A modern version of restoration comedy? Double entendre,objectification,fearful men and rakes manqué in the television work of Benny Hill

Introduction

Visiting Australia in 1974, British comedian Benny Hill gave an interview to Sydney radio host Bob Rogers. The Benny Hill Show (BBC 1955-1968, Thames 1969-1989; hereafter TBHS) was then popular in Britain and had become a successful Thames Television export to Australia. It had not yet arrived in America, where its enthusiastic reception in 1979 launched Hill into global stardom. And while portions of its often-bawdy humour would be socially unacceptable today, it had not (by the standards of its time) yet begun to include material that UK critics in the 1980s and after would deride as sexist and misogynist, and which would dilute the show’s comedy and affect its reputation and Hill’s career.

The show was then ribald enough, however, for Rogers, while discussing its ‘roguish’ humour, to ask Hill: ‘Would it be true to say it’s a sort of modern version of Restoration comedy?’ Hill replied:

I don’t know much about Restoration comedy, no. Somebody said I’m the present-day Max Miller. Do you remember Max Miller? … He was a great comic. He was a super comic … But he was roguish … He never went too far. … In fact, he would just walk onto the stage and look at the audience, and the women would scream [with laughter] (Rogers, 1974).

If his influences and later audiences were international, Hill’s comedy was closely identified with his home country. Writer John Mortimer once described Hill’s television work as ‘very traditional English humour. It’s a sort of seaside postcard, end-of-the pier [type]. It’s very visual, which is why it’s really popular all the world over, and it’s very silly…’ (quoted in Omnibus ). When assessing the ‘very traditional English’ portions of Hill’s humour, Rogers’ interview question in 1974 seems astute. Hill, in answering, denied having direct knowledge of Restoration comedy but acknowledged an influence – Miller – whose stage persona suggested that genre’s libertinism and use of double entendre. A Thames executive in the same year even cited Restoration comedy when defending Hill’s show from conservative critic Mary Whitehouse (B. Thompson, 2012: 150).

Hill’s work by the early 1970s certainly shared the Restoration comedy playwrights’ interest in sex as a thematic element. This approach was, of course, not then unique across UK entertainment, and criteria discussed herein may be applied to sources other than Hill. But while academic writings generally discuss Hill in broader UK television context (e.g., Hunt, 1998; Porter, 1998), it is worth assessing Hill’s comedy separately from that of his contemporaries because of the global audience he attained in the 1980s. Even as The Benny Hill Show drew increasing criticism at home, Thames sold compilations of it to reportedly over 100 countries, earning Hill the unofficial title of ‘the world’s most popular comedian’ (Telegraph, 1992; regarding sales, cf. Forwood, 1992: 97, 99). By the time Thames cancelled the show in 1989, Hill himself estimated he had helped the company make about £100 million (Monkhouse, n.d.). Global sales made Hill not only rich but also influential. Leslie Halliwell suggested that ‘It may not be going too far to attribute to Benny Hill the sudden emancipation of American sitcoms in the eighties…’ (1987: 226).

That said, while an assessment of apparent Restoration comedy influences may contribute to an understanding of Hill’s work, his television legacy remains controversial. As Leon Hunt observed, in the UK Hill’s ‘shows were an institution and consistent crowd-pleaser throughout the 1970s, and a politically incorrect albatross for Thames by the end of the 1980s’ (Hunt, 1998: 28). Until a scheduled late 2021 appearance on That’s TV, The Benny Hill Show was off British television for about 20 years, a Times journalist observing that ‘In the age of so-called cancel culture, it is an unlikely return’ (Kanter, 2021).

Approach and caveats

This article will explore several links between Hill’s humour and that associated with Restoration farces and comedy plays. Note that unlike his Thames catalogue, at the time of writing comparatively little of Hill’s BBC material has been issued commercially, and that as compilations rather than individual episodes. (Individual BBC episode broadcast dates given herein are derived from Ross, 1999, Brown, 2002, and Lewisohn, 2003).

Comedy elements discussed here may figure in many eras and be traceable further back than the Restoration – to Plautus, for example, whose influence is often ‘present in the forms of Restoration farce’ (Holland, 2000: 119) – but several factors make Restoration comedy a useful prism to apply to Hill’s work. The era saw, for example, extensive use of double entendre – the term entered English during the period (Styan, 1986: 201) – and the technique is often associated with Hill. The Restoration theatre’s acceptance of women onstage, as opposed to boys playing women, also opened a chapter for the English-speaking world in the objectification of women, something coupled with Hill’s Thames years (especially his 1980s output). Additionally, the theme of men fearing women is present throughout Restoration comedies, and women on Hill’s shows may be portrayed as unfaithful or (as in inversion-type sketches) with men in comically ‘oppressed’ roles. And while there are contrasts to acknowledge, some of Hill’s characters have traits suggestive of those of Restoration comedy.

