Monty Python's the best sketch comedy I've ever seen, don't get me wrong. I have the complete set, and it's the standard by which I judge all other sketch comed

Monty Python's the best sketch comedy I've ever seen, don't get me wrong. I have the complete set, and it's the standard by which I judge all other sketch comedy. At the same time, as you said, they were very unpolished. Sometimes they'd ruin good jokes with bad acting. When everything aligned, as it did in, say, the courtroom scene, or the parrot sketch, they were stunning. The Simpsons very occasionally had moments like that, but returning to their earlier work I found that they too rarely were full-blown terrific. They faded with time not because good things fade, but because they weren't as good as we thought when we were younger and less experienced in comedy. Meanwhile, Shakespeare's comedies are still hilarious, and they've lasted for centuries.