Following 'The Golden Age Of Ballooning' and 'Michael Ellis', it was back to the sketch format for 'Monty Python'. 'The Light Entertainment War' opens with 'Up Your Pavement', a spoof of 'Steptoe & Son', before moving onto a WW2 sketch in which various R.A.F. officers baffle one another with terms like "Dicky Birdy" and "Wizard Prang!". We then get a court-martial in which Idle's character is charged with ''trivialising the war'. Chapman and Idle play a strange married couple - he loves 'woody' words while she prefers 'tinny' words. There's a very good Terry Gilliam animation in which a man sleeps while strange machines work throughout the night to create the following day's good weather. The sketch in the B.B.C. programme planning department ( "how about Dad's Navy?" ) anticipates Kenny Everett's mocking of the B.B.C. Board of Governors by about a decade. Neil Innes closes the show with the song 'Where Does A Dream Begin?'. He contributed numbers to 'Rutland Weekend Television' and later landed his own series - 'The Innes Book Of Records'.
Funniest moment - the spoof war movie trailer which, boasts among other attractions, 'Algy, the bisexual navigator!".
Good stuff. Season 4 was not particularly well received at the time. Some blamed Cleese's departure for the perceived 'drop in quality'. The B.B.C. gave the impression they could not wait to be rid of this troublesome show - Graham Chapman said later they got worse offices with each new series, and for the last, they were placed in a shed near the main gate!
Funniest moment - the spoof war movie trailer which, boasts among other attractions, 'Algy, the bisexual navigator!".
Good stuff. Season 4 was not particularly well received at the time. Some blamed Cleese's departure for the perceived 'drop in quality'. The B.B.C. gave the impression they could not wait to be rid of this troublesome show - Graham Chapman said later they got worse offices with each new series, and for the last, they were placed in a shed near the main gate!