Airing on PBS, starting on February 22nd: Monty Python's Personal Best, a 6-episode special wherein each member of the troupe picked out his favorite sketches. (Cleese, Gilliam, Idle, Jones, and Palin collaborated on the episode for Graham Chapman.) Eric Idle's Personal Best airs Wednesday at 9 p.m., followed immediately by Graham Chapman's. Thanks, WGBH!
John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and Terry Jones share their favorite memories of Chapman, who died on October 4, 1989, at the age of 48. A licensed doctor, Chapman traded in his stethoscope to pursue a career in comedy. His funniest sketches usually showed him playing straitlaced characters or daft middle-aged women. He may be best remembered as the uptight Colonel. Other sketches included are the solo wrestler, the accountant who decides he wants to be a lion tamer and the middle-aged couple who invite John Cleese into their living room to make a documentary about the sex lives of mollusks. Chapman also appears in such memorable Monty Python sketches as the bury-the-cat skit, the dead parrot, Spam Restaurant and the pantomime horse as a secret agent. The Ministry of Silly Walks is classic Python. Though Chapman is gone, he will be remembered for his brilliant contributions to this legendary comedy troupe.Posted by rv at February 20, 2006 11:18 AM to tv