''Holy Flying Circus'' is a 90-minute BBC television comedy film first broadcast in 2011, written by

Tony Roche Anthony Dalton Roche AO MBE (born 17 May 1945) is an Australian former professional tennis player. A native of Tarcutta, Roche played junior tennis in the New South Wales regional city of Wagga Wagga. He won one Grand Slam singles title, th ...

and directed by

Owen Harris Owen Harris (1837 – January 1905) was a Liberal politician and municipal leader in Aberdare, South Wales. Early life Harris was born in Llanddeusant, Carmarthenshire, but as a young man migrated to Ystalyfera in the Swansea Valley and late ...

. The film is a "Pythonesque" dramatisation of events following the completion of ''

Monty Python's Life of Brian ''Monty Python's Life of Brian'' (also known as ''Life of Brian'') is a 1979 British comedy film starring and written by the comedy group Monty Python (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin). It w ...

'', culminating in the televised debate about the film broadcast in 1979.

Plot

At a meeting in the offices of their film distributor, the members of

Monty Python Monty Python (also collectively known as the Pythons) were a British comedy troupe who created the sketch comedy television show '' Monty Python's Flying Circus'', which first aired on the BBC in 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over fo ...

discuss allowing the film '' Life of Brian'' to be released in America first because of America's

first amendment First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and reco ...

John Cleese John Marwood Cleese ( ; born 27 October 1939) is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. Emerging from the Cambridge Footlights in the 1960s, he first achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and ...

voices his support for the idea, and says that he loves Americans. We then see American reporters at a screening of the movie where a near riot is taking place, with the protesters condemning the film as "blasphemous". The Pythons review a disheartening statement made by a religious leader, implying that the film causes violence. Cleese misinterprets this (possibly deliberately) and goes off on a tangent about little kids carrying out copycat crucifixions on their friends. Their distributor, Barry, suggests a low profile approach for the UK release so as not to cause too much upset. "Let's not project an advert onto the side of

Westminster Abbey Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United ...

or make ''Life of Brian'' Christmas crackers". Much of the film is taken up with preparations for a debate on the

BBC2 BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream ...

chat show '' Friday Night, Saturday Morning''. Initially, the Pythons are reluctant to take part but decide that Cleese and

Michael Palin Sir Michael Edward Palin (; born 5 May 1943) is an English actor, comedian, writer, television presenter, and public speaker. He was a member of the Monty Python comedy group. Since 1980, he has made a number of travel documentaries. Palin ...

should represent the troupe on the programme. Palin's wife is depicted with a remarkable resemblance to

Terry Jones Terence Graham Parry Jones (1 February 1942 – 21 January 2020) was a Welsh comedian, director, historian, actor, writer and member of the Monty Python comedy team. After graduating from Oxford University with a degree in English, Jones and ...

( Rufus Jones plays both parts).Rufus Jone
"Holy Flying Circus: Making a drama of Monty Python"
BBC tv blog, 19 October 2011 The production team of the BBC chat show eventually manage to gain a commitment from

Malcolm Muggeridge Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge (24 March 1903 – 14 November 1990) was an English journalist and satirist. His father, H. T. Muggeridge, was a socialist politician and one of the early Labour Party Members of Parliament (for Romford, in Essex). In ...

and Mervyn Stockwood, then the Bishop of Southwark, to oppose the two Pythons. Portions of this televised discussion are recreated towards the end of the film.

Cast

* Darren Boyd as

* Charles Edwards as

* Steve Punt as

Eric Idle Eric Idle (born 29 March 1943) is an English actor, comedian, musician and writer. Idle was a member of the British surreal comedy group Monty Python and the parody rock band The Rutles, and is the writer of the music and lyrics for the Broadway ...

* Rufus Jones as

and Michael's Wife * Tom Fisher as

Graham Chapman Graham Chapman (8 January 1941 – 4 October 1989) was a British actor, comedian and writer. He was one of the six members of the Surreal humour, surreal comedy group Monty Python. He portrayed authority figures such as The Colonel (Monty Pyth ...

