Ripping Yarns

Ripping Yarns is a British television comedy series, written by two members of the Monty Python team, Michael Palin and Terry Jones. The series ran on the BBC from 1976 to 1979. Each episode had a completely different setting and completely different characters, each looking at a different aspect of British culture. The idea of "ripping yarns" parodied a pre-World War II schoolboy genre. The series grew out of a one-off BBC programme called Tomki... more

Ripping Yarns is a British television comedy series, written by two members of the Monty Python team, Michael Palin and Terry Jones. The series ran on the BBC from 1976 to 1979. Each episode had a completely different setting and completely different characters, each looking at a different aspect of British culture. The idea of "ripping yarns" parodied a pre-World War II schoolboy genre. The series grew out of a one-off BBC programme called Tomkinson's Schooldays (1975), loosely inspired by Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes. Palin and Jones both wrote and starred in multiple roles. Palin and Jones then developed the idea into a series. Following a repeat of "Tomkinson's Schooldays" as the de facto pilot episode, a further five episodes were screened in 1977. A second series of three episodes followed in 1979. Jones did not appear in any of the later 8 episodes, and Palin usually confined himself to one or two roles per episode. The series is introduced by a bearded man in an... less