Editing Monty Python (section)

====Departure of Cleese====
Having considered the possibility at the end of the second series, Cleese left the ''Flying Circus'' at the end of the third. He later explained that he felt he no longer had anything fresh to offer the show, and claimed that only two sketches penned by Cleese and Chapman in the third series ("Dennis Moore" and the "Cheese Shop") were truly original, and that the others were bits and pieces from previous work cobbled together in slightly different contexts.<ref name="Autobiography" /> He was also finding Chapman, who was at that point in the full throes of alcoholism, difficult to work with. According to an interview with Idle, "It was on an [[Air Canada]] flight on the way to [[Toronto]], when John (Cleese) turned to all of us and said 'I want out.' Why? I don't know. He gets bored more easily than the rest of us. He's a difficult man, not easy to be friendly with. He's so funny because he never wanted to be liked. That gives him a certain fascinating, arrogant freedom."<ref>[[Richard Ouzounian]], "[https://web.archive.org/web/20070929171724/http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar%2FLayout%2FArticle_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1152963371205 Python still has legs]", ''Toronto Star'', 16 July 2006</ref> In 2012, Jones spoke on Cleese's work in the third series and subsequent departure, "He was good at it, when he did it he was professional, but he'd rather not have done it. The others all loved it, but he got more and more pissed off about having to come out and do filming, and the one that really swung it, in my view, was when we had to do the day on the Newhaven lifeboat."<ref>Gent, James."Exclusive: Terry Jones on life inside the Flying Circus". We Are Cult</ref>

The rest of the group carried on for one more "half" season before calling a halt to the programme in 1974. While the first three seasons contained 13 episodes each, the fourth ended after just six.<ref name="Season four">{{cite news |title=Monty Python's Flying Circus, Series 4 |url=http://www.montypython.com/tvshow_Monty%20Python's%20Flying%20Circus,%20Series%204/17 |access-date=25 July 2019 |website=Monty Python.com}}</ref> The name ''Monty Python's Flying Circus'' appears in the opening animation for season four, but in the end credits, the show is listed as simply ''Monty Python''.<ref name="Season four"/> Although Cleese left the show, he was credited as a writer for three of the six episodes, largely concentrated in the "Michael Ellis" episode, which had begun life as one of the many drafts of the "Holy Grail" motion picture.  When a new direction for "Grail" was decided upon, the subplot of Arthur and his knights wandering around a strange department store in modern times was lifted out and recycled as the aforementioned TV episode. Songwriter [[Neil Innes]] contributed to some sketches, including "Appeal on Behalf of Very Rich People".