Ripping Yarns

In the early years of the post Monty Python split, everybody went on to their solo projects, with greater or lesser success. Although Cleese's 'Fawlty Towers' is rightly celebrated as one of the greatest sitcoms of all time, Michael Palin and Terry Jones's 'Ripping Yarns (same period, also two seasons) gives it a very close run for its money - especially for those who prefer the surreal Palin/Jones Oxford humour to the slightly more orthodox Cleese/Chapman Cambridge style.

'Ripping Yarns' is basically a send up of 'Boys Own' style between-the-wars boys adventure magazines, which might not make a great deal of sense to American audiences, but when I played the episode 'Winfrey's Last Case' to a friend in San Diego he was almost reduced to tears.

There were twelve(?) 'Ripping Yarns' stories, and one shouldn't infer anything from that. Each of the episode/stories was entirely different and unique; almost a mini-movie based on a generic Boy's Own/Chums 1920-30's tale. A couple of them ('Across the Andes by Frog', for example) fall slightly short, but most of them are inspired works of genius.

There is 'Tomkinsons's School Days', where the horrors of British public school life are parodied to hilarious effect (have you ever built an Icebreaker in metalwork class?), 'Golden Gordon', about a football-obsessed father who smashes his house to pieces every time his team loses (which they've done every week since about 1913), 'Winfrey's Last Case' - a hilarious Biggles type adventure about spies on the Dorset coast, Escape From Stalag 117' (or something), a tearfully funny send-up of 'The Great Escape' type yarns, and perhaps the most celebrated episode 'The Testing of Eric Orthwaite', where a boring young northern man obsessed with rain gauges and shovels is thrust into a life of crime to impress his love interest. It sports the unforgettable newspaper headline:

'Orthwaite gang strikes again: Bank manager tells of night of boredom'

(This episode has just a few shades of Woody Allen's 'Take the Money and Run')

Pound for pound, 'Ripping Yarns' stacks up against any British comedy series of the 70's, and proves that Palin was the best actor of the Python crew, and along with Cleese and maybe Jones, the best writer.

The characters in this TV series reduce me to hysterics whenever I watch them. The Officers Mess dining room scene in 'Roger of the Raj' is indescribably funny (if you're British) and the ghastly traditions of 'Tomkinson Schooldays' brings back so many unfond memories. As for Eric Oldthawite - I had to work with him for three years. He drove me to the edge of suicide he was so boring. You have to be a British dimwitted upper class twit to find them funny. Oh, the irony....

Ripping Yarns was a fondly remembered set of spoofs of the Boys' Own Paper stories from the first half of the 20th century, lovingly recreated by Michael Palin with Terry Jones as writing partner, exposing the absurdities and assumptions of the genre. Palin always revelled in this world - at about this time, I remember he did an absolutely straight and very entertaining reading of Biggles Flies North for a Book at Bedtime on Radio 4.

The series was rather disjointed. It began with a one-off production, Tomkinson's Schooldays, was fleshed out into a full series of 5 more episodes, and then, as a cash-in after the success of the Life of Brian, 3 more were added.

There were lots of good bits, all appealing to the Monty Python core support. Several themes were exposed to satirical gaze - the unthinking imperialism, the rigid social codes, the lack of emotional engagement and expression of the 'stiff upper lip'.

The problem was that only about four episodes were actually any good. The pilot, Tomkinson's Schooldays, contained a number of classic Palin/Jones moments, such as St Tadger's Day, and caning the headmaster. The two Yorkshire-set stories, Eric Olthwaite (the most boring man in the world) and Golden Gordon hit the mark. The Curse of the Claw raised a chuckle. But the rest tended to repetition, and plots, even if initially amusing or intriguing, would simply peter out or end in anticlimax.

First of all, there are only 9 episodes. Some comments here refer to there being 12, which might be a result of hallucinogenic drugs, no idea...

RY is very entertaining, quite Pythonesque in many ways. While not all stories are equally funny, all are at the very least interesting to watch. Sometimes weirdness alone in a comedy can keep one's attention, the (successful) gags being a bonus. "Golden", for example, is a comparatively subdued episode but has a certain charm, ditto "Winfrey".

"Tomkinson", "Escape" and "Murder" are the funniest episode, whereas "Roger" and "Frog" didn't turn out that well by comparison.

The DVD offers a relatively interesting running commentary by both Palin and Jones. If, like me, you are annoyed by left-leaning actors/directors promoting their ideology publicly, you should be warned that Jones uses any chance he can to connect what goes on in a scene to social or political issues. He is a Marxist to a fault, but I think we can forgive him for that due to his Python past and cheerful affability...

Hot on the heels of John Cleese's first post-'Python' project 'Fawlty Towers' came this splendid spoof of stiff-upper-lipped schoolboy adventure tales from the days when Britain had an empire. Michael Palin and Terry Jones obviously had fun writing this, as well as performing ( although Jones only appeared in one edition ). 'Ripping Yarns' stretched Palin's acting abilities far more than 'Python'; check out 'The Curse Of The Claw' in which he played the utterly disgusting 'Uncle Jack'! Beautifully filmed, with wonderful period atmosphere, 'Yarns' featured impressive guest-stars such as Denholm Elliott, Iain Cuthbertson, and John Le Mesurier. The quality of the humour varied from Pythonesque romps such as 'Tompkinson's Schooldays' to the genteel, touching 'The Testing Of Eric Olthwaite'. My favourite, however, was 'Murder At Moorstones Manor', a whodunnit so convoluted its impossible to tell who did what to whom! Palin and Jones were wise to only make nine episodes of this gem.