Monty Python's Flying Circus, Disc 5

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A&E’s release of the full Monty (Python, that is) continues on disc 5 with the first three episodes from the classic BBC series’ second season. Episode 14 is typically silly stuff, but with the entrance of John Cleese as a ranking official in the Ministry of Silly Walks, it becomes one for the Python pantheon. This signature sketch is topped by Ethel the Frog’s profile of the Piranha brothers, Doug and Dinsdale, whose reign of violence (such as nailing people’s heads to the table) and sarcasm terrorized England. Bravo for Terry Jones as Inspector Harry “Snapper” Organs from Q Division, whose “bewildering series of disguises” includes an appearance as Sancho Panza from Man of La Mancha for which he earns a “right panning” from the Bath Chronicle. Episode 15 introduces another bit of classic Pythonia, The Spanish Inquisition, for whom soft cushions and a comfy chair are the ill-advised agents of torture. In addition to such loony diversions as a semaphore version of Wuthering Heights, this episode brilliantly subverts television convention for a sketch in which a clueless chap (Graham Chapman) is recruited to play the part of straight man, but is not given the punch line. Episode 16 takes off with a sketch in which aspiring pilot Terry Jones gets some very silly flying lessons from a wire-suspended Graham Chapman (“Up on the table, arms out, fingers together, knees bent… now flap your arms….”). A highlight of this episode is a profile of poet Ewan McTeagle (Jones again), the freeloading author of the epic verse “Can I Have 50 Pounds to Mend the Shed.” Other amusing bits include Eric Idle as a psychiatrist milkman on his rounds, and Michael Palin as the increasingly unsettled host of It’s the Mind, who is sure he has relived this episode devoted to déjà vu. –Donald Liebenson