Michael Palin

A boy climbs to the top of a giant beanstalk where he uses his quick wits to outsmart an ogre and make his and his mother's fortune.

The quest for the Holy Grail by King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table is retold in the inimitable Python fashion.

It's 1916 and British Captain Fred Roberts and his detachment discover an abandoned printing press in the ruins of Ypres, Belgium. Roberts has an idea, he will produce a newspaper to raise the spirits of his soldiers, taking their minds off 'the attentions of Messrs Hun and Co.' They call it The Wipers Times, after the army slang for Ypres, and fill it with spoofs, jokes, and subversive comedy. A hit with the troops on the Western Front, it also incurs...

The Dark ages were never like this! Nothing is sacred in this story of Middle Age make-believe. A dim-witted country bumpkin comes to the city and ends up with a lovely princess. Out of this medieval chaos we can see the origins of the modern rush hour, observe knights that play hide-and-seek instead of joust, and experience life before people had to curb their monsters.

When the tyrannical ruler Stalin dies, his hapless inner circle scrambles to come up with the next evolution of the revolution, but it's clear everyone is really out for themselves. Proof that comedy, like politics, is all in the execution.