TV Burp

This is one of the few jewels in the ITV schedule. Not known for doing anything other than a total banker this little gem popped onto ITV screens several years ago and has quickly become a weekly staple of people who are fans of all types of comedy.

The format of mostly, just Harry sitting and giving glib comments of the weeks T.V. showing the clips concerned is simple enough, but the delivery and timing makes the interaction between viewer and presenter into a 'conversation in the pub' arrangement. This appears effortless but must take huge preparation.

Harry Hill's ability to get a bizarre angle on something which passed everyone else by is key to the comedy.

Most of all it is truly funny family entertainment, and let's face it, family comedy is usually only funny for the younger generation.

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 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.

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.