These elements, of course, do not comprise the full substance of Restoration comedy. Moreover, while the latter is a literary form in which much humour ‘hinges around repartee’ (Triezenberg, 2008: 533), significant content in Hill’s shows comes without dialogue, in skits influenced by silent films and mime. Note also that a Restoration comedy farce or play written for the stage is a thematically unified affair presenting a linear series of successive events. A Benny Hill Show episode is structured differently. His programmes might start with a short gag, followed by a comic song and a mix of sketches, parodies, and interviews with comedy characters. Some shows included musical guests. His Thames-era shows routinely closed with a ‘run-off,’ an ‘undercranked’ or ‘fast-motion’ homage to silent film comedies’ chase sequences. These segments, with a version of Boots Randolph’s ‘Yakety Sax’ in the background, have sometimes been described as mainly involving Hill’s character chasing women, although the reverse was usually the case (Lewisohn, 2003: 314–315, 331, 368). Regarding the structure of episodes, Hill said in the 1974 interview that production realities sometimes influenced the selection and sequencing of items (Rogers, 1974); among academic observers Hunt has remarked on Hill’s ‘lack of narrative’ (1998: 46).

Restoration comedy: An overview

Restoration comedy refers to the English comedies of manners produced from the 1660 restoration of the monarchy to (depending on the scholar) the late 17^th or early 18^th century. Characters and plot lines often address social behaviors, conventions, or issues related to aristocracy, class, wealth, lineage, and marriage. Restoration comedy has been broadly described as ‘the prose comedy of London life’ and also as ‘a form of baroque intrigue comedy, with fashionable society as its milieu and personal fulfilment as its dynamic,’ with plot and other factors that combine to create ‘a complex literary form’ (Burns, 1987: 17). What constitutes ‘personal fulfilment’ in these works may vary, but sex is often at their core. By the Restoration era this was nothing new. Plautus’ Amphitruo or Amphitryon (in Slavitt and Bovie, 1995: I, 1–64), for example, ‘is essentially about adultery – which has been a fundamental comic theme from the moment that marriage became a fundamental social constraint’ (Segal, 1987: 172). Like other comedy forms, that of the Restoration ‘inherited and absorbed a number of comic traditions.’ It was also ‘ever-changing in response to the concerns of the society that produced and supported it’ (Corman, 2000: 56).

These plays developed out of a larger movement, libertinism, which embraced naturalistic, institution-questioning thinking and doing, in contrast to much established society (Kachur, 2004: 12–13). They also spawned a stock character, the rake (libertine is sometimes used as a synonym), personifying libertinism’s pleasure-seeking aspects, and which will be discussed further below. Yet the role libertine values play in Restoration comedies has been questioned (Hume, 1977a). Over time the term libertine would lose its philosophical roots. English society eventually ‘linked libertinism with the debauchee and profligate’ (Weber, 1986: 92). Charles II’s libertine ‘Court Wits’ – ‘a scandalous if loosely-defined circle’ (Hume, 1977a: 30) whose ‘limited experience demonstrated that no man was honest and no woman chaste’ (Wilson, 1948: 16) – included Restoration comedy playwrights William Wycherley and George Etherege. London itself, however, was divided over the attitudes associated with the court elite and its imitators. English society at large seems to have disapproved of libertine behavior and illicit relationships (Kachur, 2004: 10–13; Weber, 1986: 45, citing Laslett, 1965: 130–131). Ultimately, ‘the Restoration comic style was relatively short-lived. The plays continued in some demand into the eighteenth century, but then virtually dropped from the repertoire for 200 years until a few of them were revived in the early years of this [20^th] century’ (Styan, 1986: 2).

Hill’s comedy: An overview

While Restoration comedies have been labeled ‘wit comedies’ for their dialogue, they have also been termed ‘“sex comedies” … for their prurient language and rampant sexual escapades, particularly during the 1670s…’ (Kachur, 2004: 42). Thus, Bob Rogers cited Restoration comedy three centuries later, in 1974, when interviewing Hill. By then, Hill was well established as a prominent, popular UK television figure. He rose to fame on BBC Television’s Showcase in 1954; The Benny Hill Show followed in 1955. His BBC work has been remembered for broad appeal and innovation, earning praise even from later critics (Lewisohn, 2003: 204–207, 213, 370).

