TV Burp

I'm rather sad that tomorrow (27th November, 2004) is the end of the current series of Harry Hill's TV Burp. Now, I can't call myself a great fan of Harry Hill, but I classify his comedy as a bit hit and miss.

In this show, he takes moments from TV shows (in Britain) and makes fun of them. For instance, Hill might say, 'Let's see the man who chews his coffee.' an then we'd see a clip of a man from some soap opera taking a sip of coffee and then chewing away as if he was eating rock cakes!

On the other hand, some things don't appeal to me. But I do find TV Burp a great Saturday tea time thing. It ranks quite highly on my list of current comedy, and if you are a fan of Harry Hill or TV bloopers style things, you will enjoy this unique blend of humour.

Once a rich source of popular television comedy, I.T.V. seems to have thrown in the towel. The jewel in its crown in recent years has been 'Harry Hill's T.V. Burp' in which the eccentrically attired Mr.Hill pokes fun at the week's television. He would not be the first person to do this; the B.B.C.'s 'Saturday Night Clive' had Clive James up to the same kind of mischief in the early '90's.

Harry Hill is the nearest we have right now to a Spike Milligan or a Kenny Everett in that he also uses surrealism as the basis for his humour. Of course he is helped by the sad fact that British television in the Noughties is a bad joke, and thus a perfect target for comedy. Try watching a soap opera with the sound off ( the grimaces and leers of the cast are hilarious ) and you'll see what I mean! Quiz shows and documentaries also come in for similar ribbing.

One of my favourite moments was when Harry did 'If...British television continues to get worse' in which he led an assault force against the television studios where much of the pap we have to endure is made. There's an unmistakable anger lurking behind the gags. Rather than get mad, Harry has decided to get even. He has fashioned a good show simply by laughing at the bad ones.

I was pretty fond of this at the time. I think a large part of the humour depended on your knowledge of UK Soaps, especially ITV ones. Like a lot of Harry Hill's stuff this was (largely) family friendly, slightly surreal and very silly. The TV series had a large team of talented writers including Stand-up comedians John Moloney and Chris Addison and David Quantick (who provided additional material for Brass Eye, On The Hour, Spitting Image). I think largely what killed it off was the tight deadlines (if I remember rightly this was broadcast weekly) and the fact the writers would need to sift through hours of TV to find a 20 second funny clip. For something like Emmerdale you are looking at 2 hours worth footage a week, now imagine that across multiple channels, then there's issues of licensing the clips, getting special guests etc. Frankly it must have been the equivalent of pointing your house to work on. All that said I got some big laughs out of most episodes and thought it was good twist on the overused clips show format.

For anyone curious the compilation TV Burp Gold DVDs are a good place to start and very cheap often costing less than £1 each. But be warned some it is a bit dated given they are referencing TV and pop culture from nearly 10 years ago.

Harry Hill came back in a great series in which he takes a funny and surreal look at the past week's TV. Just one image from Casualty or one scene in Emmerdale can be a comedy gem. It does seem he's making fun of certain people's acting and the scripts but everyone notices that about TV dramas. It will make you laugh out loud, something an ITV show doesn't usually make you do but ITV is getting better at comedy now with Hardware, Ant and Dec and Harry. So watch it, it's a great show.

Each week Harry Hill comes to our screens to pick over the bones of the week in popular television. Looking mainly at the soaps, the popular dramas and various specials Harry looks for the more unusual touches that may have been overlooked by the casual viewer. Of course many reviewers will recognise this as the same technique used by people like Jasper Carrot and Chris Tarrant who do the same for adverts and television clips from around the world, so how is this better or cleverer?

Well, simply it comes down to your opinion of Harry Hill. Personally I think the guy is hilarious and his unique sense of humour is what makes this programme work. He rarely goes for the easy gag and he is genuinely imaginative with even the basic sight gags he does in regards things in the TV shows. Whereas Chris Tarrant's clips generally don't require much delivery, Harry Hill's jokes are more about his delivery and imagination than about the actual content of the clip and is never just 'oh look how funny other cultures are'. It does depend how much you like Hill of course but I find his unique sense of craziness to be a blessed addition to Saturday night line-ups that are normally full of derivative stuff that lack imagination.

One problem with it is that fans of Hill might not appreciate the fact that his humour has been watered down for a primetime audience. Certainly the heavy use of clips means that about a third of the 25 minute running time is taken up by the TV clips and this is not as good as Hill's other shows where he had the full running time, lots of characters and all sorts of craziness going on. But this is the price we pay for a primetime and we can just hope that he will get another show later in the evening to do what he does best and, until then, I'll be going to see him live in 2005.

Overall this is a very funny show that is lifted out of its ponderous unoriginal premise and made something much more inventive and off the wall than the usual Saturday night servings would allow us and, if he manages to get a wider audience for his fuller shows and crazy sense of humour then that can only be a good thing.