Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13568 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-11-07
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Box set, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 14
• Running time: 1479 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
While more cautious fans may want to pick and choose among the previously released individual volumes of Monty Python for their collection, true Pythonites will want to own this definitive, 14-volume DVD-only boxed set that contains all 45 episodes (in chronological order) of Monty Python's Flying Circus. This "persistently silly" collection encompasses three-and-a-half seasons of dead parrots, cross-dressing lumberjacks, loonies, upper class twits, and spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, and spam. Click past the occasional clunker and go directly to such signature sketches as the Ministry of Silly Walks, the Spanish Inquisition, the Fish-Slapping Dance, the Dead Parrot Sketch, the Lumberjack Song, the Cheese Shop, the Argument Clinic, and Nudge, Nudge. Taken as a whole, one marvels at how Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam thoroughly subverted television convention with "something completely different," like sketches with no punch lines ("Your average TV viewer isn't going to understand this").

A warning to the uninitiated: there is much "material that some may find offensive, but which is really smashing." Violations of something called the "Strange Sketch Act" are the least of the troupe's offenses, as witness the Oscar Wilde Sketch, the Dirty Vicar Sketch, and the Most Awful Family in Britain Sketch, all of which achieve "the really gross awfulness" all Python fans are looking for. Say no more. --Donald Liebenson

Customer Reviews

So much fun!
This was such a great blast from the past. I haven't laughed this hard in years!

Great, but incomplete
The episodes are great, and I have loved every bit of this set... until the final disc. Disc 14, the last 3 episodes recorded, was disc 13. I had 2 disc 13s. Much to my dismay, I cannot finish the series despite the rather high cost for the set.

Great product, but buy the megaton set
Monty Python's Flying Circus is a Hilarious Show, and this box set is sure to make any Monty Python fan happy. BUT!!! Don't get this box set! Instead I recommend the Monty Python 16 Megaton set. It has all these discs, PLUS two additional discs of bonus footage, and it's only HALF this price. The only differences are that there are 2 additional discs, and that they use the slim DVD cases instead of the full size one. But this really is a great product!