TV Burp

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.

For four years Harry Hill has been consistently funny making fun of TV and re-editing things to look different. A hero in my eyes, as in the last year i've started doing the same, but no one can do it as well with the best deadpan, well almost, and quick witted comic timing around. His innovative views of TV shows and little sections of them, like this week when dot from eastenders steps out in front of a taxi, and he edits it with footage taken in which he hits a doll mildly resembling the same person, making it so funny and unexpected that it'll make you laugh for half the episode, but by then you'd have seen thousands of other jokes in similar vein or better, so you'll be laughing for a week, which is when the next episode was on.

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.

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.

Great news - Harry Hill's has finally begun another 13-episode series! He kindly watches all the soaps, 'reality' TV and dramas so we don't have to watch them ourselves to find out how bad they are. Hopefully his prime-time slot will win him some more fans, so we can see him on the box more often. I miss the Harry Hill Show a lot, but this comes very close and is a much better use of his talents than "You've Been Framed." This show is a beacon among all the Saturday 'entertainment' that has clearly run of ideas in recent years. It is also one of the few real comedies that ITV produce, although they have a few coming up that make me cringe just from the trailers. How much you enjoy TV burp will depend almost entirely on how much you like Harry's sense of humour as it can be an acquired taste, but if you are a fan you should find this show priceless.

The quality of the show is somewhat dependant on what has been on television in the UK in the week running up to the show, but his delivery and the fact he is very imaginative in the way he uses the clips can usually overcome any shortcomings in the material. He is also good at spotting things happening in the background or noticing parallels between shows. An example of this is where he showed two car crashes - one from US drama CSI with high production values where a car smashes into a restaurant at high speed, people, tables and glass flying everywhere - and the other from soap Emmerdale where a car ploughs into a haystack at about 5 miles an hour. However there are too many examples to give a real flavour here and besides the jokes just aren't the same without his trademark deadpan delivery.

A good deal more original than other clip shows which usually focus on television advertisements or 'bizarre' foreign television programmes. This feels fresher because it is so topical in comparison. Besides which all the advertisement shows end up using the same old clips eventually, whereas TV Burp gets new ones every week.