In 1969, Hill moved to the recently formed Thames, responsible for ITV’s London region weekday programming. His show retained its name and basic format as well as several supporting cast members. The move came as ITV began color broadcasting and amid the increased influence of ‘permissiveness,’ a term ‘used more by its detractors than by those considered to be its adherents’ (Hunt, 1998: 20, citing Weeks, 1989: 249). With echoes of Restoration-era libertinism, British ‘Permissive Society’ in the 1960s and 1970s saw change in a range of behaviors and attitudes (Davies, 1975; Hunt, 1998: 16–33). By the 1970s, British entertainment was increasingly marked by what Hunt termed ‘permissive populism,’ representing ‘the popular appropriation of elitist “liberationist” sexual discourses, the trickle-down of permissiveness into commodity culture…’ (Hunt, 1998: 2). Hill’s shows at Thames reflected these social changes by becoming increasingly salacious. Ultimately, journalist-and-author Margaret Forwood wrote, ‘the overriding image his work produced could be summed up in one word: bawdiness’ (Forwood, 1992: 21).

Though critical of Hill’s 1980s Thames programmes, his biographer Mark Lewisohn summed him up as ‘a great comedian. His strength lay in comedy architecture, characterization, mime, delightfully light vulgarity and a facility to redeploy jokes of all vintages.’ But among Hill’s comedy influences, ‘the most fundamental ingredient of them all [was] his obsession with sex. For the quintessential Benny blend, one must take the essence of Chaplin and Hardy, and Marceau and Tati, and add what has been – too easily, perhaps – labeled as British “seaside-postcard” humour…’ (Lewisohn, 2003: ix, 235). The best-known examples of seaside postcards, those by Donald McGill, are noted for sexual stereotypes and sexual innuendo (Buckland, 1984). Title cards of some Thames-era Benny Hill Show episodes featured seaside postcard-type graphics – a point writer Anthony Burgess made in his 1990 Guardian review of a biography of Hill by his brother Leonard Hill. Burgess felt Benny Hill’s comedy would have been enjoyed by none other than George Orwell, who had penned a wartime article about McGill’s work (Burgess, 1990; Orwell, 1941). For his part, Lewisohn deemed Hill ‘an inveterate lifter of gag material from every source imaginable, postcards included,’ but with much of his comedy based on what he had seen in Variety (2003: 236), which itself drew on many sources.

Many Hill television skits may be classified as farce, a category Restoration comedy scholarship notes places ‘emphasis on physical action, on disguise and trickery…’ As a genre, farce’s ‘physicality often mocks the intellectualism and verbal wit of higher forms of comedy…’ (Holland, 2000: 108, 109). While his humour was not cerebral, and may be best remembered for licentiousness, Hill could deliver other things. His chronic TV watching, for example, spawned impressions of performers and parodies of shows and commercials. These could be affectionate, or sharp-edged, as when he mocked low production values and celebrity hubris. ‘The cleverness of some of his ideas was later overshadowed by the sexy image of his shows, which was a shame,’ wrote Margaret Forwood. ‘It was not all sauce’ (1992: 92).

Although Thames’ 1989 cancellation of his programme did not affect Hill’s contemporary appeal in, for example, the USA, the British have long had a complex relationship with him, many remembering his 1980s shows especially negatively. Though late in life Hill received support from prominent British writers such as Burgess and Mortimer, not everyone agreed with them then or since. Some effusive praise drew parody in the magazine Private Eye (Took, 1992: 135). In the UK, Hill’s work – remembered for ‘undoubted sexism’ and misogyny (Hunt, 1998: 45, 47), but also for stereotyping and use of ‘blackface’ (e.g., Lewisohn, 2003: 318–20; Smith, 1988: 159) – has often been regarded as offensive and embarrassing, at best anachronistic (e.g., Ross, 1999: 173). Ten years after Hill’s death, a UK government adviser linked teenage pregnancies to the country’s ‘Benny Hill culture’ (BBC, 2002). Yet some observers questioned hostility toward Hill given much contemporary and subsequent media content (Forwood, 1992: 22; Novick, 2000: 22–32). Writer DJ Taylor suggested that overall Hill deserved a high ranking among British comedians (2002), and Lewisohn contended that Hill’s pre-1980s work ‘deserves reappraisal’ (2003: 439). Reactions were largely positive in 2006 when a Channel 4 programme Is Benny Hill Still Funny? asked a diverse UK audience to rate a selection of Hill comedy sketches. More recently, though, courts trying sexual offense cases heard women liken alleged incidents to behavior they associated with Hill’s show (BBC, 2020; Gordon, 2022).

