The surviving original cast of the Monty Python's Flying Circus, Michael Palin (left), John Cleese, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and Eric Idle all appear in the documentary Monty Python: Almost The Truth (Lawyer's Cut).

MONTY PYTHON: ALMOST THE TRUTH (THE LAWYER'S CUT)

Saturday at 6 p.m. on Bravo!

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Be warned: Any views or opinions expressed in the new six-part documentary Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer's Cut) are those of the five surviving members of the comedy group Monty Python, and hold no truth whatsoever. The program is pursuant therefore to clause 4.6 of the Broadcasting Video Television Act of 1989, sections 4, 3 and 2.

What you're reading here is a violation of the law. You are a law breaker. Shame on you. Monty Python: Almost the Truth's makers will have you know — and you would have known this already, had you been paying attention to the disclaimer at the program's beginning — "No viewer or watcher may copy, repeat, impersonate, mime, either contextually or non-contextually, any material whatsoever, in any public appearance, performance or reading, public or private."

Violators will be prosecuted to the utmost extent of the law, which in Monty Python's case, means exposure to the Spanish Inquisition, transvestite lumberjacks, dead parrots, singing knights and a lifetime's supply of Spam.

Monty Python: Almost the Truth is a new documentary, a Shirley Bassey-sound-alike Sonia Jones sings over the program's opening credits — themselves an homage to a low-budget James Bond movie — "but it's not complimentary."

The opening episode takes in "the not-so-interesting beginnings" and the era of black-and-white TV. Eric Idle, looking as comfortable and contented as he did when he appeared before a recent gathering of the Television Critics Association, is the first surviving Monty Python member to offer his views and opinions in Almost the Truth, and he does so with post-ironic detachment.

The early days of Monty Python, Idle recalls, were a time when postwar Britain was uptight and stuck up, with news announcers wearing black ties to read the news — on the radio.

"It was unnecessarily uptight," Idle says in the program.

Michael Palin, the world traveller and recently appointed director of Britain's Royal Geographical Society — spiritual home of legendary explorers Sir Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke — immediately one-ups Idle in the ironic-detachment department, though. Asked to recall Monty Python's earliest, "not-so-interesting beginnings," Palin replies, with a straight face, "I think I had quite a happy childhood."

Just last week, the five surviving members of Monty Python's Flying Circus — the Saturday Night Live of its day — got what they had ridiculed for so long: a lifetime achievement award, bestowed by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in New York.

To hear Idle, Palin, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and John Cleese tell it, they got the award for not doing very much, actually, aside from 40 years of deadpan satire. Make the world laugh. Speak truth to power — by making those in power look like silly .

The irony, according to Idle — "Idle by name, idle by nature," a former schoolteacher said of him— is that Monty Python is much more popular now, thanks to YouTube, DVDs, a Broadway musical (Spamalot) and the continuing success of movies like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Life of Brian — the original title, rejected in a rare moment of Python restraint, was Brian of Nazareth — and The Meaning of Life.

"It's given us a chance to get out and maybe be vaguely funny again," Idle told reporters at a gathering of the TV Critics Association.

The secret to Monty Python's success is that the satire is cutting but never so topical that it dates. The humour stays fresh. Jokes about the establishment, authority figures and the petty humiliations of day-to-day life never grow old.

Monty Python could never have translated onto U.S. television the way the U.S. networks wanted it, Idle said.

"Early on, when we were living in England, one of the networks came to us and said, "We want to buy your format,'" Idle recalled. "And we said, 'What?' We got together amongst ourselves and we said, 'But don't they know we don't have a format?' So we thought, well, the best thing we can say is say 'No,' so we did. We refused to sell them this non-existent format.

"So they went away, which was great, and we laughed. One thing we knew for certain was that Python would never work in America. That's the one thing we all held in common as an absolute certainty. And so it sort of trickled into Canada. It was quite big in Canada. People found it. But Canadians are used to English shows."

The real reason for Monty Python's success may be that, with the exception of the late, great Graham Chapman, they had the wit, grace and talent to just remain alive.

"We were all professional writers," Idle explained. "I think the special thing about Python was that it was a writers' commune. The writers were in charge. The writers decided the material. Only after that did we divvy it up amongst ourselves to decide who would act what part. Because we could criticize each other's writing, we actually got the best out of each other as writers."

Idle has ruled out a working reunion, however.

"Because we hate each other," he said, deadpan. "There's so much animosity. We're all over 60."

Besides, he added, "We've discovered that the less we do, the more money we make."

Seriously, though.

"Comedy is a young person's game," Idle said. "It's about what you have to say when you're fresh and young. I'm perfectly happy to get drunk with the rest of them, but I think it should go no further. Some people don't know that we're just old farts."