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''Q...'' was a surreal television comedy sketch show from Spike Milligan which ran from 1969 to 1982 on BBC2. There were six series in all, the first five numbered from ''Q5'' to ''Q9'', and a final series titled ''There's a Lot of It About''. The first and third series ran for seven episodes, and the others for six episodes, each of which was 30 minutes long. Various reasons have been suggested for the title. One possibility is that it was inspired by the project to construct the Cunard liner QE2, launched in September 1967, which was dubbed ''Q4''. Another theory is that Milligan was inspired by the BBC 6-point technical quality scale of the time, where "Q5" was severe degradation to picture or sound, and "Q6" was complete loss of sound or vision. This was extended by some engineering departments to a 9-point scale, finishing at "Q9". According to Milligan's autobiography, the final series was renamed ''There's a Lot of It About'' after the BBC felt the public might find ''Q10'' too confusing. ==Forerunner in comedy== Though many found it to be more "hit and miss" than Milligan's earlier work, especially ''The Goon Show'', it is considered by many to be one of the landmarks in British comedy. In particular ''Q5'', which first aired on 24 March 1969, and with its surreal bent and almost stream-of-consciousness format is seen by many as a forerunner to ''Monty Python's Flying Circus'', which debuted some months later.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/q/ )〕 The Pythons themselves remember that, having seen ''Q5'', they had been forced to scurry around for a new hook for their series, as the format they had been intending to use had now already been done. Michael Palin recalls "Terry Jones and I adored the ''Q...'' shows...() was the first writer to play with the conventions of television."〔 (quote at (a), p.157)〕 Scudamore (1985, p. 170) cites one interview with the Pythons in which John Cleese said: "Shows prepare the way for other shows, and sometimes shows that make genuine breakthroughs are missed. Spike Milligan's ''Q5'' was missed...when we first saw ''Q5'' we were very depressed because we thought it was what we wanted to do and Milligan was doing it brilliantly. But nobody really noticed ''Q5''". Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam concurred. Jones noted that "watching ''Q5'', we almost felt as if our guns had been Spiked! We had been writing quickies or sketches for some three years and they always had a beginning, a middle and a tag line. Suddenly, watching Spike Milligan, we realized that they didn't have to be like that".〔 Also, in the Pythons' (2004) autobiography, Cleese cites a conversation between himself and Terry Jones: "We both happened to watch Spike Milligan's ''Q5'', and one or the other of us phoned up and said kind of jokingly but also rather anxiously, 'I thought that's what we were supposed to be doing?' And the other one said, 'That's what I thought too.' We felt that Spike had got to where we were trying to get to, but if you'd asked us the previous day, we couldn't have described very well what that was. However, when we saw it on the screen we recognised it, and in a way the fact that Spike had gone there probably enabled us to go a little bit further than we would otherwise have gone" (p. 191).〔Chapman, G., Cleese, J., Gilliam, T., Idle, E., Jones, T., & Palin, M. (2004). Edited by Bob McCabe. ''The Pythons Autobiography by The Pythons''. London: Orion. ISBN = 0-7528-6425-4 Chapman's posthumous input via collateral sources〕 In the Python autobiography, Michael Palin mentions meeting their directors. "One was Ian MacNaughton, director of the Spike Milligan ''Q5'' series which we all thought was one of the best comedy shows on TV and certainly the most far ahead..." (p. 218).〔 He describes himself and Terry Jones as being so impressed with the ''Q...'' show that they specifically sought out McNaughton to direct their own series.〔〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Q... (TV series)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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