The Benny Hill Show

I must be the only woman in America who loves this show! Most other women I talk to say they can't stand the sexism of the show. However, I never believed that Mr. Hill was being vicious towards the women whom he made the butt (pardon the pun) of many jokes. It also helped that Mr. Hill looked like a schoolboy who had been caught doing something naughty. Some of the best sketches were the parodies of TV shows, commercials and movies. The songs were surprisingly well done, too.

The Benny Hill Show was very funny British comedy series, that they made in 1969-1989.20 years is a long time for a comedy show.Benny Hill's humor was hilarious.There were many sketches in the show that made you laugh.And there usually was some singing with the Hill's Angels.The Benny Hill Show had many great characters beside Benny himself, like that old man, who Jackie Wright played.Too bad Benny Hill is gone, but his comedy lives on.

I remember watching The Benny Hill show during the Seventies on London channel Thames TV, which also produced the show from their studios at Teddington Lock in west London. I remember just how popular this show was in England and as i found out later, the whole world. This man was a comedy genius ranked by many with the all time greats such as Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, Lloyd. In France he is revered as a comedy auteur. His shows viewing figures were always in the top ten in the UK right up to his shows cancellation in 1989. Around the same time comedy in Britain was undergoing a revolution. The old-school traditional end-of-pier type of comedy that had become a mainstay in UK television (Are You Being Served) was now considered to be politically incorrect. In it's place came a new "style" of writing more influenced by correct non sexist/racist humour. This change was headlined by such shows as The Comic Strip Presents,The Young Ones,Friday night Live and a whole host of other programing that had first had exposure with the launch of channel 4 in 1982. By the late 80s Thames television were facing a barrage of anti Benny Hill sentiment driven by the UK press that was totally contradicted by his viewing figures that showed only a small decline in viewers. Thames decided to bite the political bullet and cancelled his show in 1989. Benny Hill was to experience the wilderness of change and he never worked again. Former members of the Hills Angels visited him on a regular basis, but a depression had started to eat away at him. He died on April 18, 1992.

Now in 2005 TV comedy in the UK is split into two halves. The commercial channels such as Channels 4 & 5 show predominantly US imports such as Friends, Joey etc. While the BBC still stick to homegrown comedy such as Little Britain, The Smoking Room, which are the direct descendants of the "Alternative Comedy" that changed British TV in the 1980s. The problem now is is that it's hard to find anything that can give you a real belly laugh because todays comedy is too obsessed with patting itself on the back in self congratulation at how smart it is.

Ladies and Gentlemen - The Benny Hill Show. You don't need much to be funny - just some jokes that are funny. Benny Hill is just like that. He makes it all look so easy, but is impossible to imitate because he's simply be the funniest man ever to have lived on Earth. Basically Benny has only few jokes that he repeats and makes it all again with little variation. That doesn't mean that he repeats himself, because he rather guarantees a good laugh when the audience exactly knows what is going to happen. And when it happens, they laugh.

The archetype jokes are a mistake, accidental insult and the chase. In a mistake Benny thinks something is something that really isn't it. For example something is heavier than it appears or Benny takes man for a woman. Accidental insult happens when Benny does something that causes harm for someone. For example he touches woman's breast when he's looking for some similar object. The chase is a cliché, but you'll always wait for it. You'll know the chase will soon be on, when the funny 'chase tune' starts to play.

The Show is however much more fun than my diagnosis of it. Go and see it!

I've laughed and enjoyed the Benny Hill shows ever since i was very young, and still do. Benny Hill is one of the comedians who are really able to be funny, without contrived situations and one-liners. And he manages to throw in some more serious acting too. There is a certain feeling of quality, of true artistry to every moment of the show which most of his followers lack. Many of the jokes are seen as off-color today and would probably never be aired if the show was new, a sign that things are changing in the other direction. Catch it now before it is forever buried and condemned by the politically correct!