Monty Python's Life of Brian Controversy Chronicled in New BBC Comedy-Drama

In 1979, church leaders and even some normal people clamored over the content in Monty Python's Life of Brian, an excellent movie about a guy named Brian Cohen who's mistaken for the messiah. Opponents claimed the film mocked Christianity, and thus it was banned in several countries (but not the U.S., where it was the highest-grossing British import that year). Now, the BBC is bringing us Holy Flying Circus, a comic drama that chronicles Brian's furor in a bizarre and Python-appropriate format. Puppets are involved.

In addition to incorporating "surreal cutaways including puppetry and animation," Holy Flying Circus will follow the movie's controversy to a legendary 1979 BBC debate between Malcolm Muggeridge, the Bishop of Southwark Mervyn Stockwood, and Monty Python members John Cleese and Michael Palin. Actors Darren Boyd and Charles Edwards have been cast in the roles of Cleese and Palin.

Though Life of Brian is a more incendiary, deliriously satirical, and outright hilarious movie, it's strange in retrospect that it incurred 100% more wrath than the U.S.'s 1979 movie about a mistaken prophet-like figure, Being There. I suppose directing invoking the word "messiah" and Biblical times were the more paramount offenses. Still, this is a controversy worth revisiting: Below are clips from the movie and a separate documentary about the ensuing scandal.

The new film debuts on BBC Four this fall.

BBC to dramatise Life Of Brian controversy in new film [BBC]