Never liked that summary. The joke with Life of Brian is less that people mistake him for Jesus than the fact that there were a lot of Messiahs running around at the time.
And that’s very much what Jones brought to the table. In a lot of his work there’s a surprising amount of accurate or authentic historical detail. All of it quirky and deeply weird, much of it lesser known. With the jokes based on it meant to underline something important that’s often missed in the popular discussion of history.
He did some awesome BBC history docs post Python. All off them covering things just a bit more accurately, and with a focus on cultural and political context that usually gets ignored in favor of secret gold, war good, and straight up psuedohistory when it comes to pop history.
And that’s very much in the vein of what he (and Palin) brought to Python. A lot of that social commentary, and weird detail. A lot of the more complex stuff came out of those two. Jones was the major force in pushing them to longer form, more complicated stuff in the films. Especially with Life of Brian. Never really seemed to get the credit he deserved on that front.
The Rome one is burned in my head from high school history class. There’s a segment where he explains Roman baths and hygiene practices. And a greased up Terry Jones in a toga demonstrates the use of a Strigil to scrape olive oil and dirt from the skin. There’s a close up of the results in a little clay dish that I’m reasonably sure is not actually Terry Jones scrapings. But a bit of butter melted into cloudy olive oil for effect. But sometimes I still feel a little nauseous when I’m cooking if it bares too much resemblance.
@Ryuthrowsstuff “there were a lot of Messiahs running around at the time”. Yes! It was a very tumultuous time with a lot of rifts within the Jewish community. Some very interesting reading on this can be found in “How Jesus Became God” by Ehrman and “The Origin of Satan” by Pagels.
And others have mentioned this already, but his work on The Crusades, etc was excellent.
Not just in the Jewish community. Everyone should read the “The Golden Ass”. For the starters, it’s a fun book, but with a surprise at the end, one that will both make you understand how books like the Gospels might have come to be, and also why Christianity might have had an edge against its competitors.
With too many shows (including the Goon Show) the tapas were erased and reused to save cost. Penny wise and (hundreds of millions of) pounds foolish. A priceless loss to all of us
Complete original broadcast footage of Super Bowl I exists today only because someone had access to a videotape machine in 1967, and that tape remains locked in a vault.
