From: "Stacie" 

Is this supposed to be our cue to rush in as a mob and threaten to burn you
at the stake for blasphemy or something?

TheWiseOne wrote:
> It was a tv show that lasted four years (and there was only a few eps each
> of those four years).

Four series, 13 eps the first three series, six the last. Compared to most
shows starting on the Beeb that I'm familiar with, that's right in line
with other shows. I'm confused, though. You seem to be simultaneously
saying that is too few and too many. Which did you think it was? Oh, and
you might throw in the two German eps.

>A few movies and two movies were pretty much just
> rehashes of the show.

Five to be exact, counting Hollywood Bowl, which, to be fair, was actually
a film of a stage show that was part rehash of the show, part newly
recycled material. And Now For Something Completely Different was produced
with an eye toward introducing American audiences to Python. You have to
remember this was back in the ancient times before ye olde home video
market or the mass importation of foreign telly for endless reruns instead
of our own domestic endless reruns. Instead of just showing the same old
show again on telly in another country, you actually had to go out and
produce the whole thing again in a different format.

A movie was pretty much the only way to get Python in front of American
eyeballs. It didn't really accomplish that, but still, they tried. ANFSCD
never pretended to be much more than a superlong episode of the show for
the big screen. But it did have one advantage over the show when it hit
home video. It was more "rentable". Only in the last few years
has it been proven that people will rent/buy television series on
DVD/Video. Common wisdom used to be that people would definitely risk a
cheap rental on a movie they might or might not like and spend 90 minutes
with it. But an entire series was the scary unknown. Most smaller rental
stores didn't used to stock television shows for rent. Stocking a
television show is a bigger investment than a single movie. Renting one is
a bigger investment. Renting ANFSCD used to be pretty much the only easy
way to get yourself exposed to any Python sketch comedy if Flying Circus
wasn't in syndication in your area.

>It wasn't enough to build such a big franchise with.

Seems to have been profitable enough. Some of the material is repetitive to
varying degrees, but it is rather interesting to see how they often tweaked
the same material to better fit the medium or the flow of other material
around it. Personally, I kind of enjoy comparing how they fit select
sketches/animations together for ANFSCD as compared to the show, for
instance. And if it sells, I tend to think of that as supporting the
franchise.

> There's only so many books or anything else you can base on a franchise
> like this. They tried too much Python material and the result was it
> becoming painfully obvious there was not enough to merit all this.

If the books and toys and whatever-elses keep selling decently to fans old
and new alike, such as those pesky people like myself who were came of age
well after ye olde home video market, I guess I'd have to say Python does
merit all this. If it were selling poorly, I wouldn't think they would keep
coming out with merchandise of all kinds. Someone in marketing evidently
thinks they do merit it. And someone at the cash register. Some of the new
fans are literally, well, new. If the material's new to you, it's new. It's
like, oh, say, the Narnia books, Harry Potter, Warner Brothers classic
cartoons or Disney classic movies. New generations keep coming along that
get introduced to something that's already old hat to some of us, and they
want to buy it. Nothing wrong with reissuing the same material in different
forms (or even the same forms) if there's an eager audience for it. That's
what franchises are for.

Now, does that mean that even hardcore fans are automatically going to
think that everything ever produced and likely to be produced that has a
Python connection is unfailingly innovative, fresh and brilliant? Nope.
That's all personal taste. And probably everyone here has a different
opinion about what they love, what they hate, and what feels like
"retread". Part of that depends on what other sketch shows you
might have been exposed to and when, as well. If you've seen some of the
original sketch shows that Python "borrowed and adapted" from,
for instance.

It's not as though you can expect them to come out with something literally
new at this point. Unfortunately, that's all the Python material there's
ever going to be. With Graham Chapman dearly departed, there won't be any
new Python material. Sorry, but old and recycled is all we can have. If you
want freshly produced, never-before-seen comedy, you're going to have to
find a comedy group that's still working together and all alive. And even
then, good luck getting anything truly new or different. Formulaic and safe
seems to be the norm these days.

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