Hi-de-Hi!

1981

Seasons & Episodes

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6.7| 0h30m| en| More Info
Released: 19 February 1981 Ended
Producted By:
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00v119d
Synopsis

Hi-de-Hi! is a British sitcom set in Maplins, a fictional holiday camp, during 1959 and 1960, and was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft, who also wrote Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum amongst others. It aired on the BBC from 1980 to 1988. The series revolved around the lives of the camp's management and entertainers, most of them struggling actors or has-beens. The inspiration was the experience of writers Perry and Croft: after being demobilised from the army, Perry was a Redcoat at Butlin's, Pwllheli during the holiday season. The series gained large audiences and won a BAFTA as Best Comedy Series in 1984. In 2004, it came 40th in Britain's Best Sitcom and in a 2008 poll on Channel 4, 'Hi-de-Hi!" was voted the 35th most popular comedy catchphrase.

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Reviews

CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!
Console best movie i've ever seen.
BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
Honda Seller I liked this series. I love British humour.This show is completely silly but hilarious.I knew of a number of the main actors from another series called You Rang M'Lord which is funny too but sadly, youtube only has a few episodes there.I watched the entire Hi de Hi series on youtube which was great.I noticed the writing started to get old in the last few seasons with a lot of repetitive themes. It went especially downhill in the last season which is common with TV series.I was so disappointed that they didn't write a better and more creative ending. Instead, they wrapped it up in a rather hum drum and nonsensical manner.I think a better and more logical happy ending would have been for the rich man who led the camp to somehow have his family take him back into the fold, in spite of his marriage, because they needed him to come and run their farm and amusement park.That way his wife (the Welsh woman who was the best yellow coat around) could have helped run things and the majority of the rest of the staff could have all been given jobs there. This would have been a much better and a very happy and settled ending rather than the half hazard one they wrote.That's my two cents.
TheDreadedNat For me, this programme epitomises everything that was wrong with the BBC in the 1980s. I'm astonished to find that it rates so highly (7.0), although the mere 300 or so ratings it has garnered clearly reflect that only hardcore fans have bothered visiting this page (can't remember exactly how it was that I ended up here). My parents used to watch this tripe (back then we only had the 3 channels to choose from) and I always considered it an especially cruel and unusual form of torture. Despite consisting of only 6 or 7 episodes per series, due to the BBCs seemingly endless cycle of repeats, it seemed to hardly ever be off the air.To give credit where it's due, many of the actors did a reasonable job; the best they could with such appalling, repetitive material. It is to their discredit, however, that only Simon Cadell had the good sense to get out after they won their BAFTA (how on earth did that happen?), having already seen every joke recycled about 25 times over the course of 5 series. The depths to which it plummeted over the remaining 4 series are probably the main reason David Croft had to create 2 more TV series to provide much-needed employment for the 'stars' of this awful show (by this time, we had satellite TV so no-one was forced to suffer through these the way my generation was forced to suffer through the likes of Hi-de-Hi and 'Allo 'Allo).Hi-de-Hi is typical Croft/Perry fare, in that all the characters are severely dated stereotypes, taking part in poorly-conceived and executed farces that could easily have been written by a drunk comprehensive school drama teacher. I didn't think the 1st series was funny when I was 7 years old and I could barely believe they were still making them when I was 15. Amazing, really, that the BBC saw fit to screen this rubbish alongside such gems as The Young Ones (1982) and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981). Its 'popularity' (among a largely captive audience) is testament to the fact that, by the cynical use of 'canned laughter', it is possible to convince my parents' generation that practically anything is funny.
welshNick This is a classic example of what happens when a sit com is on TV for far far too long. Everything gets tired and the jokes start getting repeated over and over again. OK, from the start, the first couple of series were quite good. You had an Entertainment Manager (Simon Cadel) being pursued by his deputy played by Ruth Madoc, a cleaning lady wanting to become a yellow coat, an alcoholic child-hating Punch and Judy man, a bent Jockey, and a stand up comedian. As said earlier, it started well but went on way too long. Once Simon Cadel left it went downhill fast, you were getting dire story lines, and a new entertainments manager who Ruth Madoc (again) threw herself at. When a comedy is all filmed in one place there is a limit to the number of jokes that can be cracked. Unfortunately this went on so long every joke was cracked 3 or 4 times over. If this comedy had been stopped after 2 series it would have gone down as an all time classic. As it is, it will be largely remembered for the dreadful last few series.
richard.fuller1 A variation of this was said by John Cleese in one of his earliest, if not his first, appearance on an American sitcom, Cheers, on which Cleese was Dr. Simon Finch-Royce, a colleague of Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammar).In the episode "Simon Says", Cleese told Sam Malone (Ted Danson) and Diane Chambers (Shelly Long) that they weren't suited for one another, so Diane kept dragging Sam after Cleese, to his hotel, insisting he rethink his conclusion, until finally, Cleese, a la Basil Fawlty, would scream out his hotel window "Listen up, World, the perfect couple has finally been achieved, so you can stop trying!!" I thought of this line as I watched the twelve episode set of "Hi De Hi" available to America. A slight alteration to the quote, the perfect sight gag, the perfect physical comedy joke.For those wanting to know, "Hi De Hi" was a show that, unlike Mr. Bean, Doctor Who, Fawlty Towers, Hyacinth Bucket, Are You Being Served, Jeremy Brett, Helen Mirren and numerous others, never reached American public television."Hi De Hi" was also about a subject that America knows virtually nothing about; these late 1950s vacation resorts in the UK that were a colossal failure, it seems.At best at this time in America, we had the summer camp for kids, such as what might be seen in Disney's "The Parent Trap" or Bill Murray's 1980s comedy "Meatballs".The show, however, was a huge success and ran for eight years, dealing with the staff who ran the resort and tried in vain to keep the campers amused.Definitely two of the standouts were Spike (Jeffrey Holland), who was the stooge who would be thrown in the pool for jokes, often in a different costume which we would unfortunately never see again (and most of the time, we didn't see him go in the drink) and Peggy (Su Pollard) definitely a centerpiece as a cleaning woman who wants to be one of the entertainers. She will do anything to be part of the show. She almost drowns when she wears a shark costume to Spike's drag costume of the damsel in distress.That Spike and Peggy take their respective indignities with a smile is what makes it difficult to be amused by other characters such as a grouchy puppeteer or disapproving snobby ballroom dance instructors.So in the episode "The Day of Reckoning" this time Spike must wear the legendary horse costume. But such a costume requires a second person. Once again, it is Peggy who volunteers to be the horse's posterior."Could be my big break!" she says.They are taken (in costume) by the horse trainer to retrieve a real horse that has been delivered. The trainer panics when the delivery man recognizes him and flees, leaving Spike holding the real horse's reins.The duo decide to head back with the horse and what do they do? They do what anyone else would do who has a journey to make with a horse. They ride it.In the costume. Truly the ultimate sight gag of the costumed horse perched upon a real horse.Hence, the John Cleese quote from "Cheers": Hear that, world, you can stop trying because perfection has already been achieved. Now the most juvenile of minds might say it looks like a sexual encounter, but that is for the viewer to decide.To me, it looked exactly like what it was; two people in a horse costume riding a real horse.That the Marx Brothers or Lucille Ball or Laurel & Hardy or Carol Burnett never did this very joke is beyond me.The only way to top it that I can deduce is two people in an elephant costume on the horse, or two people in the cow costume on the horse, or two people in an elephant costume on an elephant.But the blueprint was here on Hi De Hi.

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