Ripping Yarns (1976 - 79) Complete Series

BBC

⚠ Unverified — hosted on the Internet Archive, not confirmed public domain. Opens on archive.org; nothing plays here directly.

British comedy series created and written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones straight off Monty Python's Flying Circus, starring Palin in standalone spoofs of classic Boy's Own Paper adventure fare. Consists of nine episodes across a pilot and two series, all of which aired on BBC2. The pilot was filmed in front of a studio audience on videotape, with pre-recorded film segments in the manner of most studio productions of the time. The remaining episodes were shot entirely on film and on location, then screened for an audience in order to add a laugh track. This archive is of the Network DVD release, which restored the episodes from the original film elements. All episodes bar the pilot and S01E03 (which only survives as a videotape transfer) have optional laugh track-free audio, and so I've included three versions of each episode where applicable; the original broadcast version with the laugh track, the syndication version without, and the commentaries Palin and Jones recorded for each episode. Also included is a 2006 episode of the retrospective documentary series Comedy Connections which looks back at the series, and the 2014 documentary Alexander Armstrong's Real Ripping Yarns which explores the history of the genre the series is spoofing. Also also is, from the DVD, a 1983 episode of the series Comic Roots in which Michael Palin explores the origins of his sense of humour, and Secrets (1973), a comedy drama television play written by Palin and Jones, which was the first in an anthology series called Black and Blue; this is the only episode which still exists, and only from a recording made on a very early VCR.