Hale and Pace

This used to be on TV every year up until the late 90's. Some stuff had me in hysterics but the show grew gradually more stale with each season. Gareth Hale and Norman Pace are two names I remember well, and hopefully more people will get see their work (going from this being the first comment). A "Hale and Pace" best-of would make a great DVD, provided they included their edgier stuff.

Gareth Hale and Norman Pace rose to prominence through stage, radio and TV appearances in the 80s, mostly via their characterisation of The Two Rons; two east-end bouncers who took their jobs a bit too seriously and often referred to themselves as "the management". The Two Rons were extremely dimwitted, incredibly violent and screamingly funny characters who found great favour with the public. After C4 gave Hale and Pace a Christmas special in 86 and The Rons themselves a low key sitcom in 88, ITV saw fit to give Hale and Pace their own sketch show. The duo rewarded the channel's faith in them handsomely, winning the Golden Rose of Montreaux within a year and earning the channel solid ratings many a Sunday night for a decade.

Along with the Two Rons other characters the duo brought to life in their early years included the risqué children's presenters Billy and Johnny, bitchy fashion experts Jeffrey and Jeffrey, and burnt out hippies Jed and Dave, a cheerful and affectionately observed pair of characters whom Gareth Hale cited as his favourites. In later years Gareth and Norman adapted to a changing comedy climate shaped partly by Harry Enfield, Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson by adding a greater roster of recurring characters, the most enduring of which were brash but friendly cabbies Frank and Steve ("a large portion, yes!") and Curly and Nige, a pair of deliberately old fashioned comic characters redolent of comedy troupes like The Three Stooges, with a propensity for violence which gave Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson a run for their money.

Yet HALE & PACE is perhaps more notable for being possibly the last in a line of sketch shows modelled most closely after NOT THE NINE O'CLOCK NEWS, focusing less on repeated characters and more on one-off sketches and "quickies" based around whatever caught the actors and writers' fancies that week. Hale and Pace proved themselves willing to take on a variety of subjects, both as writers and performers. While they generally took the direct route to the funny-bone, Hale and Pace also occasionally proved themselves quite adept at pathos, with a parody of GOODBYE MR. CHIPS being particularly moving.

As another reviewer noted Hale and Pace also showed considerably musical talent in the series; whereas for many sketch shows the obligatory musical numbers often seemed a chore, on HALE & PACE they were often the highlight. Hale and Pace revealed themselves to be pretty good singers and songwriters, both in their parodies of artists like Chris Rea and R.E.M. and in their original compositions like "The Days of Black and White" (another fine example of their pathos).

Hale and Pace divided opinion from their first episode when they microwaved a cat, and frequently came in for criticism, particularly in their later series. Alexi Sayle and Victor Lewis Smith were among their most prominent critics. After their disastrous 1999 BBC game show, H&P@BBC, some people began to wonder if they had ever deserved their fame in the first place. Hale and Pace were far from perfect; a tendency towards laziness revealed itself fairly early on, and the in the last two series they did seem a little low on ideas. But while the criticism may have had merit, Hale and Pace were still two frequently hilarious, exceptionally talented performers, who had a natural chemistry which is perhaps unrivalled in recent UK comedy history. Indeed it is the sketches in which they played fictionalised versions of themselves sharing a London flat which perhaps stick out as the most enjoyable material.

Ultimately for many of us Hale and Pace often seemed to have a "direct line to our funny bone", and their sketches gave them a dedicated following not only in the UK, but all over the world, particularly in Czechoslovakia, Finland and Australia. Indeed, they proved more popular in the later country than their homeland, continuing to perform sell-out tours there. Best of all Australia released their complete TV series on DVD, well worth importing for all those enthusiastic enough. Overall, for all the bad sketches they may or may not have made, Hale and Pace made a unique contribution to British comedy that deserves to be treasured.

Along with Smith & Jones, Gareth Hale and Norman Pace made up the other popular British comedy duo to brighten our screens in the nineties. They spent less time on satirising the big issues and more on sexual innuendos and dirty jokes than S & J, with the kind of sniggering enthusiasm that has always been the English approach to toilet humour. Not surprisingly, their regular characters included two imbecilic teenagers with penchant for sadomasochistic pranks, and a pair of so-nice-you-just-wanna-puke children's show hosts who dropped outlandish double entendres with smiling innocence. They also had something of a gangster fetish, best realised in the two Rons, a pair of stone-faced cockney hoods in black tie who had a firm faith in the compatibility of electrodes and testicles. They shamelessly drew and played on the boorish, sexist and national chauvinistic mentality so loved by the British tabloid press and still too often prevalent when dealing with anything or anyone across the Channel, but never really succumbed to endorsing it without that tongue on the cheek. They always were a bit too clever and a bit too juvenile for that.

