MICHAEL PALIN plays the leading man, or men, in every episode of this series, written by him and Terry Jones. Ripping Yarns was a series of low-key, subtly funny stories in the style of Victorian/Edwardian boys' adventure books. Palin starred as a different character in each programme. Terry Jones cowrote each episode but only appears in the Pythonesque pilot, "Tomkinson's Schooldays," the only one of the episodes to be shot on video - the rest were shot, fairly beautifully, on film. John Cleese also makes a silent but silly walk-on in "Golden Gordon." It ran to rave reviews for two seasons, and 9 episodes, before the expense became too much. But what is the series about? Well, it's basically a series of half-hour films inspired by the stiff-upper-lip adventure stories told to British children around the turn of the century, with a twist. Or many twists. The mixture of the look of high drama with a subtle Pythonic wit proved baffling to BBC editors, who prepared some episodes with a laugh track, and others without. The series has been released on video and DVD. A special edition DVD is soon to be released with commentary by Palin and Jones. from the 'The Radio Times Guide to Television Comedy' by Mark Lewisohn: Ripping Yarns UK, BBC, Comedy films, colour, 1976 Starring: Michael Palin Nine lavishly filmed half-hour comedies, spoofing the type of stirring adventure stories found in boys' annuals of the early- to mid-20th-century. Following the (temporary) demise of Monty Python, BBC producer Terry Hughes invited Michael Palin to come up with a new series. Palin and his long-term writing partner, fellow Python Terry Jones, duly pondered a range of ideas but it was Jones's brother who pointed out the comic potential of an old annual, Ripping Tales, that Palin had given to Terry Jones as a gift. (Jones's brother had also suggested their earlier series The Complete And Utter History Of Britain.) The annual, and others of its ilk, did indeed prove a fertile ground, but the resulting story ideas were such that Palin and Jones felt convinced that the series would have to be shot on film in order to benefit from the necessarily higher production qualities and attention to period detail they envisaged. They then wrote a pilot episode, 'Tomkinson's Schooldays', which aired independently under that title on 7 January 1976 and carried an unmistakable Pythonesque edge, with its intense cruelty (boys were nailed to walls), marvellously ludicrous vignettes (Tomkinson constructed a 14,000-ton ice-breaker ship in the handicraft class) and the sort of idea-reversal that the two writers relished (kids caned the headmaster, parents expected their children to get proper bullying, and so on). A full series materialised in 1977, tapping the boys' adventure annuals for its subjects: triumph against adversity ('The Testing Of Eric Olthwaite'), war ('Escape from Stalag Luft 112B'), crime ('Murder At Moorstones Manor'), exploration ('Across The Andes By Frog') and black magic ('The Curse Of The Claw'). As the writers had wished, the production values were of a uniformly high standard, but this meant that the costs were significantly higher than normal for a comedy half-hour. For this reason, when Palin and Jones were planning a second series, the BBC decided they could afford only three more shows - a 1920s espionage thriller ('Whinfrey's Last Case'), a football story ('Golden Gordon') and a spoof of the overtly racist yarns that passed unchallenged in old schoolboy annuals, 'Roger Of The Raj'. All nine programmes were superbly cast, with Palin in the lead roles throughout. John Cleese made an ultra-brief but wonderful cameo appearance in 'Golden Gordon'. Because it was shot on film, the series has withstood the passing of time much better than most other programmes of the period, and Palin and Jones's excellent scripts mean that there is still a wealth of comedy lurking in these nine classic Ripping Yarns. Of the nine episodes, at least half a dozen were quite brilliant, and two in particular, 'The Testing Of Eric Olthwaite' and 'Golden Gordon', are magnificent, virtually without peer in the realm of British TV comedy half-hours. Crew Michael Palin - Writer Terry Jones - Writer Terry Hughes - Director Jim Franklin - Director Alan J W Bell - Director Transmission Details Number of episodes: 9 Length: 30 mins Special 7 Jan 1976, BBC2 Wed 9pm Series One (5) 27 Sep-25 Oct 1977, BBC2 Tue 9pm Series Two (3) 10 Oct-24 Oct 1979, BBC2 Wed 9.25pm Books of the scripts were also published.

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Thanks to Greg Duffell for the tapes.