For an uncaught exception, Python by default prints a stack trace, the exception itself, and terminates. Is anybody aware of a way to tailor this behaviour on the program level
You are looking for sys.excepthook:
sys.excepthook(type, value, traceback)
This function prints out a given traceback and exception to sys.stderr.
When an exception is raised and uncaught, the interpreter calls sys.excepthook with three arguments, the exception class, exception instance, and a traceback object. In an interactive session this happens just before control is returned to the prompt; in a Python program this happens just before the program exits. The handling of such top-level exceptions can be customized by assigning another three-argument function to sys.excepthook.