Complete And Utter History Of Britain is finally actually complete

ITV has recovered long-lost episodes of a landmark missing comedy series that was a precursor to Monty Python's Flying Circus.

The Complete And Utter History Of Britain was written by and starred Michael Palin and Terry Jones, with one six-part series airing on London Weekend Television in January and February 1969.

For many years, the entire series was believed to have been wiped. However, copies of the first two episodes were eventually found in the personal collection of the director, Maurice Murphy, and released on DVD in 2014. 

However, all episodes have recently been discovered in the ITV archive, cleaned up, and added to the streaming services Britbox and ITVX. 

Jones previously expressed dissatisfaction with the pace of the surviving episodes, saying: ‘It was doing The Complete and Utter History of Britain that got me really convinced that you have to control everything. You not only act in the things - you've got to actually start directing the thing as well.’

And Palin said: ‘‘It was rather bad. It looked like Stonehenge was made of polystyrene. And things like the wrong sound effects can really ruin a sketch.

But he added: ‘There are some quite good ideas in there,’ Palin said. ‘I can see all sorts of Python in it. It’s funnier than I remember. Parts of it are silly and schoolboyish, but also rather satisfying.

However, the failure did help the formation of Monty Python later that same year. 

Palin recalled. ‘John Cleese called me when it went out and said, "I’ve just seen this series of yours. You won’t be making any more of those, will you? So why don’t we do something together." He always was a mean bastard.’

An ITV spokesman told Chortle: ‘It was found by the ITV Archive team as part of a huge project to fully identify every archive asset ITV holds.

‘The series had been sitting in the ITV vaults though mis-catalogued for decades, but through the identification programme we were able to make this remarkable find.

‘We flagged it to our colleagues in streaming, had the film cleaned and restored from the 16mm telerecordings and then finally made available to our viewers for the first time since the original broadcasts.’

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Published: 2 Oct 2023