Monty Python's Flying Circus

The Pythons had planned to rearrange sketches from the two German specials into a sketch film had Life of Brian not been filmed. With Brian completed, these German shows were not introduced in America in their entirety until the Python retrospective 17 and 24 February 1989. The Museum of Television and Radio in New York introduced these unseen hours in part to celebrate the Pythons' 20th anniversary and, hopefully, to release the specials to a TV network or to video. The second special for WDR was the Pythons' rebuttal of a BBC proposal to send a compilation show to Germany. This program was filmed with one less burden: the cast could speak in English. Connie Booth had begun writing with John Cleese by this time, and the two turned out the "Fairy Tale" sketch, later reprinted in The Brand New Monty Python Bok. Other sketches are summarized in Kim "Howard" Johnson's book The First 280 Years of Monty Python, published by St. Martin's Press.