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Playing the Fool

Benny Hill will always be the bastard stepchild of British sketch comedy. In a realm where The Goon Show and Monty Python's Flying Circus remain on pedestals, Hill is the bad boy looking up the skirts and down the blouses of passing ladies. His was a style born of vaudeville, a broad burlesque focused on breasts and butts.

Most audiences outside Britain base their concept of Hill on the syndicated series that bore his name. Starting in 1979 and running well past his death in 1992, these half-hour condensations of his hour-long Benny Hill Show showcased the mischievous bits (the scantily clad dancers, the double entendres and sexual situations) and left out Hill's most mainstream moments, his daft impersonations and spoofs of current affairs.

A&E is now trying to remedy this situation by releasing box sets another Benny Hill Show, created for rival English television house Thames (who lured him away from the BBC in the late '60s to serves its flagship). Benny Hill: The Naughty Early Years - Complete and Unadulterated is now in its third volume, covering the years 1975 to '77. While the skits here feature some of the comedian's signature inventiveness, they also reveal the beginning of the end. After nearly two decades on the air, Hill was getting tired... and so was his material.

It's surprising how much mileage Hill got out of scatology, sexism, and the sophomoric. At the same time, Volume Three includes long-form lampooning (the rather accomplished Tennessee Williams' spoof "The Long, Dry Summer") and timely parodies (the marvelous looks at Kojak and Starsky and Hutch, here called "Husky and Starch"). The Benny Hill Show also used continuing characters, none more well received than the stubby scamp "Fred Scuttle." Circular glasses poised upon his piggish nose, pants hitched up high above the waist, and hand to head in an odd open wave salute, this everyman as know-it-all allowed the comedian to comment on aspects of society that interested him. Volume Three offers the wiseass discussing everything from the programming on Thames TV, to England's bid to join the space race (Fred has his homemade rocket ready to go). Hill occasionally donned a dopey red fright wig and short pants to play a kind of universal shmoe (of various names) who always got his comeuppance.

Joining Hill was an exceptional cast of character actors who often upstaged him by playing "straight." Though Henry McGee looked inane when he tried to match Hill joke for joke, as a reporter haranguing Hill, his timing was perfect. The loveable lummox Bob Todd brought welcome earthiness to Hill's flights of fancy; his Cockney slang and sketchy (lack of) teeth stand out in first few episodes of this box set. But the one indispensable member of the company was little Jackie Wright. A wee Irishman Hill called the "the funniest man" ever, Wright was the recipient of those now classic rapid slaps, hilarious rat-a-tat-tats on the top of his head.

We might rethink Hill's humor in two ways. One, he provides a beer-and-sausage version of Monty Python's classier social commentary: Hill's humor was obvious, not obtuse. His shows appear as scandalous today as those created by Cleese and the gang, but Hill's satire is less pointed and more puerile. Or two, we might see Hill as the comic actor he considered himself, following the great silent stars. The sole significant DVD bonus offered on Volume Three -- a silent film Hill made in 1970 called Eddie in August -- demonstrates his emulation of Chaplin and Keaton. Hill adored the concept of humor without words, and it was the foundation for his most famous bit, the "Yakety Sax"-style fast motion chase where the comedian played the fox to the rest of the company's clamoring hounds.

Incorporating his love of music -- many sketches in Volume Three revolve around Hill's silly songs -- and occasional nods to the variety format, Hill strove to fashion complete entertainment. And he would do almost anything to achieve those aims. The show delights in some decidedly non-PC gags (blackface, ethnic slurring of Asians and broad stereotypes of American Southerners) and when working his prose and/or poetry presentations, Hill could be very creative. It was words, not wantonness, that turned Hill on.

Yet it's to the risqué we return when calculating Hill's legacy. His cherubic cheeriness, his need to connect with his audience, is all but forgotten in his current designation as a "dirty old man." Hill's only wish was to give his fans some fun.