The TV shows to watch this week: From Monty Python to the Hairy Bikers

It’s 50 years since the comedy troupe’s TV debut, and the BBC is getting out the bunting

The Pythons in 1970: Chapman, Idle, Jones, Palin and Cleese (Ibl/Rex)

It has maybe not aged that well, Monty Python. Despite its cult status, the breathtaking talents of its stars, the international success, the way that so much of the Python phenomenon has passed into our cultural heritage – the question is: is it funny? Was it ever funny?

Well, yes, a lot a of the old skits and sketches hold up very well – dead parrot, silly walks, lumberjack – but an awful lot of hasn’t travelled that well, which is more than those bits being a bit politically incorrect now, or the unfathomable contemporary news references (such as to the long forgotten Conservative politician Reginald Maudling). Even in 1969 many of the “establishment” habits and ways were on the way out – spam, city gents in bowler hats, working-class geezers.

Still and all, it was “completely different” at the time, a step along from Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Marty Feldman, At Last the 1948 Show and the Frost crew’s satires, and it was certainly brave of the BBC to risk time and money on it. The corporation’s latest homage to its past, Python at 50: Silly Talks and Holy Grails, is extremely well put together, and contains a commendable amount of first-hand accounts an interviews with the Pythons themselves.

Fully primed in Pythonology, you can then appreciate all the better the following repeat of the very first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. For me, it is about time they also reran Michael Palin and Terry Jones’ superb Ripping Yarns, the most underappreciated of the entire Python works, and some of the very best. Anyway, as Graham Chapman used to stride on in an officer’s uniform and say, that’s enough of that, now.

‘The Great Model Railway Challenge’: just don’t call them trainspotters (Channel 5)

The Great Model Railway Challenge offers an opportunity to observe a lifestyle as strange, to most of us, as that of those obscure rainforest tribes who are being messed round with by President Bolsonaro of Brazil. Yet, why not? After all, we have shows devoted to gardening, baking, antiques, Lego, even dating, so there’s no logical reason why we should shunt into the sidings our community rail enthusiasts (never, ever call them “trainspotters”). Besides, Rod Stewart likes to pound his Deltic around the track (not a euphemism) and he’s about as cool and hip as it gets, right?

The first heat features three teams setting about making a rail disaster happen (in miniature, that is). Full marks for drama and invention, there, but maybe not such tasteful theme: told you it was a strange world.

‘Rise of the Nazis’: a thoughful account of a shocking era (BBC)

Just in case you’ve not had your fill of telly shows about the Nazis (after all, the History Channel is basically a 24/7 rolling news channel for the Third Reich) there’s Rise of the Nazis, on BBC2 on Monday nights. Actually, like the 1997 series The Nazis: A Warning from History, this is an excellently put together programme, and in truth we can’t be reminded too often about how fragile our freedoms and democracy actually is.

It would be a bit trite, not to say facetious, to draw clumsy parallels between events in interwar Europe and the troubles in the world today, and they hardly need mentioning – the rise of demagogues, trade wars, isolationism, financial crisis and a general faithlessness in democratic procedures and politicians. In any case it is an endlessly intriguing story, and no end of a lesson.

The two faces of ITV drama are on show again this week. First, Sanditon, a scrape-the-barrel of an unfinished Jane Austen novel, which is as bad as it sounds; and the vastly superior investment in modern-day story telling A Confession, which has mostly had deservingly warm reviews. Martin Freeman stars, and it is some small poof that there’s still some creative life and ambition left in ITV.

Back on the road: ‘Hairy Bikers Route 66’ (BBC)

I’d slightly lost track of the Hairy Bikers, I have to confess. I suppose I assumed that they must have run out of fuel, whether literally or metaphorically, and that would account for their going a bit quiet. Anyway their hogs are up and burbling again and they’re tackling Route 66, one of the great – and by that I also mean 2,448 miles – road journeys of the world. Connecting Chicago to California. it long since ceased to be a vital artery, having been largely supplanted by the Interstate highway programme launched by the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s.

Anyway, nowadays it’s just a very long tourist attraction, glorious nostalgic and with some quaint and wonderful sights along the way – real Americana. There’s a also, given its heritage of motels, transport cafes and drive-in fast food joints, a voyage of discovery across American cuisine. All of which makes for an enthralling, delicious, but perhaps medically inadvisable expedition for our two pioneers. Good luck, anyway, to Dave Mayers and Si King, who obviously survived all the corn dogs.

Python at 50: Silly Talks and Holy Grails (BBC2, Saturday 10pm); Monty Python’s Flying Circus (BBC2, Saturday 11pm); The Great Model Railway Challenge (Channel 5, Friday 8pm); Rise of the Nazis (BBC2, Monday 9pm); Sanditon (ITV, Sunday 9pm); A Confession (ITV, Monday 9pm); Hairy Bikers Route 66 (BBC2, Thursday 8pm)