Five Oxford and Cambridge graduates plus one American animator, Terry Gilliam, brought their surreal, stream-of-consciousness sketch format to BBC One late on a Sunday night. Early ratings were modest and some BBC executives disliked the show's chaotic structure, but it grew into a cultural phenomenon that influenced generations of comedians and gave the world 'spam,' the Ministry of Silly Walks, and the Spanish Inquisition sketch.
The show's now-famous cold opening — a bearded, dirt-covered man crawling ashore and gasping 'It's...' before the theme music crashed in — set the tone for a program that refused to follow the normal rules of sketch comedy. Sketches didn't need punchlines. They could simply be interrupted by a Gilliam animation, a wandering non-sequitur, or a man in a suit announcing the show was over, only for it to continue.
Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin had all worked on earlier British comedy shows, and pieced together the format almost by accident, deciding traditional structure was the enemy of good comedy. The BBC gave them a remarkably free hand, partly because executives weren't quite sure what to make of the pitch.
The troupe made 45 episodes over four series between 1969 and 1974 (the first aired October 5, 1969, though some record different premiere details across BBC regions), before moving on to films including 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' and 'Life of Brian.' Their influence on absurdist and alternative comedy — from Saturday Night Live to countless British sitcoms — is difficult to overstate.
Key people: John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin, Graham Chapman