Harry Enfield’s Brand Spanking New Television Programme

• Monday nights at 10pm (rpt Thurs, 10.30pm)

I’ve liked Harry Enfield since I first saw the first series of “…Television Programme”and watched him reach his peak with mates Paul Whitehouse and Kathy Burke.There was never anything truly amazing about him – I’d hardly consider him a comic genius.

He’s merely a man who has a slightly above-average ability to “do accents”and exaggerate certain aspects of stereotypes into “characters”. The closesthe’s come to anything inspired was his Kevin The Teenager character, whilethe rest are fairly 2-Dimensional and obvious targets: The Slobs (thick,disgusting), Tim Nice-But-Dim (thick), The Old Gits (nasty), etc, etc.

But it was always good for a chuckle, and could actually be very amusing andoccassionally “laugh-out-loud humour”. TV worth watching, basically.

But… how things change. In Sky One’s new series, Enfield has totally lostthe plot. Without comedy partner Burke and Whitehouse to back him up, thingsalready sounded shaky… but the promise of a more “adult” approach to thecomedy given its non-BBC production, pasted over that.

Sadly, the verdict is that his “Brand Spanking New Show” is brand spankinglyawful. Truly terrible. I’ve never seen a sketch show with practically NOfunny moments… until last night.

Enfield’s spurned ALL of his past characters, and instead of giving usworthy replacements, he’s simply cobbled together the naffest bunch of 2-Dreject ideas ever known. I actually remember Sky running a competition forviewers to suggest new characters for Enfield to do — and it seems he’sbasically used all of them! No disrespect to the public out there, but the”characters” he masqueraded as in his show were the kind of thing kids wouldmake up… and then realise they’re a bad idea.

Not so with Enfield. Didn’t he realise that every character was unfunny, thedialog was laden, the sketches had no rhythm, and that the catchphrases werecringe-makingly bad?

I’m sure he does realise, and no doubt people will mockingly say he’slaughing all the way to the bank. If so, he’s an idiot. This show will ruinhis career (if enough people get to see it) and perhaps cements the factthat Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson were the real talent behind hisprevious shows.

I could go through every sketch and rip it apart. Even sadder was theblindingly obvious fact that some sketches were merely included because theywere a bit “naughty” and “rude”. But even more unfunny than the othersketches because of this.

And since when does he have to do bad impressions? His David Beckham (whichgave away the fact Sky have been sitting on this project for aaaages, givenhis out-dated hairstyle) was pathetic… as was his Jeremy Paxman.

Enfield’s not an impressionist. He’s just like a lot of people in the worldwho can “do accents”. I thought he had a writing talent, but that wascompletely missing from this show.

An utter waste. And you know you have a bad programme when the makers decideto put a “bloopers” tape over the end-credits (see L.A 7, too). The idea isto leave the viewer smiling and happy so that they marginally forget the 28minutes of shit beforehand.

Not gonna work Sky. This show was memorably BAD.