{"id":1019,"date":"2011-10-23T16:31:19","date_gmt":"2011-10-23T16:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1019"},"modified":"2012-12-07T11:36:47","modified_gmt":"2012-12-07T11:36:47","slug":"the-hunt-for-tony-blair-vs-holy-flying-circus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2011\/10\/23\/the-hunt-for-tony-blair-vs-holy-flying-circus\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hunt for Tony Blair vs Holy Flying Circus"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Recent days in television have brought us two resurrections of once-feted comedy group, one recreated by new actors, courtesy of a script from The Thick Of It<\/em> scribe Tony Roche, the other with many of the old team reassembled for another jog around the track.<\/p>\n

Taking The Comic Strip\u2019s The Hunt for Tony Blair<\/em> first, it can certainly be said that this is better by far than the almost entirely uninteresting Sex, Actually<\/em>. It also runs true to that strand\u2019s usual form, in tone, structure and approach. The team that satirised the miners strike in 1988 (three years after it ended), The Professionals<\/em> in 1984 (three years after it ended) and The Fly<\/em> in 1988 (two years after the film was released) now tackles the Prime Ministership of Tony Blair four years after he left office.<\/p>\n

Structurally, the film resembles several other Comic Strip efforts including War<\/em> (the second-ever), South Atlantic Raiders<\/em> and Spaghetti Hoops<\/em>, being essentially a series of sketches, related only by the fact that the same protagonist turns up to each situation in turn. Here that protagonist is Comic Strip newcomer Stephen Mangan whose wide-eyed optimism suits Blair nicely, and the recurrent trope of Blair\u2019s blithe optimism and ruthless rationalisation is probably the film\u2019s best joke. \u201cIt\u2019s never pleasant strangling an old man with his own tie,\u201d muses Blair in a voice-over, \u201cbut what\u2019s done is done and we move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the secondary focus of the satire is all over the place. Lurching from decade-to-decade the piece spoofs The Thirty Nine Steps<\/em>, The Fugitive, Sunset Boulevard<\/em> and others, never really skewering any of them. From the steady aim and clear focus of Five Go Mad In Dorset<\/em>, we are now dangerously close to Scary Movie<\/em> territory. It\u2019s when Blair turns up at Mrs Thatcher\u2019s mansion (with Jennifer Saunders reprising the role with far less wit than in GLC<\/em>) that things completely fall apart as tone, taste and even basic plotting are jettisoned in pursuit of cheap laughs.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, Robbie Coltrane and Nigel Planer prove once again that they are the best actors in the team, but are never given anything funny to say. Rik Mayall is reduced to face-pulling and falling over. Harry Enfield is very funny but only on screen for sixty seconds and Richardson himself is embarrassingly poor as George Bush. Technical standards have slipped too with several shots overexposed, ruining the film noir look and several mismatched shots just stuck together hopefully when surely a cut-away could have been found somewhere.<\/p>\n

Overall, this feels laboured, plodding and rather uninspired. Holy Flying Circus<\/em> at least had energy, taking the smart decision to tell the story of the release of Monty Python\u2019s Life of Brian<\/em> by focusing on a manageably short period of time \u2013 the few months between the film\u2019s American release and Cleese and Palin\u2019s appearance on TV opposite Malcom Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark. Whereas the Comic Strip film shows a shaky hand, falteringly guessing at what effect these various choices might have on an audience, Tony Roche\u2019s script has a very clear intent \u2013 to play fast-and-loose with time, space, reality and truth (to the ire of many of the real Pythons).<\/p>\n

This is only partially successful. Some of the tropes are fun, like the same actor playing both Terry Jones and Mrs Michael Palin. Others just seem pointless, like Darren Boyd apologising to camera for basing his portrayal of John Cleese mainly on Fawlty Towers or Jason Thorpe\u2019s ludicrously manic TV director Alan Dick screaming absurd insanities in the manner of Matt Berry in The IT Crowd<\/em>. The trio of Christian protestors lead by Mark Heap get a bit too much screentime for my liking, and their rejection of the Bishop is too pat to be convincing. Far more telling, I think, is the story oft-told by the Pythons but omitted here, that back in the green room after the show was over, a genuinely angry Michael Palin was staggered to see Muggeridge and the Bishop genially passing around drinks and congratulating all concerned with having pulled off such a lovely piece of television.<\/p>\n

Hats off to some of the other cast members though, including a spookily accurate Michael Palin from Charles Edwards, a hilarious Malcolm Muggeridge from Michael Cochrane and a brilliantly sappy Tim Rice from Tom \u201cPC Andy\u201d Price. A worthily experimental telling of a fascinating moment in English comedy history, told with brio but with enormous self-indulgence, and that probably only needed an hour to be just as effective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recent days in television have brought us two resurrections of once-feted comedy group, one recreated by new actors, courtesy of a script from The Thick Of It scribe Tony Roche, the other with many of the old team reassembled for another jog around the track. Taking The Comic Strip\u2019s The Hunt for Tony Blair first, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[101,196,19],"class_list":["post-1019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-comic-strip","tag-monty-python","tag-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-gr","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1019"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1025,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions\/1025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}