Double entendre

Restoration comedy playwrights often ventured into sensitive areas using double entendre, ‘a phrase that can be interpreted in two different ways, one of them usually obscene’ (Triezenberg, 2008: 536). Examples may involve a pun: ‘an expression that has two or more possible meanings all hinging on one word being polysemous or homophonous with another, or two words together being phonologically similar to a third word’ (Triezenberg, 2008: 533). Such wordplay is at the heart of much humour; examples go back far into history (e.g., Morreall, 2008: 216; Neuss, 1974). Double entendre’s effective use depends, of course, on the audience’s familiarity with ‘worldly’ interpretations of a particular word or phrase. It is associated with Restoration comedy playwrights like Wycherley (whose 1675 play The Country Wife is among the genre’s best-known works), Thomas Shadwell and George Farquhar (Styan, 1986: 201–203). Playwright Aphra Behn, in her preface to The Luckey Chance, referred to those who ‘will in spight of Sense wrest a double Entendre from every thing…’ (sic. original italics, 1687: n.p.). Jeremy Collier included a critical reference to double entendre in his book-length 1698 attack on the theatre (1698: 12).

Hill’s admiration of Max Miller, prominent in Variety from the 1930s into the 1950s (he died in 1963), influenced his own extensive use of double entendre (see East, 1993: 198). Miller’s onstage persona has been described as that of ‘an egocentric libertine’ (East, 1993: 196), and ‘a loud-mouthed, flashy-dressing Cockney’ who ‘possessed an endless fund of narcissistic self-confidence and sexual preparedness’ (Sutton, 2000: 142). Miller’s use of double entendre was both highly developed and essential, as authorities could censor stage acts until 1968 (Wilmut, 1989: 14, 122–123; see also Double, 2012: 153). His fast-talking character clearly lacked – or in identification with his audience, eschewed – the gentlemanly status of Restoration comedy rakes. Yet like them he was pleasure seeking, anti-matrimonial in dialogue, and irreverent to many social conventions; his biographer likened Miller’s performance in one revue to that of ‘a debauché of the Restoration stage’ (East, 1993: 115). While modern observers would classify many Miller ‘routines as old-fashioned sexism and misogyny,’ his style added complexity to his performances and possible interpretations of his work (Sutton, 2000: 148). Certainly, Miller delighted in double entendre and risky material, occasionally comically berating his audiences for laughing at it. And in recordings of his performances (e.g., Miller, 1958) female laughter is often prominent – something Hill remarked on in his 1974 interview.

Following in Miller’s footsteps, Hill was one of many UK comedians employing double entendre well into the ‘permissive’ era. Examples turn up often in Hill’s work, with him often redeploying materials he likely first heard on the stage. Some can be heard in Miller’s earlier recorded performances. Some go back further. Consider the lyrics in Hill’s song ‘Pepys’ Diary’ in a 1958 episode.

I went to view a lady’s house, she handed me the key,

These echo dialogue in an 1814 British cartoon, ‘Lodgings to Let.’

[Man] My sweet honey, I hope you are to be let with the lodgins! [sic].

Three examples from a 1965 Benny Hill Show episode further illustrate his use of such wordplay. One involves the then-novelty of live interviews via satellite, technical difficulties offering possibilities for unsynchronized questions and answers.

[Patricia Hayes, as interviewer] Is it true that you’re coming to England soon?

Hill’s ‘Passengers of Passion’ sketch is a parody of television’s airing of poor-condition films in which (among other things) splices mangled dialogue. In another skit, Hill’s character calls the police when kidnapped by Patricia Hayes’ character, leaving it to the audience to decide what has been misheard over the telephone.

[Hill] Yes officer. There’s a wicked evil woman here. She’s holding me hostage. [Pauses, rolls eyes] No, me hostage! (TBHS, 27 Nov. 1965).

Consider also an example from a 1968 interview sketch.

[Henry McGee] Have you been subsidized?

After moving to Thames in 1969, Hill began a pattern of reusing earlier material, double entendre included. Sometimes there were technical improvements. For example, Hill remade ‘Passengers of Passion,’ originally done on film in front of a live audience, using videotape editing to better simulate jump cuts (TBHS, 24 March 1971). Regardless, Hill’s tendency to recycle content, some of which he redeployed multiple times, undercut his reputation for subtlety and innovation.

Objectification

Charles II, who likely watched women tread Continental boards, ended a long-standing English tradition barring them from performing in the theatre. Yet their emergence onstage in a patriarchal and patrilineal society encouraged not more nuanced theatre experiences but more prurient ones. On the Restoration comedy stage, part of this involved costume. Some comedy ‘business’ centered around décolletage; many plays included ‘breeches parts’ which called for women to don tighter-fitting men’s attire. Plots, dialogue, and characters kept pace (Styan, 1986: 89–141; Kachur, 2004: 30-31; Howe, 1992: passim). What some Restoration comedy scholarship has called ‘exploitation of the actress’ (Styan, 1986: 91–92) might also be classed as sexual objectification (e.g., Papadaki, 2021). Yet, as Elizabeth Howe observed:

the satiric, unromantic presentation of love relationships encouraged by the new female players also had positive results. Restoration comedy’s forceful scrutiny of social problems concerning women, such as arranged marriage, the double standard and divorce is not solely a consequence of a change in political and philosophical climate; it is also a consequence of a changed approach to female characterisation that the sexual exploitation of the actress made necessary (Howe, 1992: 64–65).

