Monty Python’s Flying Circus first aired on the BBC in 1969.
The series premiered on BBC1 on 5 October 1969, with its first episode broadcast at 10:55 p.m. The program was created and performed by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, whose mix of surreal sketches, animation, wordplay, and broken television conventions was unlike most British comedy of the period.
The opening episode was recorded at the BBC on 7 September 1969. Its late-night scheduling and unconventional style initially produced a small audience, but the show gradually built a devoted following. Across four series, 45 episodes were broadcast between 1969 and 1974, with Cleese leaving after the third series.
The year is sometimes confused with 1970 because the show’s second series—and the famous Spanish Inquisition sketch—began then. It is also easy to mistake 1971, when the troupe made the first of two German-language specials known as Monty Python’s Fliegender Zirkus. The original BBC series, however, began in 1969.