And now for something completely different, and marvelously fascinating. Even the theme song is a scream—with bawdy new lyrics for every chapter, as the singer gets more fed up with singing their praises) in IFC’s essential six-part documentary on the zany lads of Monty Python's Flying Circus. (Monty Python: Almost the Truth: The Lawyer's Cut airs Sunday through Friday, 9/8c, on the Independent Film Channel.)

In separate illuminating interviews, peppered generously with timelessly silly bits from their influential TV sketches and movies, the surviving Python members speak frankly and mostly fondly of their 40-year history in the trenches of subversive satire. (The late Graham Chapman is seen in archival interviews.)

Almost the Truth (The Lawyer’s Cut) is a serious history of sublime nonsense, packaged with classic Python-esque irreverence. The opening episode, about the sextet’s bourgeois backgrounds during the revolutionary ’60s, is titled “The Not So Interesting Beginnings,” followed by “The Much Funnier Second Episode,” and so on. Twisted touches like these beautifully illustrate how eagerly Monty Python upended BBC (and, later, PBS) conventions, commenting on their own acerbic absurdity while reaching out to a new generation delighted to see sacred cows roasted by men often decked out in dowdy drag.

As they describe their chaotic creative process—so what if a sketch didn’t have an ending, they could always insert a surreal animated gag—distinct personalities emerge: John Cleese as the aloof “face of Python,” dogged Terry Jones as “the bowels of Python” (Eric Idle's colorful phrase), Michael Palin as the nice guy, Idle as the most business-savvy and Terry Gilliam as the combative visionary from the States. Chapman’s battle with alcoholism is addressed in depth.

The Pythons grew apart as they grew older, but like their loyal fans, they’re always eventually drawn back to each other and to their shared legacy of inspired maverick lunacy. It still feels fresh, 40 years later.

They were a riot on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon Wednesday night, taking the show and host willing hostages as they babbled in unison, threw water on each other and basically broke all the rules, as they’ve been doing for decades. It was a splendid curtain raiser for the circus of delights in Almost the Truth. Don’t miss it.

Also this weekend, BBC America delivers one of the boldest movies for TV all year in Occupation (Sunday, 8/7c). Having delivered the summer’s most unforgettable and terrifying fantasy in Torchwood: Children of Earth, BBCA now goes to the other extreme of tragically gritty realism in Occupation, which tells the story of three British soldiers’ unsuccessful attempt to leave the savage wartime culture of Iraq behind them.

James Nesbitt (Jekyll) is especially compelling as an accidental public hero who risks marriage and family when he falls for an Iraqi doctor whose profession puts her in danger in sectarian Basra. Two of his hometown buddies—one (Stephen Graham) an unapologetic profiteer, the other (Warren Brown) an altruistic idealist—becomes mercenaries, or “risk management operatives,” and return to the war zone for their own purposes.

As they each soon learn, “There is no right in this country. It’s just wrong and wronger.” Occupation builds to a shattering conclusion in which no one escapes unscathed, least of all the riveted viewer.