In Hill’s case, after moving to Thames, something akin to what a Restoration comedy scholar described for that genre as ‘self-conscious exhibitionism’ (Styan, 1986: 89) became conspicuous in his shows. ‘A core of suggestiveness had run through his BBC programmes, but no scantily clad women. At Thames, suddenly, it was different – there was a steadily increasing proportion of stockings and suspenders, skimpy dresses and bikinis…’ (Lewisohn, 2003: 325). At the BBC, Hill had benefited from the contributions of comedy professionals such as Patricia Hayes and June Whitfield in regular roles, but at Thames women began to appear less in character-based parts and more often in decorative ones. Nothing similar to Restoration-era comedy’s abovementioned ‘forceful scrutiny of social problems concerning women’ (Howe, 1992: 64–65) emerged at this (or any other) point in Hill’s work. But some sketches parodied ‘permissiveness,’ or handled it with ironic or self-deprecatory overtones (discussed further below), the middle-aged Hill visibly out of place in youth-oriented, changing times. Hill’s approach at Thames prompted occasional complaints, but he kept within contemporary UK television limits, and throughout the 1970s his audience appeal remained broad. Hill’s shows earned high ratings, and they and he also received occasional industry awards (Lewisohn, 2003: 330–331, 349).

Two 1979 events would lead to greater emphasis on the objectification of women in the show, arguably at the expense of comedy itself. One was The Benny Hill Show’s arrival in America. Initial compilations shown in syndication there, with older material but exceptionally ribald by US standards, found enthusiastic audiences. American success soon helped make the show a major Thames export, aided by Hill’s silent skits needing no translation. The other was the installation of new producer/director Dennis Kirkland. Unlike predecessors who ‘had served Benny best by curbing some of his baser instincts,’ Kirkland felt it was his job to enable rather than restrain his star (Lewisohn, 2003: 347–353, 359).

At about this time, Hill’s show began to noticeably change – as would perception of it in the UK. One example involved the introduction of women dancers whose ‘primary function was to titillate’ (Novick, 2000: 100). While incorporating token (often recycled) humour, the dance routines essentially appeared in lieu of comedy. Lewisohn described some 1979-1980 content as ‘gratuitously sexual in the way that it was shot,’ ‘voyeuristic,’ and ‘comedy of a sort, but devoid of taste or wit’ (2003: 357–358). Hill, who made the dancers a regular element in 1980, would later say that he added them after a similar troupe was credited with boosting ratings for Thames’ youth-oriented Kenny Everett Video Show ( Omnibus ). But Ross described them as an addition made ‘in response to the demands of the American market’ (1999: 133). Certainly, they were part of a redesign that emphasized ‘saucy slapstick stuff that appealed’ to Americans over ‘[t]he clever wordplays and sketches that played with British culture and British television mores…’ (Novick, 2000: 111). Thus, Hill began producing content aimed at secondary (overseas) audiences, rather than the primary (UK) one on which, international sales notwithstanding, his Thames employment was ultimately based.

In doing so, he crossed a line with an important part of his UK audience. When Hill’s earlier 1970s ‘sauciness’ raised ire, it was generally from conservative, religious critics like Whitehouse. Starting in 1980, British feminists and women viewers in general began sustained criticism of the show (Hunt, 1998: 45; Lewisohn, 2003: 361–371). Even some dancers complained about costumes and camerawork (Smith, 1988: 111–112). Despite this, and at a time when UK culture was changing and ‘alternative’ comedy emerging, Hill stayed the course, unable to understand the controversy (Monkhouse, n.d.). ‘[O]n the whole,’ wrote Margaret Forwood, ‘the female sex was portrayed in his shows the way he himself saw women – as wives, girlfriends, objects of lust or mere decoration. He simply did not know what sexism meant’ (1992: 163). In The Guardian, Kay Lewis contended that Hill’s ‘foreign appeal is no mystery … He speaks the international language of misogyny’ (1992).

There seems little argument that the 1980s, in which The Benny Hill Show met increasingly negative UK reaction, also saw Hill’s weakest comedy work. When in mid-decade Hill cut back the controversial material, it reduced his remaining UK audience. Thames in 1989 cancelled the show due to high production costs, noticeable decline, and falling ratings (Lewisohn, 2003: 361, 391–393, 396–407; Took, 1992: 135–136, 144–145).

