![]() Still looking fit and full of energy, Hill discusses his art, which is supplemented with excellent clips from shows going back to the 1950s. Produced by the BBC and Thames Television in 1991, the 52-minute, 4:3 documentary is a gem, following Hill, in the last year of his life, around England and France, from glamorous tributes to the local dry cleaner. A technicians' strike in late-1969 all but zapped the color out of British television for several months (many other series were affected, including the first season of Upstairs, Downstairs) and the three black and white Hill shows included here haven't been seen anywhere since their original run.Īs with most of A&E's British imports, the set is pricey ($49.95) but, typical of that studio's releases, the transfer is faultless and the shows are handsomely packaged.Īdding enormously to the appeal of this set is the inclusion of an excellent documentary, Benny Hill: The World's Favorite Clown. ![]() What's more, the set includes three episodes filmed entirely in black and white. ![]() These are the complete shows, not time-compressed, running about 50 minutes apiece, in a form unseen in the United States. And while Hill's Puckish leering became his trademark, his unending pursuit of long-legged blondes was but one facet of this multi-talented comedian.Ī&E is wise to bring Benny Hill's comedy in undiluted form as Benny Hill Complete and Unadulterated: The Naughty, Dirty Years, a boxed set of the first 11 one-hour shows from Hill's Thames Television series, which began airing in 1969. Indeed, while Hill may be guilty of objectifying beautiful women, jokes are always at the expense of the silly, hot-blooded men pursuing them, never the women themselves. think they're the only ones being sent up. As actor and Benny Hill fan Michael Caine says, "Everything serious is sent-up. Is Hill's comedy as crude, juvenile, and sexist as feminist groups would have you believe? You bet. In these politically-correct times, Hill's brand of unapologetic lewdness was suddenly deemed distasteful and, in the greatest of ironies, for a time the British comedian seemed to be everywhere except in Britain. (The fact that many local stations unwittingly ran these shows with their occasional nudity intact didn't hurt, in those pre-VCR/pre-cable days.) Benny-mania soon spread to all corners of the globe, but ironically Hill's long run on British television was nearing its end. Benny Hill became something of a phenomenon in the late-1970s, from the moment old reruns of his show began airing on late-night American TV. To say the show proved popular would be an understatement. Although Benny Hill (1924-1992) had been a staple of British television since the 1950s, he remained practically unknown outside of the United Kingdom until someone at Thames Television got the bright idea of syndicating cut-down, 30-minute versions of The Benny Hill Show in the United States.
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