Monty Python's Flying Circus (TV Series) The Cycling Tour (1972) User Reviews

Brilliant, silly, long, silly... ...and brilliant!

[tommypeters · 10/10 · 18 August 2010]

(Extremely mild spoiler included - and who haven't seen this sketch?) Simply the silliest, and at the same time best, Monty Python sketch ever! (well, maybe that sketch with old ladies and letter boxes attacking innocent people is sillier, but The Cycle Tour is "Simply The Best"). Both Trotskij, Clodagh Rodgers and the British/Chinese Embassy in the same sketch... :-)

While most Monty Python sketches are short and without any punch line, this makes up a whole program - and is without a punch line. But it has gag after gag, and they must have had a lot of fun making this sketch.

While everything is held together as one story, part of why it is so funny is the constant shifting of ideas, jumps between countries, changes in tempo. And of course, as usual, the characters look funny. And it's not a sketch you watch once and then it's not funny anymore, part of the fun is remembering the lines from seeing it last year.

The best whole episode they ever made!

[sarojinididi · 10/10 · 3 October 2017]

Although much more coherent than their usual shows which are composed of very tenuously linked, often surreal sketches, the Pythons lose none of their hilarious, silly juxtaposition of disparate ideas. The result is an absolute comedic masterpiece in which the hallmark Python humour is augmented by some clever characterization (Mr Pither is both delightfully eccentric and extremely irritating) and a story-line that somehow manages to travel well beyond the Devon countryside in just half an hour.

A colossal misfire for the Pythons

[LCShackley · 5/10 · 30 November 2020]

Michael Palin admits in "The Pythons" that by the end of season three, Cleese was bored, and they were all running out of good material. He and Terry Jones had come up with the "Cycling Tour" idea as a project for the two of them to do by themselves, but when the Pythons were coming short of new ideas, they pitched it to the others, who added their own bits.

This has always been my least favorite episode of the first three seasons, an experiment that failed dismally. Mr. Pither is a character that might have been funny in a 3-minute sketch, but not as the anchor for an entire story. The same goes for Mr. Gulliver, whose changes of personality are funny for about five seconds apiece. Chapman's Chinese ambassador is an overlong and embarrassing segment; the firing squad scene would have made a good brief sketch but goes on too long. Doing a funny accent is not an anchor for an entire segment.

What made the "normal" episodes work so well was the frequent change of story line, the different personalities of the writing teams, and the craziness of Gilliam's animations (which are drastically underused here). When I first saw this episode almost half a century ago I was disappointed; watching it again today left me with the same feeling.