The book summarizes and reviews every original episode of Monty Python's Flying
Circus in the kind of painstaking detail one usually associates with Star Trek
episode guides. There is also plenty of behind-the-scenes trivia which should
fascinate any Pythonaholic. The movies are also covered, but it's easy to tell
that more of the author's heart went into the television shows.
Another beyond-cult British favorite, Monty Python is certainly worthy of a
book or two, and it has been. This is one of the best of those books, written
from the insider's perspective of Kim "Howard" Johnson, an occasional Starlog
writer who is also as close as the Pythons have to an official chronicler.
There is also a wealth of biographical information on each of the six Python
writers/performers, along with frequent "guest stars" such as Carol Cleveland.
The bios are very factual, "warts and all" portraits of the Pythons, and from
the second edition forward, a sad foreword notes the death of Graham Chapman
just as the first edition hit the shelves. And there are even a couple of
footnotes showing exactly - keep in mind, this was long before Douglas Adams
created the computer game Starship Titanic - where and when the creator of
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy made a cameo appearance in the final season of
Monty Python.
The First 200 Years also delves into the Pythons' pre-Python careers
(hopefully that's only a slight oxymoron), but most of that information was held
back for Johnson's follow-up volume, Life Before (And After) Monty Python, with
the exception of a Terry Gilliam-assembled photo featurette from a humor
magazine, featuring a young John Cleese.
If you're looking for something more than yet another parroting (or, as the
case may be, ex-parroting) of the Python scripts, this is probably your best
bet.
