The Basil Brush Show

Nice to see Basil Brush back on TV albeit in this slightly watered down fake sitcom for kids.

The character remains by and large the same and gets all the best lines but it's pure pantomime stuff really with kids probably being more entertained than their parents.

It does make a nice change from animated kids programmes like the dreaded Pokemon and the like but its just a shame the show couldn't be a little bit smarter and not speak down to kids so much. The human characters are all average and the less said about Basils relatives the better. It's like Scrappy Doo all over again.

It's pretty neat that this show exists at all. I like Basil himself a lot; the jokes are bad but that's part of the schtick and he manages to send up that persona of English Aristocracy but in a way that is oddly affectionate. He's a fox who dresses like a fox hunter; that's funny to me.

In a way, this show just feels very CBBC. But it is also its singular thing. You probably couldn't get a less pretentious show with its very candid fourth wall breaks and frequent self deprecation. If you ask me they abuse the amount of times you can excuse a blatant plot convenience by just saying "I didn't write this rubbish!" but it's no-brainer fun.

It began all fun and games but in the middle seasons, there came a certain malice in the writing. You know the sitcom writers that just think misery and everything going wrong is just automatically funny? Well there's more than a bit of that.

They outgrow it before the 5 season thankfully (more or less). I liked it when the show began with Basil telling a cheesey joke on the stage but the show makes many changes in its 5th season.

I respect that actors move on and kids grow up. I actually liked Lucy bringing some youth to the thing. It was those animated interludes that I found highly questionable. They were all a bit...kids menu if you know what I mean. For the 6th season they used a lot more visual humor in these but the new title sequence was cool.

Molly could be a supercillious little shrew when she wanted to be and yet I still felt a longing for her.

Dave as a character made sense when he was "Delboy Trotter for the teletubbies generation" in the sense he wasn't terrifically good at business and karmic retribution came back to bite him. Dave as the successful Oligarch just got old quick.

Liam was a reasonable replacement of the iconic Mr Steven.

Ella was nice but the show already had Molly as a straight-girl so I understand why Madison came in. The anti-american overtones irked me. What those guys ever do to you, Basil?

This kids sitcom is surprisingly good and funny. It's quite unique with its humour too, which I'll explain in a bit. It does decline throughout the seasons but overall it's a pretty good series.

There are so many fourth wall breaks in this show it's absurd, I have never seen anything like it. You're never more than 5 minutes away from the cameraman walking in front of the screen, or seeing shots of the set. It is pretty funny to see but sometimes can be irritating since this literally happens at least 5 times in an episode. No hyperbole at all. Basil also has an intense obsession with Barbados and is always going on about it.

The other characters are okay albeit not that memorable.

I would still give this an 8/10 because it's likeable and that sly fox is still funny like in the 70s version.

I watched this as a child and I really enjoyed how zany and unpredictable it was. The humour was hit-and-miss but all the characters were memorable and every episode was a wild ride.