Radio Times: Review by:; Alison Graham

You can guess where writer Tony Roche (The Thick of It, Fresh Meat) throws the TV Biographical Drama Rule Book, can’t you? Yes, right through an open window, because Holy Flying Circus, about the furore of moral panic and hypocrisy that greeted the 1979 cinema release of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, usurps every bio-pic trope and convention.

Thus Holy Flying Circus is littered with dream sequences and wanders off down some fantastical little byways (a bit too often, if truth be told) as we build up to the infamous ambush, on the live TV chat show Friday Night... Saturday Morning, of John Cleese and Michael Palin by an epically supercilious Bishop of Southwark and religious commentator Malcolm Muggeridge.

Roy Marsden is majestically effete and patronising as the bishop, Mervyn Stockwood, but the film belongs to Charles Edwards, who just IS Michael Palin, and Darren Boyd as John Cleese.

Oh, and Stephen Fry plays God. Of course. The whole thing is a mad mash-up of self-reference, cross-dressing, ribaldry and nonsense. I loved it.

About this programme

Comedy drama, based on the controversy that surrounded Monty Python's Life of Brian on its release in 1979. As a campaign to ban the film gathered momentum, John Cleese and Michael Palin defended their work by participating in a live TV debate against Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark - but the programme did not go according to plan. Darren Boyd and Charles Edwards star alongside Steve Punt, Rufus Jones, Tom Fisher, Phil Nichol and Stephen Fry.