Classic moments from Rutland Weekend Television
Trolling around the internets today we stumbled on an interview with Eric Idle for the Scotland on Sunday website referencing Idle’s hit musical, Spamalot, was coming to the Playhouse in Edinburgh beginning tonight, 18 October. Having seen the original some years back in Chicago with the likes of Tim Curry, David Hyde Pierce and Hank Azzaria, this is a must see if you are anywhere near Scotland this week, but wasn’t what caught my eye in the story. A brief mention in the article of Rutland Weekend Television, which was Idle’s first “post-Monty Python” project in 1975, got me digging into some pretty great mid-70’s British parody comedy moments from the series. BTW, Neil Innes is a genius.
George Harrison’s Pirate Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8jSMSRfMp4&NR=1
RWT take on Ken Russell’s Tommy with The Who
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS0ssnZcO4o
Suburban Prisons with special guest appearance by Johnny Cash
Idle described the series by saying, “…It was made on a shoestring budget, and someone else was wearing the shoe.” Broadcasting from England’s smallest county, Rutland, it was dubbed “Britain’s smallest television network”. There were many classic moments, but perhaps the best thing to come out of the two-season series was to launch the career of The Rutles. Who can forget Rutlemania?
