessive fantasy life of two adolescent girls and their eventual murder of Parker’s mother. In 1995 Winslet appeared in an adaptation of the Jane Austen novel Sense and Sensibility; the film was written by actress Emma Thompson and directed by Ang Lee. Winslet’s turn as Marianne Dashwood, a young woman set financially and romantically adrift by the circumstances of her father’s death, brought her to the attention of a larger audience and earned her an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress. Winslet then starred in another literary adaptation, Jude (1996), which was based on Thomas Hardy’s novel Jude the Obscure (1895). Winslet solidified her burgeoning reputation for taking period roles by portraying Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh’s production of Hamlet (1996).


see all related content