Monty Python's Flying Circus

Monty Python's Flying Circus is a British sketch comedy television series that premiered on BBC1 on October 5, 1969, created by and starring Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam. The series abandoned the traditional structure of a sketch show, allowing sketches to end abruptly, run into one another without a punchline, or dissolve into Terry Gilliam's distinctive cut-out animation rather than following a conventional beginning-middle-end format. The show's absurdist, stream-of-consciousness style proved highly influential on later television and film comedy, and its cultural reach extended well beyond entertainment: the Python programming language was named in its honor, and the term spam for unwanted bulk email derives from one of its recurring sketches.