In Series 3, episode 2 (1972), Monty Python's Flying Circus used the play as the basis for the weight loss product informercial, Trim-Jeans Theater:
Priest: I am here. No traitor to the King.
First Knight: Absolve all those you have excommunicated.
Second Knight: Resign those powers you have arrogated.
Third Knight: Renew the obedience you have violated.
Fourth Knight: Lose inches off your hips, thighs, buttocks and abdomen.
In 1982, the play was lampooned by the Canadian/US TV comedy show SCTV. In a typically surreal SCTV sketch, the play is presented by NASA and "Buzz Aldrin's Mercury III Players," with space-suited astronauts as the actors, and proceedings narrated by Walter Cronkite as if they were a NASA Moon mission. "[Spacesuit transmission from astronaut] Mission control ... I think we've found a body." The mission is aborted when the doors of the cathedral will not open, and not even Becket's Extra-vehicular activity can open them.
