The last place on Earth I’d ever think would discuss this was Marketplace on my NPR affiliate, otherwise I wouldn’t have known about the milestone yesterday; the downside of my current Apple gig keeps me too pre-occupied to do any serious Web surfing.
It’s worth listening to because the narrator talks about the sketches from an historical context regarding Britain’s economy in 1969 instead of the usual, predictable angle Comedy Central would take: before Python, there was the Goon Show with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, blah blah blah. Still, I doubt the UK would ever experience a Communist overthrow through an election or coup. I would agree on the issues about food, manufacturing and customer service which I feel two out of three are continue to ring true. Seriously. Other than a pub have you ever heard of an English restaurant? I think their manufacturing got resolved the same way it’s happening in America, it’s been handed over to China.
Anyway, by the time I was old enough to understand and appreciate the comedic stylings of these guys, the UK was a different place thanks to Punk Rock, Margaret Thatcher and more American culture being exported to them. The jokes weren’t as relevant yet I doubt even the most Anglophilic wannabe understood 90 percent of them. The reruns remained a nerdy rite of passage in the Eighties as they were a staple of late-night weekend television on PBS. All the inside jokes evolving into a secret code for the nerd/geek cliques at the five high schools I attended.
Then MTV decided to bring it to the (m)asses of America in the late Eighties. It never was the same to me. I’m sure it’s the feelings minorities experience when their music and slang get co-opted into suburbs.
The good of what Python did outweighs the annoyance. Their absurdities cascaded over to American and Canadian comedy: SNL, SCTV, The Simpsons, Mr. Show, and parts of Adult Swim.