Benny Hill and his big British TV comeback
The smutty sketch show is returning to our screens after freeview channel That’s TV bought rights to the episodes. Can it stand the test of time? Three writers of different generations give it their verdict
MICHAEL HOGAN, 51
Benny Hill was a big deal in my hometown – and not just because he was the foremost TV funnyman of his day. I grew up in the Suffolk port of Felixstowe, where Hill had a disabled friend in a care home which he often visited. I was aware of his celebrity status before I actually saw his show, because people whispered, nudged and tried not to stare (unsuccessfully) whenever he was spotted around town.
When I finally watched my first episode in the mid-seventies, I found it hard to reconcile the shy, sheepish man who pushed a wheelchair along the seafront with the larger-than-life figure on our teak Grundig TV screen.
The Benny Hill Show was huge, attracting 21million viewers at its 1971 peak – the same year that Hill scored a Christmas number one with Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West). He was a bona fide pop cultural phenomenon – a status easier to earn back then. There was not much else to watch.
To my schoolboy eyes, it didn’t seem terribly different to other sketch comedies of the era – the likes of Dick Emery and The Two Ronnies. The humour was hit and miss but those sped-up chase scenes set to Yakety Sax were always knockabout fun, like a scantily clad Keystone Cops. My father and grandad would chortle merrily. My mother and grandma would tut or roll their eyes.
I knew there were gags I wasn’t getting, double entendres which flew over my bowl-cutted head. It was the slapstick, wordplay and silliness that tickled me. The Benny Hill Show was set in a heightened, cartoonish world – like a children’s programme but with adult humour, meaning it felt thrillingly transgressive. It was also associated with being allowed to stay up late on a school night, which was a large part of the appeal.
Looking back, it was often racist, with frequent use of blackface, but mainly absurdly sexist. “Of its time”, as the euphemism goes. It was like Page Three, Carry On or the saucy seaside postcards sold by the gift shops along Felixstowe prom. Women were implausibly curvy, often wearing nurse’s uniforms. Their clothes had a habit of falling off. Men were leering, lecherous and hapless. The joke was usually on them.
Will I be tuning in to its Christmas comeback? Possibly when my own children are safely tucked up in bed.
And only then to marvel at what once passed for primetime entertainment. I’d rather remember him as the devoted friend pushing a wheelchair. If, like me, you’d never heard of Benny Hill, let me offer a trigger warning: coming into his “comedy” cold is quite the experience. Did people in this country seriously watch this, in their millions? The first episode I found, The Oddball Club Cabaret (1985), had a straightforward premise: to the backdrop of a tinkly theme tune, men encounter a series of situations where they are portrayed as ill-fated fools – mostly at the expense of glamorous women in skimpy swimwear – before the set transforms into a burlesquestyle cabaret. In another, The Loser (1981), Benny plays an unlucky man who fails at a series of jobs, before finding a treasure chest that solves his woes.
The unsolicited touching, ogling and sexism are obviously abhorrent – although the gender dynamics are not far off some of those found in pop culture today. I was reminded of Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines music video,
The only explanation for how this was such a hit is that there were only three TV channels
where a naked Emily Ratajkowski danced around him (Thicke later admitted he had “wanted to make a Benny Hill-type video, something fun”).
Still, I’m doubtful that the smutty, voyeuristic skits of Benny Hill can capture a new generation.
I could hardly watch the scene where Benny, clad in a postman outfit, prods a woman’s chest to the backdrop of a “honk” sound. As for the returning theme of the senile nagging wife vs the desirable younger girl – it has not aged well.
Those who grew up with the show will no doubt have fond memories of watching it. I’m aware the humour is considered to be of its time. But the only explanation I can reach for how this show was such a hit is that back then there were only three TV channels.