Little Britain v Monty Python

Python especially the films were as good as it gets, the series had high and lows whereas their sketches would often end abruptly. In later comedy series they would add a repetitive character catch phrase that would be repeated endlessly every week.
I think shows like the Goons and Python changed comedy from the formulaic sketch 'beginning middle end era.

I often watch the films( holy grail and life of Brian being amongst the best ever)but the series is behind things like fawlty towers, phoenix nights, extras etc.... I guess I like my comedies with a story to tell and an ending.

Short Sketch comedies get pretty repetitive pretty quick.

It's whatever suits you sir:-)
 
Python had excellent to poor bits. There was some repetition- ‘and now for..’… ‘it’s..’ but it was entirely different to what had gone before.
Little Britain was throughout ok, but wouldn’t say it broke new ground, and had repetitive bits, because it was character comedy.

The Fast show, was far better than Little Britain, imo. But also suffered from the odd poor bit.

A shout out for the short lived ‘Big Train’, which is possibly the closest to a Python type comedy show since. Ironically the only repetitive sketch was the best of the lot -
Compilation, with Barry Davies on probably his finest deadpan performance commentary
 
JASR said:
Python had excellent to poor bits. There was some repetition- ‘and now for..’… ‘it’s..’ but it was entirely different to what had gone before.
Little Britain was throughout ok, but wouldn’t say it broke new ground, and had repetitive bits, because it was character comedy.

The Fast show, was far better than Little Britain, imo. But also suffered from the odd poor bit.

A shout out for the short lived ‘Big Train’, which is possibly the closest to a Python type comedy show since. Ironically the only repetitive sketch was the best of the lot -
Compilation, with Barry Davies on probably his finest deadpan performance commentary
Click to expand...


Let's be honest there were too many people trying to re-invent comedy when all comedy is and was is the ability to make people laugh, now it's either too political or performed by people who shouldn't be anywhere near it like that useless Miranda.

But here's a clip from a sitcom Man Down that would make a corpse giggle.

 
The Two Ronnies sketches were better than Little Britain. I think a fairer matchup would be LB vs Smack the Pony or something like that.
 
Jesus, Python. Every time. At their best they were hysterical.

Little Britain was mildly funny at first and then painfully unimaginative thereafter.
 
Python for me. And as per JASR's post above, Big Train was fantastic.
Never really liked Little Britain. I found it very repetitive.
 
mexico1970 said:
Let's be honest there were too many people trying to re-invent comedy when all comedy is and was is the ability to make people laugh, now it's either too political or performed by people who shouldn't be anywhere near it like that useless Miranda.

But here's a clip from a sitcom Man Down that would make a corpse giggle.

Click to expand...

I think Miranda was excellent.... mostly.
 
Blue Mist said:
You are.
You disappont me.
You've ruined my Monday.
Click to expand...
He sounds like me as a know-it-all 15 year old telling my dad that Handcock's Half Hour was just boring and certainly NOT funny whilst he was avidly recording reruns of it in the 80s.

I was wrong then just as he is now.

Hopefully time will allow him to revise his opinion too.



ANYWAY, can't believe nobody has mentioned Not the Nine o'clock News yet.
 
CTID1988 said:
The monty python films are great but have you had a rewatch of the series? It's really shit. 95% of it is really bad
Click to expand...
The series had some great sketches, but would anyone sit down now and watch a full episode? And enjoy it? Doubt it very much.
 
mexico1970 said:
Let's be honest there were too many people trying to re-invent comedy when all comedy is and was is the ability to make people laugh, now it's either too political or performed by people who shouldn't be anywhere near it like that useless Miranda.

But here's a clip from a sitcom Man Down that would make a corpse giggle.

Click to expand...


Thats always been the case though, it’s entirely subjective and people get what they get and like what they like.

Rob Bryson spoke to someone on one of his podcasts about it and was a really interesting discussion about how passionate people get about the comedy they don’t like.

Personally I’m with you on Miranda :)
 
BimboBob said:
Milligan then Python...

Little Britain is a lot further down the list. Had its moments. Fast Show was much better.
Click to expand...
The amount of classic shows on the beeb that the recordings were overwritten is such a shame.

I have seen a few Milligan episodes (before my time), he was the star on Noel’s house party (more my age)… which led me to watch compilation clips, but I never saw his serieses on TV… I think a lot have gone forever.

A similar situation occurs with The goodies, which I was around to watch a few, and they possibly were repeated once… but not now.
I have finally the whole lot on DVD - and some of them are just viewers recordings. The beeb even wiped out the original Kitten Kong!

Along with Python, I think a lot of the Goodies is excellent -the rough use of early visual editing is superb - but there are a few very drab ‘filler’ episodes. Not got through to the final few series (and the ITV final one) yet.
However I can see why it might be tricky to repeat show The Goodies on tv now… it’s certainly throws some language of ‘the time’ every so often. Not at the level of The Comedians, or Alf Garnett… but close.

There’s a fascinating (and sad) list of missing 60’s/70’s comedy episodes (among all beeb output) here:

Category:Lost BBC episodes - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
&

List of lost television broadcasts in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
If anyone has a few hours of rabbit hole time to spend
 
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