User Reviews

The second episode of Season 4 of 'Monty Python' is an improvement on the disappointing first. Eric Idle plays 'Chris Quinn', a naive young man who goes to a London department store to buy an ant. After encountering various irritating shop assistants, he gets his ant - but takes it back when he realises it is missing a couple of legs. It is good to see Idle dominating the show for once. Terry Jones is his mother, who keeps a live tiger in the kitchen. Not much animation, apart from the opening titles and an ant documentary on television. The department store setting features a number of surreal gags, including a doorman ( Palin ) getting kneed in the groin by a customer, Carol Cleveland attempting to buy a flame-thrower, the poetry session full of dead poets such as 'Percy Bysshe Shelley' ( Gilliam ) and 'Keats' ( Idle ) and the toupee section where everyone is wearing shoddy toupees ( there's even one on a photo of the Reverend Ian Paisley ). The ending is a bit of a cop-out, but the Pythons make a virtue out of it, providing the episode's funniest moment - Chris goes to a section of the store that specialises in endings. After being shown several endings - a chase, a romantic clinch, a summing-up by a Brian Clough-type football expert ( Idle ), a slow fade - the shop assistant ( Jones ) suggests an abrupt ending, and that's what we get. Despite the odd longueur, 'Michael Ellis' is one of this season's stronger instalments. Incidentally, no-one named Michael Ellis actually appears in it, but then, that's Monty Python for you.