Thursday, 15 September 2016
493 Hi-De-Hi
First viewed : Summer 1981
Hi-De-Hi was one of the big hits of 1981 although we didn't start watching it until the beginning of the repeat run on a Saturday evening.
It was the third hit comedy series from Jimmy Perry and David Croft and like the previous two was based on the real-life experiences of Perry who was a Butlins Redcoat after the war. The series was set in the late fifties /early sixties hey-day of the holiday camp , well and truly gone by the beginning of the eighties. The make do and mend tawdriness of the set-up gave plenty of opportunities for slapstick comedy but there was also a strong vein of pathos running through it from empty-headed cleaner Peggy's fervent ambition to be a Yellowcoat to ballroom dancers Barry and Yvonne's boundless resentment at their loss of status which they usually took out on each other.
The series began with the appointment of shy, gauche, public school-educated Jeffrey Fairbrother ( Simon Cadell ) to entertainment manager. He had to contend with fending off the attentions of the ghastly chief Yellowcoat Gladys ( Ruth Madoc ) and the sly subversion of camp comic Ted Bovis ( Paul Shane ) who wanted his job. Ted had a naive young apprentice Spike ( Jeffrey Holland ) whom he mentored, their relationship being very similar to Fletcher and Godber in Porridge .
As usual with Perry and Croft there was a strong ensemble cast and a pro-rata distribution of lines so that the most junior member was lucky to get a word. In this the Private Sponge character was the third Yellowcoat girl who seemed to change each season. My favourite was Val in the second season who was played by Gail Harrison. She actually had a decent c.v. behind her, having had a good part in David Copperfield and a recurring role in Emmerdale Farm as Henry Wilks' daughter, so it's hard to understand why she took such an unrewarding role in the first place.
The star of the show was undoubtedly Shane, a mate of Les Dawson and the epitome of the tragicomic Northern club comedian. He held all the big showpiece scenes together and his comic timing was invaluable as the scripts were not always up to scratch. Of the four main Perry / Croft productions , I'd say Hi-De-Hi was the least well-written.
I never loved the series and really struggled to get past Su Pollard whom I find near-unbearable and I don't think I watched it much past the first two series. I only watched one or two episodes at the most after Cadell left - a big blow - in 1984. The series carried on, pepping itself up with new regular characters , until 1988.
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