Harry Enfield’s Television Programme

1 9 9 0 – 1 9 9 2 (UK)
16 x 30 minute episodes

After a celebrated stint on Saturday Live, comedian Harry Enfield gained his own BBC2 show which introduced a gallery of new comic caricatures (usually performed in cooperation with Paul Whitehouse or Kathy Burke).

Favourite characters included: Upper-class Tim Nice-But-Dim (pictured); the Old Gits; wide-boys Lee and Lance; Wayne and Waynetta Slob (and their baby daughter, Spudulika); Mr. “You don’t want to do that”; The Scousers; and Mr Chondmondley-Warner and Mr Greyson, whose 1940’s-style documentary presentations were later translated into a series of advertisements for a telephone company.

Though Enfield’s performances were highly controlled, the satire was barely restrained, and his spoof DJ’s Mike Smash and Dave Nice – fave rave: You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet by Bachman Turner Overdrive – demolished any lingering credibility of an entire generation of ageing Radio 1 presenters.

Unwilling to preserve characters beyond a short screen life (the aforementioned ‘poptabulous’ DJs (pictured) went to TV heaven in a “tip-top, tippety-top” 1992 special, Smashey & Nicey – The End of an Era), Enfield was obliged to invent new ones at a prodigious rate.

Harry Enfield & Chums (1994 – 1997) was effectively Harry Enfield’s Television Programme under a new title and transferred to BBC1, and saw the birth of the Self-Righteous Brothers, Kevin the Teenager, Tory Boy, Lovely Wobbly Randy Old Ladies, and Considerably Richer Than You, amongst others.

More uneven in quality than the original series, …& Chums also suffered in comparison with the rapid-fire pace of The Fast Show from (ironically enough) Enfield’s own ‘chum’, Paul Whitehouse.

Harry Enfield
Paul Whitehouse
Kathy Burke