Monty Python’s Flying Circus (also known as Flying Circus or during the final series just Monty Python) is a BBC sketch comedy programme from the Monty Python comedy team, and the group's initial claim to fame.

The show was noted for its surreality, risqué or innuendo-laden humour, sight gags, and sketches without punchlines. It also featured the iconic animations of Terry Gilliam, which were often sequenced or merged with live action.

The first episode was recorded on 7 September and broadcast on 5 October 1969 on BBC One, with 45 episodes airing over four seasons, plus 2 episodes for German TV.

The show often targeted the idiosyncrasies of British life (especially professionals) and was at times politically charged. The members of Monty Python were highly educated (Terry Jones and Michael Palin are Oxford graduates; while Eric Idle, John Cleese and Graham Chapman are Cambridge graduates; and American-born member Terry Gilliam is an Occidental College graduate), with their comedy often pointedly intellectual by way of numerous references to philosophers and literary figures.

It followed and elaborated upon the style used by Spike Milligan in his series Q5, rather than the traditional sketch show format. The team intended their humour to be impossible to categorise, and succeeded so completely that the adjective "Pythonesque" had to be invented to define it, and later, similar material. Despite this, Jones once commented that the fact that they had created a new word in the dictionary shows how miserably they had failed.

The Pythons played the majority of the series characters themselves, including the majority of the female characters, but occasionally they required an extra actor. Regular supporting cast members included Carol Cleveland (referred to by the team as the unoffical "Seventh Python"), Connie Booth (Cleese's then-Wife), Series Director Ian MacNaughton, Neil Innes (in the fourth series) and The Fred Tomlinson Singers (for musical numbers).

The series' famous theme song is the first segment of John Philip Sousa's Liberty Bell, chosen because it was in the public domain, free to use without charge.

The title Monty Python's Flying Circus was partly the result of the group's reputation at the BBC. Michael Mills, BBC's Head of Comedy, wanted their name to include the word circus because the BBC referred to the six members wandering around the building as a "circus" (in particular "Baron Von Took's Flying Circus" after Barry Took, who had brought them to the BBC).

The group added flying to make it sound less like an actual circus and more like something from World War I. Monty Python was added because they claimed it sounded like a really bad theatrical agent, the sort of person who would have brought them together.