Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [83]
The next morning, I took him to catch the 11.30 train back to Suffolk. He looked rather tired and had little bounce left, and it was as well he was going back. But I think the four days had in fact done him a great deal of good, in taking his mind off his ailments, real and imagined, and giving him things to do – the trip to Cambridge, the airport, the Barque and Bite, which showed him that he is not yet an invalid. In fact, his capacity to enjoy himself is very strong, but he needs pushing.
On Tuesday, Terry and I played squash in the afternoon, and then went on to the BBC for a meeting with Cotton and Duncan Wood about the future of Python. Cotton restated his position that if we were to do a show without John it should not be called Monty Python – it should try and be something different, and it should be tried out in an on-air pilot, with a possible series next year. We in turn had bristled at the idea of having to prove ourselves in a pilot, and so it devolved on John C. How involved is he prepared to be in a new series? If he is adamantly against any involvement when Bill rings him, then we shall have to think about alternatives.
Tuesday, August 14th
This evening at 10.05, the first TV play written by Terry and myself went out on BBC2. Secrets had been given a blaze of pre-publicity of the sort normally reserved for the Cup Final. Mainly, I think, because it was the first of a new series, with a prestige star, Warren Mitchell, and a prestige producer, Mark Shivas, and a prestige director, James Cellan Jones. But also because it was at last something new in the midsummer wilderness of repeats. Anyway, we had the Radio Times cover, several trailers, and nearly every critic wrote it up as the main thing to watch this evening.
Helen and I took the children down to Terry’s and watched there. As the show started I felt a tingling nervous expectancy, and, although it was all recorded long ago, I watched it as if it were live, willing the actors on to say the line faster or slower, hiding my head during a grossly overplayed scene, laughing with tremendous relief when we all laughed. Many things were too cod and too heavily played, but I felt it looked very professional. Graham rang to say he’d enjoyed it and, about 12.00, Barry Cryer was the only other caller. He liked it, but, I think, with reservations. Whatever happens, I don’t think after the enormous publicity build-up the critics will ignore it.
Wednesday, August 15th
I opened the Daily Mirror to find the headline on the TV page ‘Choc Drop Flop’. I groaned, but reading on was worse. It was a violently unfavourable criticism, savagely attacking the writers but, ‘as a favour’, not mentioning our names. The Guardian had nothing.
I bought the other papers, and the situation seemed worse. Both Peter Black in the Mail and Richard Last in the Telegraph felt that it was the writers who were at fault. Last compared us with Evelyn Waugh, unfavourably of course, and Black felt we hadn’t been very clever. Mind you, as a critic, he can hardly have any credence when he caps his review by saying ‘if only Graeme Garden, as the Major in the Monty Python series … could have stopped it’.
James Thomas in the Express thought it fell flat and it was not until I read The Times that there was any crumb of comfort. At least he thought it was hilarious. For two or so hours, I felt like a hunted man. I didn’t even ring Terry, I didn’t really want to go out.
About 11.00 Simon A rang. He had seen it with his brother and a friend and they had all found it very funny. His objections were the same as mine – that more realism would have helped, that the overplaying of the slapstick made the tale seem more trivial than it was meant to be – but it hadn’t spoilt