Language and Humor Blog

[CORRECTION (9/10/2006): Gervais is not quitting comedy. Gervais said: "We're not leaving comedy behind but we'd like to have a go at something more dramatic."]

Two Brits Out, One American In

John Cleese of Monty Python fame recently announced he was quitting comedy, possibly to do documentaries but not to write a history of comedy as wrongly reported by The Times. (However, Sean Connery’s book on Scotland will include some Scottish comedy history, as I reported a few weeks ago in Oldest Scottish joke.)

Cleese is not quitting entirely, though. He will do the voice of the evil scientist in the animated comedy movie Igor. He will also return in Shrek the Third as the voice of King Harold, with the voice of Merlin the Magician by fellow Python member Eric Idle (who’s doing well with the musical version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail called Spamalot.

On the one hand, good for Cleese for not doing something in which he has lost interest. On the other hand, it’s sad that he hasn’t had more movie roles offered to him over the years. It was fun to see him and John Lithgow’s characters battling on American sitcom Third Rock from the Sun a while back. I’m sure there have been a lot of movie roles he could have been playing.

As if that weren’t enough, now Ricky Gervais of The Office (UK) and Extras says he’s quitting sitcoms, perhaps to do drama. He wants to stretch.

I’d watch Gervais do drama. I really like The Office. There’s a lot of drama mixed in with the comedy, so he’ll do fine. (I hope Extras gets shown here in America.)

Contrariwise, Robin Williams is going to take a break from dramatic films to do more stand-up comedy. He’s done this before. I think he’ll always need that outlet for his creativity. Movie characters usually need to be fairly constrained, even in a comedy, but in a comedy club he can bounce from topic to topic (and off the walls) to his heart’s and brain’s content.