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Series 3, Episode 32: Tuesday Documentary/Children’s Story/Political Broadcast
The cast:
NEWSREADER Michael Palin
PRESENTER Eric Idle
POLITICIAN Terry Jones
The sketch:
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: ‘TODAY IN PARLIAMENT HAS NOW BECOME THE CLASSIC SERIAL’
Newsreader: He in turn has been revealed by D’Arcy as something less than an honest man. Sybil feels once again a resurgence of her old affection and she and Balreau return to her little house in Clermont-Ferrand, the kind of two-up, two-down house that most French workers throughout the European Community are living in today.
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: ‘THE CLASSIC SERIAL HAS NOW BECOME THE TUESDAY DOCUMENTARY’
(Cut to a photo of a French construction site. The camera tracks over the photo.)
Presenter: The ease of construction, using on-site prefabrication facilities
(the camera starts to pull out slowly from the photo to reveal the photo is part of the backdrop of a documentary set about the building trade; the documentary Presenter is sitting in a chair) makes cheap housing a reality. The walls of these houses are lined with prestressed asbestos which keeps the house warm and snuggly and ever so safe from the big bad rabbit, who can scratch and scratch for all he’s worth, but he just can’t get into Porky’s house.
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: ‘THE TUESDAY DOCUMENTARY HAS BECOME “CHILDREN’S STORY” ‘
Presenter: Where is Porky? Here he is. What a funny little chap.
(cut to animated Porky doing little dance) But Porky’s one of the lucky ones- he survived the urban upheaval of the thirties and forties. For him, Jarrow is still just a memory.
(zoom out to see Porky as pan of documentary-the graph) The hunger marches, the East End riots, the collapse of the Labour Government in 1930…
(stock film of Ramsay MacDonald)
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: ‘THE CHILDREN’S STORY HAS GONE BACK INTO THE TUESDAY DOCUMENTARY’
Presenter: … are dim reminders of the days before a new-found affluence swept the land,
(stock shots of Christmas lights in Regent Street, shopping crowds, tills and consumer goods ending up with toys)
making it clean and tidy and making all the shops full of nice things, lovely choo-choo trains…
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: ‘NO IT HASN’T’
Presenter: …and toys and shiny cars that go brrm, brrm, brrm,
(shots of toys)
and everybody was happy and singing all the day long
(cut to the Presenter; by now he has a big kiddies’ book which he shuts)
and nobody saw the big bad rabbit ever again.
(Cut to a politican giving a party political broadcast in one of those badly lit sets that they use for broadcasts of that nature.)
Politician: But you know it’s always very easy to blame the big bad rabbit…
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: ‘NOW IT’S BECOME A PARTY POLITICAL BROADCAST!’
Politician:.. when by-elections are going against the Government, (he turns and we cut to side camera which reveals a cross behind him as for a religious broadcast) Do you think we should really be blaming ourselves?
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: ‘NO, SORRY, “RELIGION TODAY”‘
Politician: Because you know, that’s where we really ought to start looking.
(A football comes in, he heads it neatly out of shot.)
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: ‘MATCH OF THE DAY’
(Cut to stock film of ball fiying into net and shot of Wembley crowd roaring. Then cut into short sequence of footballers in slow-motion kissing each other.)