Phil Nichol Phil Nichol is a Canadian comedian, singer-songwriter and actor. Early life and career Comedy Nichol was born in Scotland to a Scottish mother, but raised in Canada. He first found fame as a member of the musical comedy trio Corky and the Juice ...

Terry Gilliam Terrence Vance Gilliam (; born 22 November 1940) is an American-born British filmmaker, comedian, animator, actor and former member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam has directed 13 feature films, including '' Time Bandits'' (1981), '' ...

* Michael Cochrane as

Roy Marsden Roy Marsden (born Roy Anthony Mould; 25 June 1941) is an English actor who portrayed Adam Dalgliesh in the Anglia Television dramatisations (1983–1998) of P. D. James's detective novels, and Neil Burnside in the spy drama '' The Sandba ...

as Bishop of Southwark * Tom Price as

Tim Rice Sir Timothy Miles Bindon Rice (born 10 November 1944) is an English lyricist and author. He is best known for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, with whom he wrote, among other shows, '' Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat'', ...

Stephen Fry Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director and writer. He first came to prominence in the 1980s as one half of the comic double act Fry and Laurie, alongside Hugh Laurie, with the two starrin ...

God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

* Ben Crispin as

Jesus Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religiou ...

Simon Greenall Simon James Greenall (born 3 January 1958) is an English actor, producer, writer and voice artist. He has portrayed Michael in the BBC television series ''I'm Alan Partridge'', as well as in '' Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa,'' the Caretaker in ...

as Barry Atkins *

Paul Chahidi Paul Chahidi (born August 22, 1969) is a British actor. An associate artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Chahidi appeared at Shakespeare's Globe and appeared on Broadway in all-male productions of ''Twelfth Night'' and ''Richard III''. Chah ...

as Harry Balls * Jason Thorpe as Alan Dick / Desmond Lovely *

Mark Heap Mark Heap (born 13 May 1957) is an English actor and comedian. He is known for his roles in television comedies, including, ''Brass Eye'', ''Big Train'', ''Spaced'', ''Jam'', ''Green Wing'', ''Friday Night Dinner'', ''Upstart Crow'' and ''Beni ...

as Andrew Thorogood

Title sequence

The title sequence for the film was created using a two meter tall

-inspired Phonotrope created by Jim Le Fevre. It consisted of over 2000 laser-cut frames and was 1.8 meters wide at its base.Interview with Jim Le Fevre, title sequence creator
on BBC Comedy website

Reception

The film received mixed reviews from critics, while receiving just over half a million viewers on

BBC Four BBC Four is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002

and proving very popular on

iPlayer BBC iPlayer (stylised as iPLAYER or BBC iPLAYER) is a video on demand service from the BBC. The service is available on a wide range of devices, including mobile phones and tablets, personal computers and smart televisions. iPlayer services del ...

. Chris Harvey of '' The Telegraph'' wrote, "Constantly inventive, often very funny, the drama followed a fictional religious group intent on pillorying the Pythons and having ''Life of Brian'' banned", although he added that it "abandoned some of its humour and subtlety for preachiness." Phil Dyess-Nugent at '' The A.V. Club'' praised the concept and most of the performances, but said: "At the risk of committing blasphemy myself, one problem may be that the filmmakers actually love the Pythons ''too'' much. If that is a problem, it was probably an insurmountable one, since no one who only loves Python to a sane and reasonable degree was ever going to conceive the idea for this movie." Most praised the casting of the Pythons, predominantly for Palin and Cleese. ''HFC'' gained approval from Palin and

, but Cleese says he "absolutely detested" the drama, in particular Boyd's portrayal of him. Gilliam commented on the fact that Cleese did not like it, and reasoned that the Pythons would have no reason to complain about somebody "taking the piss" out of them when they'd been doing it to others for years.

References

External links

* * {{Monty Python, state=collapsed 2011 television films 2011 films 2011 comedy films BBC television comedy Comedy films based on actual events Films set in the 1970s Monty Python Cultural depictions of comedians Cultural depictions of actors Cultural depictions of British men Films directed by Owen Harris (director) 2010s British films British comedy television films