Terry Jones (1942–2020), founding member of the Monty Python team

Terry Jones  was a founding member of the Monty Python comedy team, who brought absurd humor to the world with their “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” TV sketch show and several movies. Jones directed those films — “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” “Monty Python’s Life of Brian,” and “Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life.” He appeared in them too, as well as in non-Python films including “Jabberwocky” and “L.A. Story.” It was Jones who was responsible for a key piece of the tone of “Flying Circus,” the show’s tendency to skip punchlines to sketches in favor of ending abruptly or wandering dreamily to a new story in a stream-of-consciousness way. Jones was also a medieval historian and an author of children’s books.