Monty Python At 50 - Rutland Weekend Television / The Rutles

If not for the creation of The Rutles who would go on to star in their own American TV special featuring a host of UK comedy and rock royalty alongside most of the Saturday Night Live cast, it’s likely that Rutland Weekend Television would not be remembered at all. Not due to quality reasons (there’s some strong material in there) but because it was largely ignored by the viewing public at the time and, as such, has not been repeated (barring a compilation shown during a Vic and Bob takeover evening on BBC2)  or commercially released.

Rutland Weekend Television (2x 7 episode series, 1975-76)
Starring and written by:- Eric Idle
Episodes shown:- Series 2 Episode 1
Like Python, it’s a sketch show but the nominal theme here is that it’s all based around the smallest TV station in the country’s smallest county, Rutland. However, Do Not Adjust Your Set is probably slightly more of an influence here as Neil Innes provides regular songn support in each episode as well as performing in some of the sketches. That combination of sketch and song which often blend into and out of each other and can sometimes be quite odd and whimsical gives RWT an identity that, while obviously indebted to Python, sets it aside as its own peculiar beast, The episode shown has some nice sketches including a look behind the scenes at the biblical six days that lead to the creation of Earth and, unsurprisingly, the original sketch and song that introduced the Rutles, Neil Innes’ affectionate and accurate Beatles pastiche.

The Rutles (one-off TV special)
Following an appearance by Eric Idle on Saturday night Live during which he played the Rutles clip from RWT, Lorne Michaels (SNL creator and producer) commissioned Idle to make a full film. Idle roped in a raft of his celebrity pals and a mock-documenatry about a fake band which predates Spinal Tap by about six years. It’s a wonderfully observed piece of Beatles-spoofery with some lovely songs by Innes and a host of cameos from some comedy names that are now legendary including Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi and Gilda Radner alongside musicians like Mick Jagger, George Harrison and Paul Simon (and a brief coupole of cameos from Michael Palin in the almost obligatory link back to Python).

The Intro
This one was introduced by Neil Innes - unsurprisingly really given how much the Rutles are his creation. One thing that he highlighted which I had almost forgotten about was how interlinked Python one of my other comedy heroes was - Douglas Adams. Innes and Adams are the only other writers credited with writing sketches for Python (for the fourth series once John Cleese had quit) and Innes, Chapman and Adams used to work together - by which Innes means that he had and Chapman would write for about an hour and a half before meeting Adams in the pub for “lunch”. This was a method of productivity that wasn’t sustainable as far as Innes was concerned! More on the Python-Douglas Adams link later...