In the sketch, an interviewer (Terry Jones) and linkman (Michael Palin) for a fictional programme called The World Around Us, investigate the phenomenon of "men [who] want to be mice".

The programme bears a striking similarity to an episode of Panorama;[1] even its theme tune, the fourth movement of Rachmaninoff's Symphony No.

"[3] The "programme" features undercover footage of a "mouse party", where Cleese explains that "there's a big clock in the middle of the room, and about 12:50 you climb up it and then... eventually, it strikes one and you all run down".

[5] The way of life explored in "The Mouse Problem" is an obvious parody of the secretive lives and social condemnation of gay men in the 1960s, and the sketch itself mimics the film and interview techniques used in serious television documentary exposés on the subject,[1][6][7] but also makes reference to transvestism, recreational drug use, orgies and other behaviour considered "deviant" by the standards of the late 1960s.

[8] Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune notes its similarity to a real 1967 documentary, CBS Reports: The Homosexuals.