Scott of the Antarctic

One of the few genuine turds floating in the Python punchbowl, this is a tough watch, composed of just two excruciatingly over-extended meandering scenes, split by one animation, that resulted in a handful of scattered, uncertain chuckles from an audience waiting for a punchline that never came.

It's hard to see what the team were thinking here: there's no narrative to justify this structure, and precious little ideas within each scene beyond some try-hard but mild surrealism that is itself drawn out long after the laughter has stopped.

Unless you're a completist, this is one that you can easily skip and not miss a single thing.

At their best the Pythons were anarchic, exciting and totally disdainful of the rules of the media they used. At their worst they were disjointed, confusing and self-indulgent. This is one of the worst episodes of the series.

The experimentation is still there - the opening credits appear halfway through the episode, and the first scene is a decent parody of Godard. Unfortunately, this leads into an overlong parody of Hollywood epics, and the Pythons clearly understand French cinema better than they do the US.

The rest of the episode is just not super funny. Mr. Praline is probably Cleese's most annoying character, and the Fish License sketch meanders with no point. This episode is a harbinger of Season Four, where they seemed to lose their judgement over when to abandon weaker sketches,

An unlikely contender for a winner of an episode. I didn't get it when I was fourteen, but I needed more life-experience to understand most of it. Foreign film. Behind the scenes of making a movie, et al. Watch it a few times and you will be hooked; just like Eric the fish.