Michael Palin

It's been more than 40 years since the first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus aired on BBC One and we never looked at comedy - let alone spam, parrots or lumberjacks - in the same way again. This documentary marks the first time the surviving Pythons have come together for a project since 1983's The Meaning of Life]. Directed by Alan Parker, it features interviews with Terry Jones, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and Eric Idle, as well as archive chat from late Graham Chapman. All tell the story of how they met at Oxbridge and The Frost Report, created trail-blazing television, made the transition into movies and ultimately became a British institution. Which, like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expected.

When John Le Mesurier's wife Joan left him for what turned out to be a brief and disastrous relationship with his best friend Tony Hancock, he became Joan's confidante. He'd comfort her in her unhappiest days with Hancock, telling her: "I love him too, I know exactly how it is, darling."

Everybody loved John Le Mesurier and the contributors here, including Joan, who left Hancock and returned to her husband (he never referred to her affair again) speak of him with unconditional adoration. Le Mesurier was peerless; that wonderful, urbane delivery and the crushed-velvet voice made him unforgettable as Sgt Wilson in Dad's Army.

To those who knew him best, he was charming, warm and delightful. Michael Palin worked with him on Jabberwocky and wonders fondly where Le Mesurier would be in 2012: "Playing a patient in a bed in Casualty?" Palin is a devotee of Le Mesurier's reassuring presence: "[when he appeared] I just felt comfortable. I knew he knew what to do."

Those recalling Robert Bathurst's portrayal of John Le Mesurier in BBC4's Hattie might have thought him too good to be true. Au contraire. No one - from Clive Dunn and Ian Lavender to Michael Palin and JLM's third wife - has a bad word to say about a man who endured repeated cuckolding, perpetual career disappointments and terminal illness with a half-smile and drifted through life with an ineffably British sense of opaque understatement and vague melancholy. Much time is understandably spent on Dad's Army, but this doc also serves as a frustrating 'what might have been' for an underrated actor who ambled through a stop-start career with the same unknowable civility as he did his life. He's the man for whom 'keep calm and carry on' might have been invented.

Julian Rhind-Tutt narrates this in-depth profile of the beloved actor, best remembered for his role as the genteel Sergeant Arthur Wilson in Dad's Army. Friend Michael Palin and Dad's Army co-star Clive Dunn offer fulsome praise, and help dissect Le Mesurier's three marriages and legendary fondness for a tipple (or 10). "It's all been rather lovely" were his final words before slipping into a cirrhosis-induced coma - an appropriate epitaph by all accounts.

The life and career of Spike Milligan has been incredibly well-documented over the years. We know about the scars left by war, the misanthropy, the depression and the freaky and original humour. It's hard to argue that this John Sergeant-helmed doc adds very much to the world's sum of Milligan-knowledge but it's watchable enough all the same. Sergeant, in news that won't be particularly surprising to Strictly fans, began his career as a comedian. He's always been in awe of Milligan and here, he visits a few of Spike's old haunts and chats to the likes of Michael Palin, Noel Fielding and Esther Rantzen. Finally, he plays The Goon Show to a classroom of modern kids to see if Milligan's comedy stylings still cut the mustard. And cheeringly, it seems that they do.

Spike Milligan accused Monty Python of plagiarism

Michael Palin has revealed Spike Milligan once accused Monty Python of "plagiarism".

Your next box set: Ripping Yarns

Charming, insightful and very silly tales of Englishness, empire-building and high adventure from Michael Palin and Terry Jones.

Audio: Michael Palin would consider returning to comedy

Michael Palin told BBC Radio 5 Live that he missed certain aspects of writing comedy and may consider going back into that field.

The Monty Python star was speaking to Richard Bacon from the BBC Worldwide Showcase in Liverpool where hundreds of producers from around the world seek out the works of British stars.

Michael Palin was promoting his latest series, Brazil, that is still in production.

I remember being taken as a youth to a double bill of And Now for Something Completely Different and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and thinking even then that this was an ex-comedy, it had ceased to be. (Although for some reason I was quite taken with Michael Palin's Lumberjack Song.)

For many, of course, Monty Python remains timeless and here its original players recall how the show became a hit in America, leading to the aforementioned movies. They're still amazed at Holy Grail's success, bearing in mind Graham Chapman's alcoholism and John Cleese's self-confessed diva behaviour.