Men afraid of women

Men fearing women is a recurrent comedy cliché. ‘Shakespeare’s earlier comedies depict gynophobia of various kinds, including the widespread fear of cuckoldry …’ (Saito, 2018: 84), for example, and ‘[a]nti-female comments and attitudes pervade Restoration comedy’ as well as other contemporary writings (Figueroa Dorrego, 2019, 36; see also Nussbaum, 1984). Peggy Thompson has remarked on the motif ‘in Restoration comedy of the duplicitous criminality lurking behind the modest facades of cunning and corrupt women’ (2012: 65). Hill’s men tend to show desire for women rather than fear of them, comedy emerging when their efforts go wrong (discussed further below). However, unfaithful women frequently appear in Hill’s work, such as when Hill’s milkman meets amorous wives (TBHS, 23 Dec. 1970) or when his voyeur character spots his own wife with a neighbor (TBHS, 25 Dec. 1969). In another, Hill’s clearly unhappy couple says goodnight.

[Hill, as husband] Goodnight, mother of six.

Some women appear as tricksters, common in Restoration comedy (see, e.g., Canfield, 1997). Hill maintained that ‘If my sketches teach anything, it is that, for the male, sex is a snare and a delusion’ (quoted in Hill, 1990: 346), and his men are, for example, lured to boudoir windows only to discover different women than expected (TBHS, 13 March 1974 and 23 March 1977). Such tricksters may have marriage in mind. In one sketch a woman (Anne Bruzac) fakes pregnancy to trick Hill’s character into marrying her on April Fool’s Day (TBHS, 23 March 1977).

Hill’s shows generally present views of marriage akin to those of Max Miller’s routines; the ‘henpeck’ comedies of early British silent film (Porter, 2012); McGill postcards (Buckland, 1984: 77–81); and some Restoration comedy playwrights’ dialogue (although the genre overall was not ‘hostile to marriage as an institution,’ Hume, 1977a: 28). The opening of Hill’s first Thames episode shows his character drop a coin in a wishing well hoping to change his wife (TBHS, 19 Nov. 1969). Burgess termed such examples ‘the comedy of sexual regret’ (1990). An atypical scenario involving matrimony appears when Hill’s snooker player, distracted by the charms of a spectator (Lesley Goldie), disqualifies himself by tearing the cloth with a cue. The spectator turns out to be his opponent’s wife, her trickster efforts meant to help her husband win. It is a rare example of spousal loyalty on a Hill show, albeit set to work against Hill’s character (TBHS, 5 Dec. 1973).

Hill also sometimes inverted stereotypes and presumed roles to present men as weak, naïve and vulnerable. Inversion figures in much contemporary television comedy. It goes far back into comedy history (Segal, 1987: 99), examples including medieval holidays and carnival traditions in which social status was reversed. Restoration comedy inversions include those in which ‘a domineering wife tyrannizes an ineffectually rebellious husband’ (Hume, 1977b: 254). Hill’s inversion sketches include those in which his character is stalked by a gang of women (TBHS, 20 April 1968), and ensnared by Patricia Hayes’s character while hitchhiking (TBHS, 11 March 1970). Hill also did inversion sketches based on the 1956 film Baby Doll (on the BBC in 1965 and TBHS, 7 Feb. 1974) and the 1965 film The Collector (TBHS, 27 Nov. 1965 and 24 Sept. 1975).

In discussing this aspect of Hill’s output, note that some Thames-era shows included references to sexual harassment, rape, and other acts of violence against women (e.g., TBHS, 21 April 1976; see also Novick, 2000: 11). Rape and/or the threat of it figured significantly in Restoration-era works, Aphra Behn’s The Rover (1677) among them. Yet ‘Behn characteristically uses scenes of attempted rape to expose the violence and “deliberated Malice” … implicit in the libertine ideology’ (Chernaik, 2008: 206–207; see also Pacheco, 1998, and Howe, 1992: 43–49). Contrast this with, for instance, Hill’s inversion-type sketch with him as a would-be assailant, whose target (Valerie St. John) tears off his clothes and chases him into the ‘run-off’ (TBHS, 11 March 1970). Some later Hill critics attacked the show in light of real-world assaults in Britain; other observers suggested that his characters’ evident immaturity mitigated their dangerousness (Lewisohn, 2003: 367–370, 352; Telegraph, 1992). In Miami, the show’s reported effects on some children prompted calls for it to be moved from 7 p.m. to a later time slot (Smith, 1988, 159–160; Hill, 1990: 294).

