After the transmission of their final TV series in 1974, the five remaining members of Monty Python – John Cleese had bailed a year earlier – went their separate small-screen ways; and while Fawlty Towers will always be the best known post-Python programme and Rutland Weekend Television possibly the most underrated, the most fondly-remembered by fans is probably Michael Palin and Terry Jones’ Ripping Yarns.
Based on an idea by director Terry Hughes, Ripping Yarns ran between 1976 and 1979 and was an affectionately surreal parody of the Boys Own-style adventure annuals popular during the first half of the 20th century.
Growing from a one-off pilot (Tompkinson’s Schooldays) into two series of gently anarchic explorations of Great Britain’s history, empire, sporting endeavours and class system, the show was as close to a continuation of Monty Python on television as ever existed.
Although Michael Palin is the only member of the group to appear in all nine episodes, it’s no great leap of the imagination to picture the others taking some of the roles played by Roy Kinnear, John Le Mesurier or Denholm Elliot.
Recorded almost entirely on film, the high production values give each episode a mini-movie quality while the mixture of epic adventure and hilarious absurdity imbues the stories with an enduring charm.
Across the Andes by Frog details the ill-fated voyage of Captain Walter Snetterton, least-known of all English explorers, who attempts a perilous mountain crossing by amphibian. ‘Come and a have a woman––er, a drink,’ offers the vice-consulate when Snetterton arrives in Peru. ‘I won’t, thank you,’ he replies. ‘I have to get the frogs housed.’
Despite the utter failure of the trip, thanks to the conditions, his soldiers and the superstitious locals – whose celebrations of Cardiff’s victory in the FA Cup final are spoiled by El Misti, an angry volcano god – Snetterton’s fascination with frogs remains undimmed – as does his racist RSM’s interest in the local women: ‘I’ve just been having a bash with one of them … a right bit of stuff she was, sir.’
The Curse of the Claw is a brilliant Hammer horror-ish spoof with Palin playing a dual role as grieving widower Sir Kevin Orr and the haunted baronet’s disease-ridden Uncle Jack, an adventurer who collects rats, contracted lockjaw and scurvy in a protest against a London postal strike and discovered a cursed vulture’s claw whilst exploring Burma.
‘I was a young fit man and I only had malaria,’ Jack recalls before his nephew sails out on The Greasy Bastard, intending to return the terrible talon to its rightful place. The tramp steamer, staffed mostly by women pretending to be men, is a hotbed of sexual repression enhanced by the power of the curse – ‘I began, to my horror, to notice what an extraordinarily beautiful chief petty officer Mr Russell was’ – which eventually explodes, forcing Kevin to return home. Eventually, the claw follows him and wreaks a terrible revenge.
Like the original pilot episode, Whinfrey’s Last Case opens with Palin trying to introduce the story in character as Orson Welles – it’s a couple of minutes’ worth of laugh-up-a-lung visual comedy genius quite in the Python style – and goes on to tell the tale of a proto-Bondian ‘debonair dandy’ named Gerald Whinfrey who inadvertently stops the Germans starting World War I a day early whilst holidaying on the Cornish coast.
‘No smugglers’ cottage would be complete without at least one secret passage,’ he remarks after being imprisoned by a mendacious butler, a midget barmaid and an ostler who thinks he an osteopath in his bedroom – which happily turns out to have 23 of them built-in, allowing the hero to escape and save England once again.
While the high standard of humour isn’t quite maintained throughout the nine episodes – The Testing of Eric Olthwaite is a disappointing one-joke dirge and Roger of the Raj, despite its worthy anti-establishment satire, tires itself out long before the closing credits – Ripping Yarns is a worthy successor to Monty Python and a beautifully made piece of television in its own right, remaining hugely funny and delightfully entertaining some 30 years after its original broadcast.
Released on DVD on Monday 5th March 2012 by Network.
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