The Comedy Vaults: BBC2's Hidden Treasure

As part of the 50th celebrations for BBC2 this programme delved deep into the vaults of the BBC and unearthed rare archive footage and never seen before pilot comedies.

I use the phrase 'never seen before pilots' loosely as the Ronnie Barker series 7 of 1 has been broadcast on the satellite channel GOLD. However I am not surprised Madness's sitcom never managed to get to a full series as it was badly acted and badly written even though the writers turned out to be Ben Elton and Richard Curtis. Also it was beguiling to see the Miranda pilot and she really did have a bad hair day.

However the engaging aspect was the rare footage some of it recently recovered such as Alan Bennett and Spike Milligan being his usual surreal self. We saw early appearances from Sacha Baron Cohen, Mitchell & Webb and Harry Hill. However the appearances from American comedians like Bill Hicks, Dennis Leary seemed to be from Paramount City which I am sure was broadcast on BBC1 in the early 1990s.

However I did enjoy the programme because of the rare footage some of it unseen for decades. I never knew Kenny Everett did a sketch show on BBC2 in the early 1970s.

This kind of program has its pleasures - of looking at comedy gold from the past, while understanding how and why some pilots failed to make it into six-part series. An example of the latter is a Madness pilot from the mid-Eighties written by Ben Elton and Richard Curtis, that proved beyond doubt that Suggs, although a competent singer, was no actor.

Some of the material was more familiar than perhaps the program liked to suggest - Ronnie Barker's SEVEN OF ONE was repeated on the BBC, while the pilot for QI eventually turned into a long-running series. Rik Mayall's Kevin Turvey turned up in several specials; it was nice to see this once more, proving beyond doubt that beneath the madcap exterior the late comedian was also a fine actor. From the Sixties we were treated to clips of Alan Bennett doing a humorous monologue (with the immortal acronym NORWICH - (K)nickers Off Ready When I Come Home, as well as examples of Spike Milligan's anarchic humor that formed the cornerstone of the Q series.

Inevitably there are some clips that will prove funnier to individual viewers than others, but the program as a whole gave a good survey of the range of cutting-edge comedy that the channel has provided in the past, and continues to offer to this day.