glenn-aylett
Hi de Hi sent up a popular British institution from the fifties and sixties, the holiday camp ,a relatively cheap seaside holiday where campers stayed in chalets, ate in canteens and enjoyed entertainment of varying quality. Written by the former Redcoat Jimmy Perry, Hi de Hi sent up these regimented holidays that were popular before foreign holidays and caravan camps became more affordable. ( I stayed in a later version of a holiday camp in 1985, based around a caravan park, and it had distinctly Hi de Hi attractions, beauty contests, kids singing, entertainment provided by an elderly comic whose routine was stuck in the fifties).Also this was the era when Hi de Hi was at the peak of its popularity, when 16 million viewers would tune in to watch the goings on at a fictitious holiday camp in 1959. OK it does look a bit cheap and dated now, mostly being filmed in a studio and the jokes could get a bit repetitive, but on the whole Hi de Hi was good fun, particularly the ones with Simon Cadell as the entertainments manager, Geoffrey Fairbrother, an upper class academic who was seriously out of his depth. In one episode he introduces classical music recitals, which go down like a lead balloon, and is constantly being thwarted by the camp comedian, the devious and scheming, Ted Bovis, played brilliantly by the late Paul Shane. Also Fairbrother is lusted after by the sex starved chief Yellowcoat, Gladys Pugh, a Welsh woman who speaks with an exaggerated accent and whose attempts to seduce Fairbrother fail with hilarious results.Indeed watching the re runs on BBC Two recently, after years of being absent from the television, made me appreciate the earthy charms of Hi de Hi, a sitcom hated by the trendies at the time, but very popular with millions of viewers who loved the innuendo, memories of holiday camps and simple humour. Also what made it more watchable were the misfits and has beens who worked at the camp such as Barry and Yvonne, the ballroom dancing champions no one had heard of, the disqualified jockey Fred Quilley, Peggy the cleaner who dreams of being a Yellowcoat, and an alcoholic Punch and Judy man who hates children. As ever from Perry and Croft, a strong ensemble sitcom that is still well remembered today and with a cracking rock and roll theme tune.
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.
