Last year, the Monty Python legend announced that he would be hosting his own show on the news channel and that it would be a “no holds barred account of the news”.
Entitled The Dinosaur Hour, Cleese appeared on GB News to discuss his decision to join the network, telling Michelle Dewberry: “They came to me a few months ago and they made me the most extraordinary offer that’s ever been made to anyone in the history of television.”
He added: “They said ‘would you like to do ten shows; you can do whatever you like’. Can you imagine the BBC doing that? It would be subject to committee A and then after committee A had approved it, you’d go to Committee B. They said you can do anything and I’ve had no interference of any kind and it has been joyful.”
The show will be filmed at a thousand year old castle and feature Cleese having intimate conversations with a number of guests.
I’m a Monty P fan from way back. But I think this is a bad idea. Culture and times change and some people just don’t keep up with them or care to.
Indeed, he seems to think that because sometimes like Fawlty towers wouldn’t be made today that things have gotten worse, when the reality is that people have grown bored of cheap stereotypes being used as the butt of jokes. Comedy moves on, like any other medium and you either move with it or you become the very thing you used to make fun of.
Honestly Fawlty Towers was always quite aware/clever about this stuff and it was generally Basil Fawlty who was the butt of the joke. Cleese’s heel turn of the last 20 years makes you wonder whether he never really got it, or has just morphed into the character.
Lol, didn’t he part write it, not just act it? Do you think he didn’t get his own work? Or you think it was hugely successful despite us all misunderstanding it?
He’s just old. The world has changed and he hasn’t. He lashes out with bigotry, without the nuance he would have had when questioning taboos before.