In 1979, Monty Python made Life of Brian and the debate about what is an acceptable subject for comedy was blown wide open. This is a fantastical re-imagining of the build-up to the release of the film and the controversy it caused.
It was followed by a showing of a program called Friday Night Saturday Morning first broadcast in 1979 which was the subject of the drama and in which the John Clease and Michael Palin take on Malcolm Muggeridge and a Bishop.
If you live in the UK you can watch here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016bgt2 and here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0162zbx Failing that it will all show on youtube at some point and it will be good to have the debate available - I've searched in the past and not found it. The original debate is a classic. Apparently it was Douglas Adams favourite viewing as the Christians behaved so badly. Watching it at the time I felt we were badly represented. For completeness sake you should also watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asUyK6JWt9U which manages to be funnier in four minutes than the new drama manages in an hour and a half.
The debate prefigures a lot of stuff you get on this forum right down to Clease misinterpreting Popper on falsifiability. Sadly no one on the Christian side seems to want to lift the debate to that intellectual level and as the drama points out the Pythons take it seriously and the Bishop makes silly jokes. The Bishop is also incredibly patronising though he does make the occasional good point.
