Graham Chapman returns home for his fifth anniversary, to discover that wife Diana Quick is leaving him. He's dull. After driving around half of London, she stays at mutual friend Tony Sloane's home. Chapman gets drunk. The next morning, Miss Quick calls, and he decides to commit suicide, but can't figure out how. That's when odd jobs man David Jason knocks on the door. They decide that he'll kill him unexpectedly over the next few days. Then Miss Quick returns and he changes his mind. Jason, however, does an honest bit of work, even though he keeps killing the wrong person. He keeps trying to off Chapman, though.
Comedians trying to kill themselves dates back at least to Max Linder in LE PENDU. The idea of hiring someone to kill yourself and then changing your mind at least to Jules Verne in LES TRIBULATIONS D'UN CHINOIS EN CHINE, which was made into a movie by de Broca starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. So this has a long lineage.
What will surprise people is that Chapman, despite his Monty Python roots, is not particularly funny. He is, as Miss Quick notes, dull, and his reactions to the situations are bizarre rather than funny. He is the center around which the comic characters circle, especially Jason, but also cops Edward Hardwicke, and an assemblage of mobsters hired to protect him from his would-be assassin. Still, there are plenty of things to laugh at in this black comedy.
Comedians trying to kill themselves dates back at least to Max Linder in LE PENDU. The idea of hiring someone to kill yourself and then changing your mind at least to Jules Verne in LES TRIBULATIONS D'UN CHINOIS EN CHINE, which was made into a movie by de Broca starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. So this has a long lineage.
What will surprise people is that Chapman, despite his Monty Python roots, is not particularly funny. He is, as Miss Quick notes, dull, and his reactions to the situations are bizarre rather than funny. He is the center around which the comic characters circle, especially Jason, but also cops Edward Hardwicke, and an assemblage of mobsters hired to protect him from his would-be assassin. Still, there are plenty of things to laugh at in this black comedy.