What is Monty Python?

By Stefan Botnari

Monty Python (also known as Spamalot) were a British sketch comedy group who created their sketch comedy show Monty Python's Flying Circus, which had produced 45 episodes and were made over four series. The Python phenomenon developed from the television series into films, stage shows and live performances. They also released four music albums collecting songs that were featured on the show and performed live.

The team Monty Python had met while they were studying at Cambridge University and remained friends after graduating, they had decided to call themselves "Monty Python" as a joke meaning "we weren't very good". Their debut was with their TV series which proceeded to broadcast in hundreds of countries. Many of the Pythons' signature sketches and characters were included in their first album "The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief".

Besides their live performances they began making films, including some of my personal favorites “Life of Brian”, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and “The Meaning of Life” which are very influential to this day being considered the epitome of comedy even though dating more than 50 years back and created a cult-like following.

The mark that Monty Python can still be seen to this day with comedies being given a "Pythonesque" to comedies of surreal humor or the modern programming language called Python and even the word Spam due to their first name "Spamalot"!

I personally have only watched the movies produced by Monty Python, Life of Brian to be exact, which made me burst out laughing even though the humor was dated. They were a great group that had the biggest influence on today's pop culture and made people further appreciate and develop a taste for surreal humor.