NO NAUGHTY BITS Hampstead Theatre

Steve Thompson’s comedy is – nudge, nudge, wink, wink – fiction inspired by a true story. In 1975 Monty Python’s Flying Circus was to be broadcast for the first time in the US. Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam flew to New York to stop the ABC network cutting out all the sexual innuendos and, when ABC refused, they took them to court and, amazingly, and undeservedly, won. The script is never funny enough; a documentary, in a surreal Pythonesque manner, might have been a better idea. The scene which works best takes place in a courtroom over which Matthew Marsh’s judge so amusingly presides with his deadpan and droll humour.