"Ripping Yarns" (1976) TV series 1976-1979

Director:

Terry Hughes

Seasons:

1 | 2

Release Date:

7 January 1976 (UK)

Genre:

Adventure | Comedy

Plot:

Ripping Yarns is a collection of tales that make for 'ripping good' television. Michael Palin plays a different lead character in each yarn.

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Michael Palin	...	Bank Manager / ... (9 episodes, 1976-1979)
Charles McKeown	...	2nd Native / ... (4 episodes, 1977-1979)

Runtime:

30 min (9 episodes)

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Singapore:PG | Australia:PG

Filming Locations:

Cape Cornwall, St Just, Cornwall, England, UK

Company:

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

Trivia:

At least three "Ripping Yarns" were never fully realized. According to Palin and Jones, "The Seawolf", "Rizzo The Wonder Dog" and "Dracula At St.Dominics" were started, but never completed.

Movie Connections:

Featured in What the Pythons Did Next... (2007) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Façade, Suite No. 2 - Fanfare

Would have been an amazing series of six, unfortunately, they did nine.

As you've probably guessed from my summary, there are three duff episodes of Ripping Yarns (namely Murder at Moorstones Manor, Roger Of the Raj and Across the Andes By Frog) and six really good ones. Apparently the BBC agreed, because when they released two videotapes of the series, each containing three episodes, you can guess which episodes never made it to either cassette. (All nine episodes have subsequently been released by Network.) Ripping Yarns is a series of extended parodies on 'Boy's Own'-type adventure stories, with Michael Palin's versatile performances well to the fore and superb production and costume design adding to the authentic flavour. The best of the bunch are Tomkinson's Schooldays (which takes place at a public school run by perverts, maniacs and incompetents who favour ridiculous 'traditions' and bizarre punishments over scholastic achievement), the Testing Of Eric Olthwaite (in which a Northern misfit, judged by all and sundry to be "a boring little t*t", becomes an unlikely folk hero after getting caught up in a bank raid), Golden Gordon (the most loyal supporter of a hopeless soccer team saves the club from liquidation by re-recruiting several retired players for an important match), Winfrey's Last Case (a self-styled 'superhero', sick of saving the world on an almost daily basis, finds his holiday interrupted by a despicable plan to start the First World War a year early), Escape From Stalag Luft 112B (a riotous inversion of the "stiff upper lip" war movie and the Great Escape in particular) and the brilliant Curse Of the Claw, a surprisingly dark and occasionally moving black comedy about a repressed young man's doomed quest to lift the titular curse from his disease-ridden (quite voluntarily, I might add) Uncle Jack which has one of the bleakest twist endings ever seen in British comedy. When these Yarns are good, they're very very good, but the clunkers are simply tedious. Still, the half-dozen masterpieces in miniature detailed above, and the addition of an ultra-rare Palin-Jones BBC drama from 1973 makes the DVD set a compulsory purchase.