Monty Python interview

GQ talks to the iconoclasts who challenged the British establishment and ended up global comedy royalty. John Cleese, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam and Eric Idle discuss the glory years, blazing rows, groupies and the Knights Who Say Ni... Say no more!

Terry Gilliam: Monty Python is a thorn in my side

Terry Gilliam on his new film The Zero Theorem, reviving Don Quixote - and those rumours of Monty Python US dates.

Simon Pegg joins Monty Python's Absolutely Anything

Simon Pegg has joined the cast of Absolutely Anything, the film in which Monty Python's Terry Jones, John Cleese, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam provide the voices of alien creatures.

Monty Python stars reunite for film Absolutely Anything

The original stars of cult comedy Monty Python look set to reunite once more for a new movie. John Cleese, Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin are all said to be voicing characters of a group of aliens in the film who grant wishes to humans for laughs.

Monty Python's Terry Jones on Graham Chapman's biopic

We talked to original Python Terry Jones about Graham Chapman's drinking, his mum's influence, and Terry Gilliam's bossiness.

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.

Peter Capaldi's mock documentary revisits the titular, long-forgotten - oh, all right, completely made-up - north London film studios, responsible for such classic films as Clog Capers of 1932 and Breasts of the Vampire. Profiling a fictional organisation that was equal parts Ealing, Hammer, Gainsborough, Handmade Films and Carry On, it's a richly imagined, brilliantly executed and very funny alternate history. Played entirely straight - essential for any great spoof - the film clips are as beautifully realised as the also the documentary itself, an affectionate take on a certain sort of factual filmmaking, infused with the passion and occasional pomposity that characterises it, from self-important opening narration to the over-extended closing montage - soundtracked, inevitably, by Coldplay's Fix You. A Terry Gilliam cameo is merely the final treat in a wonderful pilot that simply demands a full commission.

Radio Times review

Peter Capaldi plays it straight as a film buff and devotee of the now defunct Cricklewood Studios. Pure fiction, of course, but pinning spoofs of cheap British movies and even cheaper British movie stars onto a made-up studio lets Capaldi and co-writer Tony Roche have some arch fun.

Capaldi presents this "documentary" celebrating the output of his beloved Cricklewood Studios (now a DIY superstore). He recalls Florrie Fontaine (Lindsay Marshal), a terrifyingly cheerful Gracie Fields-type singer whose career died when she became friendly with Nazi high command: "I speak as I find, and they were grand company."

Watch out for Hustle's Kelly Adams as a Barbara Windsor-ish bimbette, star of the Thumbs Up series. But the show is stolen by Terry Gilliam, playing himself, a profligate director who brought the studio to its knees.

Peter Capaldi is best known as splenetic spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in peerless political satire The Thick Of It. But he's a man of many talents, as he shows to full effect in this subtle spoof documentary, which sees him triple up as writer, director and presenter. It's film buff heaven; the tale of a now-defunct British movie studio, making room for classy cameos from Lyndsey Marshal and Terry Gilliam - and Capaldi's sharp wit.