Ripping Yarns

Ripping Yarns was a television comedy series loosely in the style of Monty Python written by former Pythons Michael Palin and Terry Jones. Each episode neatly parodied some pre-war schoolboy genre or other.

The series grew out of a one-off programme called "Tomkinson's Schooldays" (1975), loosely inspired by Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes. Palin and Jones both wrote and starred in multiple roles.

A series of five episodes was screened in 1977, following a repeat of "Tomkinson's Schooldays" as the de facto pilot episode. A second series of three episodes followed in 1979. Jones did not appear in any of the later 8 episodes, and Palin usually confined himself to one or two roles per episode.

Table of contents

1 Pilot (1975): 2 First series (1977): 3 Second series (1979):

Pilot (1975):

• "Tomkinson's Schooldays"

First series (1977):

• "Tomkinson's Schooldays" (repeat of pilot with series title sequence added)
• "The Testing of Eric Olthwaite"
• "Escape from Stalag Luft 112 B"
• "Murder at Moorstones Manor"
• "Across the Andes by Frog"
• "The Curse of the Claw"

Second series (1979):

• "Whinfrey's Last Case"
• "Golden Gordon"
• "Roger of the Raj

The pilot was shot on videotape with filmed exterior scenes and has a laugh track. The remaining episodes were all shot on film. They were also originally shown with laugh tracks, but with a couple of exceptions these have been omitted from repeats.

The scripts were published in book form, with suitably sepia-tinted stills, as Ripping Yarns and More Ripping Yarns, and later collected in an omnibus volume, The Complete Ripping Yarns.

The series was released on three VHS tapes in the UK in the 1980s. Two of these compilations were reissued (not by the BBC) on Region 0 (worldwide) DVD in 2000, but fans were disappointed that no attempt had been made to remaster the sound and picture quality and that only 6 of the 9 episodes were included. Fans continue to hope for a fully-restored complete edition.