Posted on 05/23/2006 10:11:50 AM PDT by pissant
May 23, 2006 - At one point Benny Hill was planet Earth's most popular comedian. At its peak, The Benny Hill Show was broadcast in over one hundred different countries. Borrowing a page from the big book of restaurant advertisement, one hundred different country-sized customers can't be wrong. And they're not. Hill is hilarious.
On a side note, the somewhat puzzling thing about this globe-spanning fact is the language barrier. Many of Hill's sketches focus on puns and play on words in the English language ("I'm not against naked women... not as often as I'd like to be.") - I have no idea if the stuff would translate properly. I assume that for the international broadcasts the language gags were cut out and only the fast-paced physical comedy was kept.
In many ways that is Hill's greatest strength: he was very funny on two levels. He could please audiences of both brows, low and high. While not everyone may get a chuckle out of Hill's opening songs ("One day when he was high he saw a sign that said 'Drink Canada Dry' and the damn fool went up and tried it."), but nobody, and I mean nobody, can resist a short bald man with ice-cream cones stuck to his head. Benny makes the most of his seventy-year-old whipping-boy, that's for sure.
The ten shows on this set are more or less the same, in terms of format, as those found on previous A&E releases. Each episode runs for approximately fifty minutes, begins with a song (always with Benny surrounded by young, writhing women), and ends with the classic "Benny Hill song" chase.
Making their debut in these episodes were the Hill's Angels; a group of Benny's female costars who knew how to move around in leotards like nobody's business. In an attempt to capture some of the success of Hot Gossip, a similarly scantily-clad British group, Hill and his new producer Dennis Kirkland used these women to titillate a good chunk of the world's male population.
Taking a close look at this set you'll notice that it contains all of the episodes produced between 1978 and 1981; there's only ten of them. Yes, as is common of British television, not many episodes were produced - in 1979 he only made two shows - but in this case it was on purpose. Rather than risk weakening his comedy in an effort to turn out as many shows as possible, Hill chose to take his time until he was satisfied.
It's here that we come to the show's weakness (which also happens to be its strength): it's written by just one person, Benny Hill. A sole authorship of a television series can give a program a wonderful cohesiveness, but it also limits the range of the material.
For example, in the episodes found on this set Hill introduces a new character: Gaston Le Clerc, a young Parisian child that speaks with a heavy French accent. The joke is the fact that the man interviewing him always interprets the kid's sayings in the wrong way. The kid will say, "I see a lot of pretty ladies sitting on the grass and I can see their pink knickers... " the interviewer will raise an eyebrow and the kid will clarify, "I can see they are a pink knickers because they are having a pink-nick. " It's funny, but the gag is identical to the one used with the Chow Mein character.
It must be very difficult to come up with wholly new material for a show when only one person is writing it. Considering that by the '80s Hill had been writing for television for over two decades, it's not surprising that after you watch a number of episodes back-to-back you pick up on the recycled jokes.
That being said, there is still enough new and clever material to keep you from stifling a yawn. One particularly clever gag was the idea that the characters in a bunch of television sets could interact with one another. Hill's character looks "up" to the TV above him and notices the Hill's Angels dancing around, so he blows upwards in order to cause their skirts to flutter. Nowadays such gags don't seem too revolutionary, but at the time Hill was on the forefront of playing with the capabilities of the television medium (using split-screen, running footage backwards, etc.,)
You'll get the most enjoyment out of this set if you're a long-time Benny Hill fan or if you watch the episodes at a leisurely pace. There's a lot of great stuff here, but it does tend to grow stale after a while. Then again, that complaint holds for modern-day sketch shows as well. While the episodes on this set don't sizzle with the wit and energy they had during the '70s, they still remind you that puns, women in their underwear, and chase sequences, set to that classic music, are always funny.
That may very well be. Speaking of disagreeable, where the hell has Jeeves been?
Never even heard of him until I joined the Navy and they played his shows on ship through AFTV. I loved his humor though it was hard to understand him sometimes with his heavy accent, and the occasional use of British only words and phrases I didn't always understand. But then there was the universal language "scantly clad Babes" which he always had on his show, and when you were out at sea for a several months his show was often better than a letter from home.
Benny Hill: better than a USO show. LOL
Typing up a lot of disagreeable replies...then restraining myself and not actually posting them.
Like Bob Dole, I have grown. ;)
I'll probably get these Benny Hill DVD's, after I finish watching "Angel", "Battlestar Galactica", and "Into the West". Yes, I'm way behind...
Yackety Sax!
The growing crowd of people chasing Benny to that tune never fails to bring a smile to my face. Then again, Hill's Angels were darn good at that too... ;-)
LOL. You are the picture of Maturity......no, wait, this IS a Benny Hill thread, nevermind.
My 10 year old daughter LOVES Benny Hill reruns. Most are edited to be family safe, or the joke is too far over their head to 'get'. She thinks he's funny with his puns and walks around saying one about a birdy pooping on his head.
Carson almost out-deadpanned Jack Webb.
How could you not like a film with Burl Ives and Roy Clark?
I've never seen a completely family safe version of Benny Hill. LOL
I'm surprised they don't run old Johnny Carson reruns on one of the multitude of stations out there now.
Neither have I. Nor would I ever want to.
That's kinda the point of watching. ;o)
I have no idea what PAL and NTSC are, but I assume it's the size of the picture.
I really must object...the Stooges is not just a man thing..I have loved the Three Stooges since I was a small girl...and will still watch them today, now that I am becoming an old lady...I think the Stooges are hilarious, and they make me laugh right out loud...
And Benny Hill is just great...I love him, as did my old mom..
Many of us ladies out here, appreciate the same humor as our men do...
I must appologize. You are, however, one of a kind.
Any man would be lucky to know a woman of culture, refinement and class like yourself!
Ah, I thank you...
Now here is my little Benny Hill story, that I have told a number of times, but nonetheless, I shall post it again...
When my brother died, on the day of the funeral, the limo, was coming to the house to pick up my mom and dad, and me and my family...when it pulled up, the limo driver got out...I had been posted at the window, so when the limo pulled up, I called my mom who came to the window...all of a sudden, she screamed, that 'Little Jackie', was the limo driver...well, of course, we figured, that mom, in her grief, had gone berserk...but when I opened the front door, for the limo driver, danged if he wasnt the spitting image of little Jackie Wright...just as short, just as ugly, just as bald, and just as toothless...
We have often laughed about this, many years later...the fact a little Jackie look a like was driving the limo for my brothers funeral, added a much needed note of levity on such a serious matter...
I think I may have caught that episode as well. I was hooked.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.