Character types

While there are contrasts to be noted, Hill also employed characters with traits broadly suggestive of those of the Restoration comedy rake or libertine. Across Restoration comedies, several versions of this stock character exist (e.g., Weber, 1986; Hume, 1977a). But the basic rake was a witty, wealthy gentleman-type figure:

[whose] most distinctive, and therefore most important, characteristic is his sexuality. … [T]he rake is too complex and enigmatic a figure to be reduced to a sexual machine: his love of disguise, need for freedom and fondness for play all establish the complexity of the rakish personality. Yet … the rake most compellingly expresses these complexities through his overwhelming desire for sexual pleasure … (Weber, 1986: 3).

Alternatively, the Restoration rake-libertine has been described as ‘the sexually predatory male, whose goal is to have as many affairs in as short a time as possible, and who plays off the illicitness of the liaison against his own reputation for sexual conquest’ (Mangan, 2003: 106). As stock characters, rakes generally championed sexual freedom and lack of responsibility, though a more desirable one might succumb to a ‘fifth-act conversion [that] transforms him from a wanton lover into a satisfied husband’ (Weber, 1986: 6).

Hill, who never married, often projected a real-world version of himself as an unattached playboy. He developed a rakish public persona – ‘the great Lothario practically fighting off girls’ (Forwood, 1992: 72) in reaction to rumours about his sexuality, sparked by his frequent use of ‘drag’ (Hill, 1990: 247–248). In one Thames-era television monologue Hill jokingly hinted at being on intimate terms with women in the cast, asking stagehands to search for his script in their dressing rooms (TBHS, 24 March 1971). In 1984, a Dutch magazine referred to a common perception of Hill in words that have been translated as ‘an old rake’ (de Saxe, 2011). Leonard Hill, discussing the tamer post-1985 Benny Hill Show, referred to his comedian-brother as a ‘reformed rake’ (1990: 346). The same rumours about his sexuality also led Hill on his television show to ‘introduce the compulsive lecher’ (Hill, 1990: 248), a libertine-type characterization which Hill would deploy in various guises. Necessarily underdeveloped given the show’s format, and often figuring in silent sketches, such Hill characters may lust like the classic rakes but generally lack their evident wealth, high social status and (discussed further below) their sexual success.

Other Hill character traits also have Restoration comedy echoes. Some Hill men may be tricksters, their presence in Hill’s work representing silent films’ influence (see e.g., Lieberman, 1994) but also suggestive of Restoration comedy characters (see e.g., Canfield, 1997). They exhibit mischievous attitudes and behaviors and use disguise and duplicity. In one skit, Lesley Goldie’s character marries a decrepit banker (Jackie Wright) but continues an affair with Hill’s impoverished actor, who adopts multiple disguises to infiltrate the household, with mixed results (TBHS, 27 Jan. 1971). In another, Hill’s character affects a strong foreign accent and poor vocabulary to obtain an impromptu English lesson, and sympathetic attention, from Jenny Lee-Wright’s character (TBHS, 24 Feb. 1971).

Some Hill characters also resemble the senex amator (or senex amans) of Plautus’ works, ‘an old man who for some reason contracts a passion for a young girl and who, in varying degrees, attempts to satisfy this passion’ (Ryder, 1984: 181). Versions of the senex character appeared in Restoration comedies (Mangan, 2013: 95–104), and on Hill’s show ‘the randy old man clutching his chest and expiring at the moment of sexual success is a recurring image’ (Hunt, 1998: 47). Media scholar Laraine Porter noted that the exaggerated nature of this type of humour, in the work of Hill and others, ‘take[s] these sketches beyond simple wish-fulfilment into the realm of self-mocking parody’ (1998: 91). However, Margaret Forwood wrote that Hill:

failed to appreciate that there were bits in the show which were likely to make many women wince. There was a repeated theme of old men lusting after very young girls. … Benny could not see that a sketch where a man made a play for a beautiful young girl and ended up instead with a plain older woman was offensive to some women. He thought it was a joke at the expense of the man (Forwood, 1992: 163).

‘A man who fails is funny’

As noted earlier, while Hill’s men may exhibit libertine-like traits, they often fail to attain sexual success like that of the classic rakes. This is usually through their own ineptitude. That said, Restoration comedy did see occasional rakes manqué and poseurs, as in Etherege’s (1668) She Would If She Could (for discussion, see Kachur, 2004: 80; and Davison, 1970: xi). And in some Restoration comedy examples, ‘men who fail to see their own limitations, political as well as personal, make themselves laughable by their insistence on reading women’s reserve or aversion as insincere’ (P. Thompson, 2012: 3). A Hill take on this ‘no means yes’ theme appears when his character, with affected French accent, asks his date (Lesley Goldie): ‘Is it true that when you say no, you really mean yes?’ Her blunt ‘No’ leaves him nonplussed and shows her fully in control of the power dynamics and issues of consent (TBHS, 5 Dec. 1973).

