WHEN was the last time a British sitcom made you consistently howl with laughter?
I’ll take a punt and guess it was at some point between the 1981 arrival of Only Fools And Horses and the end of The Thick Of It in 2012, after which landmark series the red pen of woke censorship began putting a cross through everything that was genuinely funny and replacing it with material that was deemed “acceptable”.
So ruthlessly destructive and efficient has this process been since then that I now watch new sitcom offerings like BBC1’s Black Ops and genuinely can’t tell if it’s a comedy or a drama.
A grim situation that isn’t about to change with BBC2’s Covid-inspired disaster Henpocalypse! which was named for the same sort of reasons its material could be described as “dildollocks”.
Overloaded with sex toys, a five-woman hen party has just started at a lonely cottage in North Wales when a global pandemic of crab measles wipes out every man on the planet, except the girls’ stripper Drew, who, for entirely understandable reasons, is threatening to cut off his own genitals by episode three.
Whether blokes have been killed off because creator Caroline Moran can’t actually write male characters or just hates our guts, no one can be 100 per cent sure, but I cannot deny it’s a smart career move on her part.
Steptoe And Son, The Likely Lads, Dad’s Army, Only Fools, Porridge and all the BBC’s greatest comedy treasures would now be dismissed, without so much as a cursory read through or a second thought to their timeless brilliance, on the grounds of being too male-dominated.
Yet perversely, it is regarded by the very same “diverse and inclusive” BBC as the height of progress to reverse those gender ratios and reduce men to bit-part gimps.
It’s an arrangement that, if I’m reasonably honest with myself, was never going to meet with my unqualified approval on Henpocalypse! or anywhere else, for that matter.
I’d have had a lot less room to moan though if it had a couple of serviceable sitcom characters and just one killer to fill the TV Gold section in these bleak summer months.
I trust then no spoiler alert is required before telling you
Henpocalypse! has neither of those two things. It’s dreadful in fact, and lacks even enough skill and subtlety to pace itself, which means after ten frantic minutes of knob-heavy blah, the apocalypse strikes and viewers are suddenly greeted by a graphic telling us it’s “Nine weeks later”.
Come this point, one of the women, Jen, is confined to bed with gangrene and a hammer, to beat her own brains out “when it gets too much”, while the other girls are left scavenging for food and swapping low-level smut which arrives from nowhere and also leads us nowhere, least of all to a punchline or plot.
“Gary’s coming, I can feel it in my fanny.” “There better be tampons in there, this moss is b*****ks.”
“Do you have any idea how much a hand-crafted pinata cock costs?”
I don’t, no, but by trying to shock the audience with this material I think I know what Caroline Moran’s up to here.
She’s trying to convince everyone, including herself, she’s going against the grain, keeping it real and socking it to the Establishment.
In reality of course, Henpocalypse! is entirely “on Guardian message”, to the point it has a dig at Jordan Peterson, and so terrified of breaking the new political rules, one of the characters can’t even claim the Welsh are “contrarians” who “never do what their English overlords say” without another hastily adding “Good on ’em”.
Comedy cannot begin to exist in such a frightened-of-giving-offence atmosphere, because, however hard you to try to write a British version of Bridesmaids, self-censorship means you’ll end up with a show that reminds me more of a 1975-77 BBC drama called Survivors, where another ramshackle bunch of desperados were also trying to survive in post-apocalypse Wales, but did at least produce the occasional wry laugh along the way.
None of this, of course, will stop all those woke enforcers from daytime TV and the broadsheets lying through their teeth when they tell you Henpocalypse! is “fantastic”, “joyful” and “hilarious” or the BBC from automatically giving it another run, obviously.
I should warn you though, this series gets progressively worse, and next week’s episode features a cameo by Danny Dyer.
Pass the hammer, Jen.
TIPPING Point, Ben Shephard: “Which Italian football team, based in Turin, is nicknamed ‘The Old Lady’?”
Nick: “AC Milan.”
The Weakest Link, Romesh Ranganathan: “The runner who held the women’s world record in the marathon for 16 years, until it was broken in 2019, is Paula who?”
Lawrence Chaney: “Paula Abdul.”
Romesh: “The Yangtze, Yellow and Mekong are major rivers that all flow through which continent?” Sherrie Hewson: “Egypt.”
And Romesh: “In science, due to its resemblance to a precious metal, the metal pyrite is commonly known by the alternative name Fool’s what?”
Arg: “Water.” (Rpt.)
