If there was a Mount Rushmore of comedy, you’d need two of them: one for the Marx Brothers and one for “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” </p><p>No matter how faded the film stock, or how crinkly-faced and gray-haired the stars, the body of work these ensembles produced never gets old. </p><p>With a silly walk here, a dead parrot there and, of course, a hefty helping of Spam, the Pythons did nothing less than reinvent sketch comedy. Just as remarkably, they took a peculiarly British form of absurdist humor and made it hugely popular on both sides of the Atlantic. </p><p>Like so many in my generation, I’ve been watching “Monty Python” most of my life. It started with late-night reruns of “Flying Circus” on my PBS station and led to the comedy records and the movies (for some reason, the first one I saw was “Jabberwocky,” their gawdawful follow-up to “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”). </p><p>I did not memorize entire films line by line and then re-enact scenes with my friends. But I had friends who did, and I’m guessing they all forked over money to see “Spamalot” and video compilations that were issued to mark the original BBC series’ 20th … then 30th … and now 40th anniversaries.</p><p>Beginning Sunday is the latest in what seems like an endless stream of repackagings. “Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer’s Cut),” a thoroughly enjoyable new docu-series on IFC, comes when the group is trying to raise up yet another generation of fans.</p><p>Somewhere along the way I should’ve gotten sick of watching the surviving five (Graham Chapman died in 1989) taking the gravy train around the track time after time. And yet it’s hard to stay mad when “Monty Python” is on TV. I had to close the door while watching my DVD screener of “Almost the Truth,” so loud was I hooting at clips from their 40-year-old series, 30-year-old movies and their now quarter-century-old concert film, “Live at the Hollywood Bowl.” </p><p>The documentary, co-produced by IFC and British reality-TV giant Eagle Rock, is a straightforward retelling of the franchise’s history, from its formative years to the present day. The surviving five all participated, and Chapman is well represented by his partner David Sherlock as well as footage of interviews Chapman gave in 1980. The group’s bosomy sidekick, Carol Cleveland, also chimes in, as do a bevy of Anglo-American admirers from Steve Coogan and Eddie Izzard to Jimmy Fallon and Seth Green.</p><p>The first hour covers the pre-“Monty Python” years, when John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Chapman cut their teeth on mainstream British comedy (eventually they wound up writing for “The Frost Report,” a comedy show hosted by David Frost, who clearly deserves an assist in assembling the country’s most famous comedy troupe).</p><p>In particular, they were influenced by “The Goon Show,” Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Spike Milligan and their cheeky sendups on the country’s stuffy upper crust. That would prove a rich source of material for “Monty Python,” though the show’s genius was the physical comedy that made its parochial attacks on the British establishment play just as well across the pond. </p><p>And of course, there were the fantastic animations of the group’s one American, Terry Gilliam. Somehow he wound up in London and in the offices of a BBC executive who, after minimal interrogation, gave a 13-episode order to six young men who’d never worked as a team before, on the understanding that they’d go off and make something funny.</p><p>“It sort of fell on the table,” Idle says in the film. “And it worked.” Still does.