In America, 1974 and 1975 were a hugely significant time for Monty Python. Although their show had gone off the air in England, it was just growing a cult in the U.S. thanks to the PBS broadcast. Public TV nerds suddenly had a refreshing new taste of what has often been called one of the best TV shows of all time, and a lot of American comedy vernacular began to change; it’s certainly no coincidence that certain North American sketch comedy shows of the 1990s (“The State,” “Kids in the Hall,” etc.) exhibited a similarly Pythonesque, absurdist bent, as they were founded by people who watched the show in the ’70s. Python was taking off in North America, and interest in the show led to a 1974 re-release of “And Now for Something Completely Different.” 

Cleese recalls the explosion quite well, and was thrilled to see the good timing between the one-two-three punch of “Flying Circus,” “Completely Different,” and “Holy Grail” land all at the dame time. 

“Then what happened: It opened in America, and to our extraordinary good luck, it opened just after the television series had come on PBS. And if it had opened six months before that, it probably wouldn’t have opened at all. Because it opened just after the PBS series, it did very, very good business. And, for the first time in my life, at the age of about 34, it felt as though people were climbing up my ladders outside my bedroom window and throwing money in, you know?”