8) Tomkinson’s Schooldays
Ripping Yarns is a series which plunders the childhood heroes shared by many of the Pythons and then holds them up for discrete ridicule. Tomkinson’s Schooldays is a keen favourite, not least because out of the nine episodes it is the most Pythonesque. In the chalkdust mist of the English boarding school the air is thick with bullies and tuck shops and through it all Terry Jones and Michael Palin pull the clichés to their logical extremes, and the result is hilarious.
As the Flying Circus television show went on the Pythons themselves began to experiment with longform comedy in some of their episodes, most notably The Cycling Tour, but freeing themselves of the sketch format allowed Jones and Palin to find their feet with a longer comedy narrative, something which would serve them very well in their comedy films to come…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpaL65TzYv8
