And now for something completely different: The dead parrot sketch with the "Norwegian Blue"; the funny walks; the Twit of the Year contest; men in mawkish dresses; disgruntled Canadian Mounties singing the gay chorus to I'm a Lumberjack; Terry Gilliam's savagely brilliant animation.

Everyone who ever saw the British TV comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus -- and did not freak out and flee the anarchistic humour -- has a favourite Python sketch. That love affair was established when the series first aired from 1969-74, before the troupe launched a series of bizarre and wonderful movies, including two cheeky masterworks, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Monty Python's Life of Brian.

Starting today on TV and continuing with the DVD release, you can relive the highlights in a mammoth career documentary, Monty Python: Almost the Truth, the Lawyer's Cut. Staggeringly comprehensive while careening from funny to poignant, the doc involves six episodes running a total of seven hours, 43 minutes.

Cineplex has already screened a 100-minute "greatest hits" version in theatres across Canada. Starting tonight at 9 p.m. EST, Bravo! broadcasts the long version in three chunks of two episodes each. The series continues tomorrow and Monday.

The whole enterprise then comes out Tuesday as a three-disc DVD box set. It boasts extras, among them extended interviews with the five survivors: John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam. The late Graham Chapman is represented in vintage interviews.

The doc is the work of co-directors Bill Jones, Alan G. Parker and Ben Timlett, with Jones and Timlett in charge as series producers. Almost the Truth tells the story of the Pythoneers from birth to today, with all the naughty bits in between. It is as irreverent as Monty Python itself was in its prime. Pythoneers cajole and insult one another. There are contradictions, illuminations and competitions for past glory.

There is a whole lotta love, too. Since making their Monty Python BBC-TV debut in 1969 -- years after most had collaborated on various stage and TV sketches from university to the Edinburgh festival -- the core group of six have defined their careers and their lives by the Python experience. The doc tells how that happened, and how their surrealistic, absurdist, satirical and even revolutionary comedy flourished.

The Pythoneers had been influenced by the best British comedians who came before, especially The Goon Show and Spike Milligan. Cleese, still in awe of Milligan, describes the Pythoneers as "dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants."

On a goofy level, Idle and company reveal how the troupe's now-beloved name originated. When the 1969 series was launched, the show had a different name for each of the first four episodes, plus other names were considered. A sampling: The Toad Elevating Moment; Owl Stretching Time; Bun Wackett, Buzzard Stubble and Boat; and You Can't Call a Show Cornflakes. Even when "Flying Circus" got stuck in their collective heads, it went from El Turbot's Flying Circus to Gwen Digley's to Norman Python's to Bob Python's and finally -- thanks to Idle's suggestion -- to Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Learn about that, and a million other fascinating facts, in Almost the Truth. These guys wouldn't lie.