| The Benny Hill Show | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Sketch comedy |
| Written by | Benny Hill |
| Starring | Benny Hill |
| Theme music composer | Boots Randolph James Q. "Spider" Rich |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Language(s) | English |
| Production | |
| Camera setup | Multi-camera |
| Running time | 45-60 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Thames Television |
| Broadcast | |
| Picture format | Black-and-white Colour 4:3 |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original run | 20 August 1951 – 01 May 1989[1] |
The Benny Hill Show is a British comedy television show starring Benny Hill.
There were various incarnations of the show between 1951 and 1991, and it aired in over 140 countries. The show is generally sketch-based with heavy use of slapstick, mime, parody and double-entendre. Thames Television cancelled production of the show in 1989, due to declining world wide sales and large production costs at £450,000 per show.
Contents |
The Benny Hill Show features Benny Hill in various short comedy sketches. The show also features occasional extravagant musical performances by artists of the time. Hill appears in many different costumes and portrays a vast array of characters. Slapstick, [burlesque] and double entendres are his hallmark. A group of critics accused the show of sexism, but Hill said that female characters kept their dignity while the men chasing them were portrayed as buffoons.
The show often uses undercranking and sight gags to create what he called "live animation" and he employs techniques like mime and parody. The show typically closes with a speeded-up chase scene involving himself and often a crew of scantily-clad women, a takeoff on the stereotypical Keystone Kops chase scenes. Hill also composed and sang patter songs and often entertained his audience with lengthy high-speed double-entendre rhymes and songs, which he recited or sang in a single take.
Hill also used the television camera to create comedic illusions. For example, in a murder mystery farce entitled "Murder on the Oregon Express" from 1976 (a parody of Murder on the Orient Express), Hill used editing, camera angles, and impersonations to depict a Quinn Martin–like TV "mystery" featuring Hill in the roles of 1970s American television detectives Ironside, McCloud, Kojak, Cannon and Hercule Poirot.
During his television career, Hill performed impersonations or parodies of American celebrities, such as W. C. Fields, Orson Welles (renamed "Orson Buggy"), Kenny Rogers, Marlon Brando and Raymond Burr and fictional characters, ranging from The Six Million Dollar Man and Starsky and Hutch to The A-Team and Cagney & Lacey. He also impersonated international celebrities including Nana Mouskouri. His own country's celebrities did not escape his comedic eye either: Hill delivered impersonations of British stars such as Shirley Bassey, Michael Caine (in his Alfie role), newscasters Reginald Bosanquet, Alan Whicker and Cliff Michelmore, pop-music show hosts Jimmy Savile and Tony Blackburn, musician Roger Whittaker, his former 1960s record producer Tony Hatch, political figures Lord Boothby and Denis Healey, and Irish comedian Dave Allen. On a few occasions, he even impersonated his former straight man, Nicholas Parsons. A spoof of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? saw him playing both Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.
The show's theme tune, "Yakety Sax", which has gained a particular cult following on its own, was written by James Q. "Spider" Rich and performed by Boots Randolph. The show's musical director was noted pianist and easy listening conductor Ronnie Aldrich, and vocal backing was provided by session singers, the Ladybirds, (who also frequently appeared on camera from 1969–74). For three episodes of the 1973–74 season, Albert Elms filled in for Aldrich as musical director.
Apart from the theme tune, another signature of the show was the enthusiastic announcer intro: "Yes! It's The Benny Hill Show!" (The announcer was often cast member McGee.) From 1975 onwards, Hill was also introduced at the start of each show as "The Lad Himself". The show closed with Hill's salute: "Thank you for being with us, and we look forward to seeing you all again — very, very soon. Until then, bye bye."
The main supporting cast includes Henry McGee, Jon Jon Keefe, Nicholas Parsons, Bob Todd and Jackie Wright.
The regular sexpot type females include Jenny Lee-Wright, Sue Bond, Bettine Le Beau, Lesley Goldie, Cherri Gilham, Diana Darvey and Hill's Angels Louise English, Jane Leeves and Sue Upton. Angels who only appear once include Susan Clark and Sue McIntosh.
Character actresses include Anna Dawson, Bella Emberg, Rita Webb and Patricia Hayes.
In the 1980s, as the climate of political correctness continued to grow, Eddington and Wilcox refused to allow the respective editions in which they appeared to ever be shown on British television again.
Hill also gave the first major exposure to several Spanish groups, including Luis Alberto del Paraná and Los Paraguayos on his show. With few exceptions, most of the musical numbers did not make it to the U.S. syndicated series.
In the late 1970s, Thames Television purchased a week's transmission time on two stations owned by RKO General which were offering a "Thames Week" schedule and were in the two largest American television markets; New York City's WOR-TV and KHJ-TV in Los Angeles. This introduced the show to American audiences and was immediately popular; subsequent screenings involved a series of re-edited half-hour programmes culled from the ITV specials. Due to heavy editing, the U.S. versions of his show have far less risqué material than those aired in the UK.
The show was awarded the 'Special Prize of the City of Montreux' at the Rose d'Or festival in 1984. Selected sketches from the first four years (1969–72) of the Thames run were also edited into a feature film, The Best of Benny Hill (1974).
Hill in 1977 produced a special in Australia (see below) whose contents found their way into scattered episodes of the U.S. half-hour syndicated edits. The cast of that Australian show included Barry Otto and Ron Shand.
In June 1989, Thames Television's Head of Light Entertainment since March 1988, John Howard Davies, invited Hill in for a meeting. Having just returned from a triumphant Cannes TV festival Hill assumed that they were to discuss details of a new series. Instead John Howard Davies sacked Hill. In an episode about Hill transmitted as part of the documentary series Living Famously, John Howard Davies, the former head of entertainment at Thames Television who had cancelled the show, stated there were three reasons why he did so: "...the audiences were going down, the programme was costing a vast amount of money, and he (Hill) was looking a little tired."
At its peak in 1979, a repeat went to Number One in the ratings. In 1989 the last Thames episode attracted 9.58 million viewers.
The Benny Hill Show aired in one-hour portions (not corresponding to the original hour-long format), twice nightly on BBC America from October 2004 to April 2007, restoring much of the mature content not seen in previous American airings (as such, most airings had a rating of TV-MA). Half-hour edits also appeared on ITV.
As of February 2010, the show is being broadcast on Australia's 7Two. The show has also been aired in India on UTV, dubbed in various Indian languages.
Antenna TV, a network created for digital subchannels in the United States, started showing the show Friday and Saturday nights in three hour blocks on January 1, 2011.
In 2004, the Thames specials were released uncut (except for ad-break bumpers) on Region 1 DVD sets for the U.S., by A&E Home Video, entitled Benny Hill: Complete And Unadulterated. Each set represents multiple years of the show in order of original airings, with Benny Hill Trivia Challenges, a booklet and extras. All 58 episodes of the Thames years were showcased in the collection.
In 2005, the Thames specials began to appear uncut (including the original ad-break bumpers) on Region 2 DVD sets, each representing one year and entitled The Benny Hill Annual. To date, the Benny Hill Annuals 1969–89 have been released on DVD by Network. Two box sets were released of the 1969-79 Annuals and 1980-89 Annuals, with a set containing all the Annuals "double bundled up together" scheduled for 2011. Also in 2005, Warner Home Video released a collection of the surviving episodes Hill did for the BBC (roughly half of them exist) on Region 1 DVD as Benny Hill: The Lost Years.