Let's. Get. Muntered.

Now, it's been an odd time for Paul Whitehouse. After several really nice projects during the last ten years, and with the superb-but-under-appreciated show 'Help' seemingly in limbo following Chris Langham's troubles, Whitehouse re-teamed, unexpectedly (hence the title, "Ruddy Hell, It's Harry and Paul"), with Harry Enfield. Enfield himself had been out of the spotlight for a long time, and had morphed in the public's perceptions since seeing Whitehouse emerge from his shadow to reveal himself to be perhaps more of the basis of the success story that Enfield had dominated when they worked together a decade or so back.

Now, returning with a young man's game, a new sketch show shown earlier this year on BBC One, was seen as something of a lazy option. They get a hard time from a certain amount of the public and certainly from the critics more so. It's easy to hide really sophisticated approaches to comedy in really dumb guises (Little Britain), and it's easy to get away with nice make-up (French and Saunders), but there's something here that's both of things and still managed to be enough to both split the critics and keep enough people relatively happy. In here then, a whole host of characters, most interesting not necessarily for the quality of the sketches overall results - they often come across as a series of semi-improvised periods of time later split into sketch-length segments and inter-cut with other such pieces - but for the way in which the characters are observed, portrayed and dealing with interesting ideas and social happenings.

Sure, if you're not in the U.K, this might not entirely come across, but I dare say there's always a certain amount of universality in here to be found... after all, this would be viewable all over europe, and the BBC does rely on reselling shows which a pedigree to other countries beyond this continent, it seems.

"Ruddy Hell, It's Harry and Paul" Review at Off The Telly, Review at The Guardian.
Character Overviews and other information at Wikipedia.

Pre-Order "Ruddy Hell, It's Harry and Paul" (Series One) at Amazon.co.uk, for release on R2 UK DVD November 12th 2007.