Talk:Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus

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Untitled

I seem to remember the Pythons on their reunion tour (particularly Eric Idle), talking about the 'German' Python series. Statements like " Ve haff no sense of humour and ve vould like you to help us get one" and them also talking about "Writing the scripts, getting them translated into German and then having to learn them phonetically".

84.130.119.234 19:21, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about the latter, but the former was true only of the first episode of the pair. Michael Palin says that to this day, he can still sing "das Holzfäller-Lied" in German, having had to learn it phonetically. --JohnDBuell 22:30, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your first statement holds merit if you've seen the Live in Aspen special, except Idle didn't apply a German accent when making that statement on that show (Aspen). They did, however, break into German language to answer host Robert Klein's question before Idle goes into detail and makes said statement.

Christopher, Salem, OR (talk) 14:53, 24 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reaction

I would be intrigued to know how the episodes were received ? Are there any reviews ? Does the existence of only two episodes imply failure ? Did it change the face of German comedy - any native homages ? de.wikipedia.org doesn't help much. --195.137.93.171 (talk) 17:16, 20 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've once seen producer Alfred Biolek who had initiated the whole thing give an interview about it for Harald Schmidt's late-night show. The problem were mainly the members of the broadcasting council of WDR who didn't understand the show's humor and hated it. The fact that none of the Pythons themselves had any grasp of German whatsoever and had to learn their lines like parrots certainly contributed to it, it must have been arduous for them. John Cleese's German pronounciation certainly is far from "perfection" as claimed in the article here, though he (along with Eric Idle reviewing the "Shakespeare with cow actors" play) is understandable at least somewhat by me as a native German (subtitles would've certainly helped a lot with most of that first episode, as exciting as it is for a change to hear their original voices in German instead of the dubs commonplace for their theatrical movies and the usual subtitling for their TV show over here). The German article mentions their thick accents and how TV audiences back then thought the reason they were THAT undecipherable was supposed to be funny exaggeration.

Another note: Sat.1 back in the late 90s tried to air the original BBC Flying Circus in a dubbed version, but the result was an angry outrage by German Python fans who for decades had been used to subtitling, calling the undertaking sacrilegeous and blasphemous, especially so because Sat.1 for this operation deemed blasphemous from the beginning hadn't even made use of the Pythons's standard, established dubbing voice actors from the theatrical movies which are still the same post-2000 whenever any of the Pythons appears in any movie, such as Fierce Creatures, for instance. Germans obviously prefer the English episodes of Flying Circus subtitled, with the only exception being And now for something completely different, because it's a theatrical movie, with the established German voices people are used to. The only time this dubbing voices standard has ever been violated successfully was in Gilliam's Brazil where Michael Palin's voice actor (Michael Nowka) was replaced with Eric Idle's one (Arne Elsholtz), probably the reason no German Python fan ever complained about Brazil was because of Palin's cunning, unscrupulous character Jack Lint which perhaps didn't seem to fit his innocent, charming standard voice. (Additional fun fact: Jonathan Pryce himself was dubbed by Thomas Danneberg, John Cleese's standard German dubbing voice, in Brazil. To this day, I keep wondering to myself whether either choice was supposed to be some subtle comment on the dubbing studio's side upon who Terry shoulda rather cast in those roles.)

You must understand that Flying Circus has a rather singular place in German media because it's the only foreign-language moving images fiction product that Germans will even just accept as subtitled instead of dubbed, in fact even preferring subtitling for this one show. "The Pythons are so English you just can't translate them, and if you do, subtitle them!" was the prevailing sentiment in response to Sat.1's failed 1990s dubbing attempt. The fact not even their standard voices from the movies were used made the whole affair only the more outrageous. --79.193.55.54 (talk) 19:19, 22 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This response is great! Suitably formatted for citation, can someone include this in the main article? 87.113.94.119 (talk) 21:21, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, thanks for such a positive response to my above anecdotes. In any case, they were incomplete: The Pythons didn't get big in Germany over here up until the large international controversy surrounding Life of Brian around 1979/'80. So yes, the two fliegender Zirkus episodes did bomb back in the day and went just as unnoticed at the time as did the contemporary dub and release of Holy Grail. Having broken the German market with Brian, both And now for something completely different and The Meaning of Life were dubbed pretty much back-to-back (as in, within the same courses of dubbing sessions) in 1983 and released simultaneously that year to great success. It's only since then that the (subtitled!) Flying Circus has also become a TV phenomenon over here.

It's also the reason why And now for something completely different and The Meaning of Life are their first two films where every Python has his established voice actor in the German dub that they get in movies ever since. In Holy Grail, only Cleese was dubbed by his standard voice, Thomas Danneberg, already. In Brian, Danneberg dubbed Cleese again and in some of his roles in Brian, Eric Idle was already dubbed by Arne Elsholtz. (Fun fact: In both Holy Grail and Brian, they mostly used a different dubbing voice for every single role, even if the roles were done by the same Python! Especially in Holy Grail, it looks like the dubbing studio was not even aware those were the same actors on the screen due to the convincing make-up and lighting...and Terry's famous smoke! :P) In Time Bandits, only Cleese had his "right" dubbing actor. So it took until the 1983 dubs for And now for something completely different and The Meaning of Life for all the Pythons to get their "right" voices we Germans are used to ever since. --2.241.42.163 (talk) 08:15, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Title

In correct German it would be Monty Pythons Fliegender Zirkus (with no apostrophe). Has anyone researched this? The British-release cover might repeat an English-language error.Nankai (talk) 21:00, 15 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Watching the (U.S.) DVD now to check this... ISBN 0-7670-8567-1, as part of The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus, 16 Ton Megaset ISBN 0-7670-8551-5. Unless the error is repeated in the actual opening title sequence (Gilliam animation), it is spelled with an apostrophe: Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus (all in caps for the animation sequence)

Christopher, Salem, OR (talk) 14:45, 24 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reception

What are the reception figures relating to? German responses, British responses? Then or decades later? The way it's written now makes it sound like the German audience loved it on its original airing, but Alfred Biolek said in an interview on Die Harald Schmidt Show that it bombed back then, nobody watched it, and the network's execs hated it because they didn't get it, and that's why even though he would've liked to see more German episodes, it only remained two. Monty Python would remain utterly unknown in Germany until the large international scandal around 'Brian' in 1979. I think Palin is being his usual "nicest man in Britain" self when he seemingly contradicts that in that quote used earlier in the article. We Germans love Python since the 80s, but back in the 70s, only Biolek knew and liked them. --91.11.45.131 (talk) 02:01, 21 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I've listened to the source now, and it sounds like the network's execs back in the day hid the actual responses from Biolek and his co-producing partner intentionally to cancel their plans for more German shows, and neither of the two found out until the partner, in preparation for the 2012 BBC4 feature, actually went into the WDR archives to find the actual surveys that had been done back in the early 70s. --91.11.45.131 (talk) 02:51, 21 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Graham Chapman's "Flute Player" ( Noted under "Lost Sketches" )

Apropos of nothing of real significant importance ... It's Graham playing The Pied Piper of Hamelin. ( In the image noted, it reads "Hameln", with a list of things The Pied Piper can & can't rid your village of. ) It was most likely part of the whole mouse themed segment. 75.104.182.200 (talk) 16:46, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]