the job was, in fact, taken

A few people are taking advantage of the occasion of the fortieth anniversary to slag the programme; there appear to be a few articles floating about claiming it to be stale, out-dated, patchy or never funny in the first place. The last one is evidently untrue, the rest could form the start of a long and interesting discussion but to slag it now just because it first appeared forty years ago is to miss the point. It doesn't matter that it might no longer make you laugh quite as helplessly as it did when you were thirteen and seeing it for the first time; what's important is remembering that it made you laugh like that, and why it made you laugh like that. The slickness of execution doesn't matter as long as the ideas are conveyed. Sketches running down undignifiedly or going on a little too long are not remembered for running down undignifiedly or going on a little too long; they're remembered for the bits which made you snigger. I wasn't falling off the sofa whilst walking home thinking of this sketch but I was sniggering lightly and doing one of those weird smirks you do when you're trying not to smirk because you're walking down a street where other people can see you.

Even though Palin looks a bit embarrassed or uncomfortable in some sketches and as if he's going to start giggling over his lines in others he was dead on in the argument sketch. There are moments when everyone doesn't quite look like they particularly believe in what they're doing but there are enough Gilliam animations to eclipse the moments when Gilliam had to appear in front of the camera; the Universe Song affords Eric Idle some goodwill despite his occasional irritation in the series and constant irritation after they ended. Some sketches do seem to be lauded and remembered for no reason other than the fact that they're already lauded and remembered but whether in the bite-size chunks of the series or the lengthened points of the films there's some good stuff in there and if it hadn't happened a lot of people would see the world significantly differently.