Interestingly, Hale & Pace also shone in the obligatory musical numbers that closed their shows, producing a few classics such as the Chris Rea parody "The Voice from Hell"; the Scottish rap duo McHammer (probably not a joke anymore); a country and western song about the singer's Dad, who was a Nazi transvestite, "a goose-stepping man of the night"; and one Godley&Creme-style video that took all the sloppy metaphors in the song's lyrics just a bit too literally. Often these are the most perfunctory parts of a sketch show, but they had enough hits to warrant the one all-music special that combined the best of their singing career.

There is of course only so many ways you can crack a joke about the French, premature ejaculation or the oafishness of anyone with a regional accent, and Hale & Pace eventually started to lose their potency. But their best skits still hold up today, smutty but clever, liberatingly funny in their incorrectness and their vigorously exploited stereotypes.

Gareth Hale and Norman Pace are one of the most consistently entertaining comedy duos to emerge from the UK. They're irreverent brand of school-yard humour was always well scripted, staged and executed and the two appeared to have a genuine mutual rapport, and thus supported one another with the razor-sharp precision required for sketch comedy. In particular, Hale's expressive, walrus-like features make him an instant comedy attraction, the perfect vice to Pace's straight guy routine. Impressively, they could also reverse the roles and still produce genuine laughs.

Some of my personal highlights are Gareth Hale's jaunt to Spain, where he becomes totally inebriated, insults his host country and is forcibly removed from a Tapas bar ("and let's not forget, the generous Spanish hospitality"), Billy & Johnny and their adult-themed children's show ("one two drip on my shoe, three four not anymore") and one of the many music satires concerning the perils of wearing red hair ("oh yes it's utterly, utterly rotten to be ginger"). Really, there were so many highlights, every episode contained a memorable moment.

In later seasons, looking noticeably older and more portly, the pair relied on recurring characters (the cab driver's with the cockney dialect) that became more the subject than the vehicle to project the humour. Some of these worked (the well-hard boys for instance chanting "always drink from a broken glass and crack walnuts between the cheeks of me Arsenal, Arsenal, come on you gunners Arsenal"), although the formula seemed to be missing more often. But the best of Hale & Pace from seasons 2-4 and the ubiquitous 'Christmas Specials', offer hours of side-splitting humour that rank among the best of British comedy. If you're accustomed to that type of sketch comedy, then you should relish Hale & Pace.

Coming out in an era when satire was king with the likes of Spitting Image and Ben Elton doing his laborious, but pointed stand-up. Hale & Pace like slasher horror films of the 1980s is a great example of something that was a critical failure, but a commercial success. Much maligned throughout it's incredibly long run; sometimes justifiably, often unfairly.

A common criticism was "two straight men"; an unwritten rule of comedy being a straight man and a clown a la: Morecambe & Wise and Laurel & Hardy. However, there are many successful comedy double acts with two jokers like Dick & Dom, Trevor & Simon and Vic & Bob. The criticisms of being vulgar are true and often the laughs would be based on someone saying a rude word or a vulgar punchline about bodily functions.

However amongst the throwaway sketches there are some sketches that are as good as anything on any other sketch show at the time: "Yorkshire Airlines", "Piss Off Mr. Chips", "Billy & Johnny" - two kid's TV presenters who hate each other. Weirdly, many comedians who criticised H&P pretty much did the same albeit in a slightly more clever way: Harry Enfield, Lee & Herring, Baddiel & Newman. The mantra being nob gags are OK if there is a literary reference in there.

Another thing people forget is just how good the performances of Hale & Pace are. Both having a gift at regional accents. Norman Pace is a surprisingly good singer, while Gareth Hale often bring a pathos to some of the sketches.

It may have gone for the cheap laugh or have been unecessarily violent and rude, but it represents a time when there was entertainment for the pre and post-pub audience. I will pick the worst of Hale & Pace over the best of Naked Attraction, which is the late night fare du jour.