BBC hypocrites lecturing us for months about “climate catastrophe” before suddenly flying Alex Scott to Australia, ’cos there just aren’t enough tedious pundits at the World Cup already.
ITV giving Holly Willoughby a huge pay rise at the exact moment viewers have turned on her.
The Last Leg doing Just Stop Oil’s PR instead of making us laugh.
The disgusting cancellation of comedy hero Graham Linehan.
And Celebrity MasterChef’s John Torode surveying a kitchen filled with the likes of the bloke from the Go Compare advert and drag act Cheryl Hole and explaining: “We want to strip them of their celebrity status.”
Yeah, knock yourself out, mate.
F you’re desperately searching the TV schedules for a laugh, please let me nudge you in the direction of ITV’s The Reunion.
It’s not a comedy, obviously, it’s a very serious and incredibly pretentious Anglo/French murder mystery which got everything gloriously wrong from the moment it cast 51-year-old Dervla Kirwan as the mother of Ioan Gruffudd, 49, who looks like he’d rather be willow-weaving at Center Parcs with his ex-wife than reading one more word of this script.
They also dropped a clanger with the casting of the victim, Vinca, who’s meant to be irresistible to men but spends the duration wearing a ridiculous ginger wig and is about as irresistible as the next Jimmy the Jock impersonator at a Russ Abbot convention.
Vinca’s played, incidentally, by the almost perfectly named Ivanna Sakhno.
The real icing on the cake with The Reunion though is a medical character called Fanny, who is so elusive poor Ioan’s constantly asking “Where’s Fanny?”
“Why aren’t you returning my calls, Fanny?” and “Could you help me find Doctor Fanny?”, who should get her own slot on the revamped This Morning.
Yet all this comes before episode four’s stunning development where everyone has to consider the serious possibility “Ahmed’s been smothered by Fanny”.
Are there holes in this case? Did rigor mortis set in before death? And will the undertaker ever be able to shut Ahmed’s coffin lid?
Stay tuned to The Reunion for all Fanny updates (tonight, ITV, 9pm).
Paul Merson: “Norwich couldn’t help but get in the play-offs. And they didn’t.”
Gareth Ainsworth: “I’m not going to single players out but Cook and Fox were brilliant.”
Jo Currie: “When the ball hit the bar the crowd gave a collective grasp.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
Pointless Celebrities: “My name’s Danny Clarke and I’m known for chatting about gardening on TV.”
Love Island: The Reunion, Maya Jama: “You’re so loveable, Whitney, and it’s surprising you don’t even know it.”
Life Stories: Ruby Wax, Kate Garraway: “I don’t think we can overstate how successful you’ve been and how funny you’ve been.”
Ooops. You just did, Kate.
GROW Another Foot, Adam Hills: “I don’t know how I became ‘Mr Rugby League’, but I’ll take it.
“I’ve put my comedy career on hold and not toured for about five years.”
Then I’ll take it as well.
SKY Atlantic’s Winning Time: The Rise Of The Lakers easily the best show on television.
Mission To Burnley, on Sky Documentaries, proving a cut above most football PR jobs.
Tyson Fury “gently” sending his kids to sleep with his freestyled version of The Three Little Pigs on Netflix’s At Home With The Furys: “So I hit him with a double jab, right and left hook.”
And the very next Celebrity MasterChef words spoken, by Gregg Wallace, after drag act Cheryl Hole said: “I’m praying to the positivity and life forces out there to look after me and let me go through.”
“The contestant leaving the competition is . . . Cheryl.”
Prayers answered.
NO idea who’s going to win C4’s survival show Alone, but in terms of sob story bingo, week one, the violins were playing for: Autism, heroin addiction, a single- parent home, mental health issues and a woman with a genetic bone-dislocating condition who said: “I’ve spent the last 24 years in a box”, which must’ve hurt like buggery.
Week two, however, we met Tom, who introduced himself by saying: “My parents separated when I was five, my mum had her own problems, I had to find depths of patience, I suffered from dyslexia, I was also the fattest kid in school and . . . ”
HOUSE! We have a winner.
During her most recent session with local sex pervert Theo, webcam girl Stacey, began by saying: “Tell you what, there’s a lovely bit of reduced lamb down the shops.”
Theo’s response began “Can I . . . ” but was then cut off by Stacey, who was too disgusted by the rest of the message to continue.
“So what did it say?
A) “Can I see your rack?”
B) “Can I try a shank in red wine sauce?”
C) “Can I interest you in a boned rump?”
Or the correct answer, D) Nothing. This is EastEnders. Fun isn’t allowed.