As his father ran a shop selling condoms, Hill learned early on about ‘adult sexual embarrassment,’ and in Variety would have seen much comedy based on male failure and inadequacy. There, in contrast to Miller’s self-assured libertine, the motif of heterosexual men being unsuccessful with women was common. Some would-be rakes suffered from folie de grandeur when assessing their own appeal, the comedy being that of delusion or self-delusion. Some failed through fear or embarrassment: ‘[M]any seemingly mild-mannered comedians, acting as if they were stags, brashly hinted at sex and ogled at women but when faced with the genuine prospect of intimacy would stammer, not stiffen’ (Lewisohn, 2003: 51, 236). Discussing how unrequited love, or at least unfulfilled desire, figured in his work, Hill told his biographer brother that:

My humour is, I believe, totally innocuous. Some of it is based on male disappointment. My would-be lovers never succeed. A man who succeeds is not funny. A man who fails is funny. At bottom, it is very sad. Chaplin knew that. Presented in the right way, failure can be very funny. Success never is. So although my male characters hope, dream and endure all manner of blows for their hearts’ desire, they are always defeated (quoted in Hill, 1990: 346).

Thus, Hill’s ‘would-be lovers,’ for example, become trapped on a ledge outside a boudoir in their underwear, awaiting a blizzard (TBHS, 25 March 1981), or encounter a seductress (Alison Bell) who turns out to be a vampire (TBHS, 6 Jan. 1982).

Responding to criticism of how The Benny Hill Show represented women, Kirkland argued that ‘[t]he show was not anti-women: the men always lost and the women always won’ (quoted in Lewisohn, 2003: 366). Burgess called Hill’s show ‘didactic in the sense of warning off’ (1990). More critical appraisals of Hill’s work in this context include those of Lewisohn, who dismissed Kirkland’s argument (2003: 366), and Kay Lewis, who wrote that Hill ‘reinforced stereotypes of women as passive, decorative and silly. And in the real world that has serious consequences’ (1992).

Less debated is the fact that Hill’s men are generally ‘male grotesques, weak, incompetent and grossly unattractive…’ (Hill, 1990: 344). Hill’s representation of them, and their frequent failures, ridiculed contemporary social and media conventions of male sexuality and ego. As Laraine Porter remarked, an assessment of Hill’s characters (like those of Sid James, for example, in the Carry On films):

must also take into account the ironic self-awareness which much of this comedy displays. It is precisely the incongruity of a figure like Benny Hill arousing the attentions of women in this way that makes the sketches comical. Benny Hill, Sid James, et al. are ironic caricatures of male libido, representatives of a collective male fantasy which will never be realized outside the comic narrative. This allows for the free play of fantasy divorced from notions of polite behaviour, acceptable sexual mores and the reality of male sexuality which invariably fails to live up to its mythical status and expectations of unerring potency (Porter, 1998: 72).

Even when Hill’s men project desirability, something usually goes wrong. In a spy-film parody, Hill’s character learns an earlier affair resulted in pregnancy. Breaking the fourth wall, he complains that ‘This never happens to James Bond’ (TBHS, 8 May 1965). In Restoration comedies, generally, and barring disease, ‘the consequences of sex are what the libertine male can ignore but the female cannot …’ (Canfield 1997: 42). As his spy’s reaction shows, among Hill’s characters this is not always the case.

Conclusion

Although in a 1974 interview Benny Hill denied having direct knowledge of Restoration comedy, his television work included several of its elements, which had been absorbed over time into the humour of his formative years. Restoration comedy’s components go beyond those cited above, but those discussed herein provide starting points for analysis of Hill’s show, worth studying for the global popularity and influence it attained in the 1980s. And while this article has focused on Hill alone because of that international success, future research could similarly assess the work of his UK contemporaries and other sources through a Restoration comedy lens.

While applying such criteria to Hill’s television work may make its foundations traceable, it does not make his legacy less controversial. Some criticism that began in the UK in 1980 stemmed from his effective replacement of comedy with other content. Of his comedy itself, while Hill’s bawdy style employed well-established norms of British humor, like that of the Restoration its popularity and acceptability rose and fell as society changed.

An example in this context concerns the most contentious aspect of Hill’s show: its representation and objectification of women. Sustained criticism of this aspect of Hill’s work began by 1980. There was, however, a divergence of views on this subject between much of Hill’s UK audience and that of the countries to which Thames was successfully selling The Benny Hill Show. This led to the paradox of Hill creating content which drew criticism at home but enhanced sales overseas.

A different, intended irony involves Hill’s deliberate targeting of contemporary representations of men for ridicule. Hill often set up his men to fail against expectations in an era of ‘permissiveness’ reminiscent of the Restoration’s libertinism. His inversion-type sketches placed them in comically ‘oppressed’ roles; his rakes manqué possessed aspirations similar to those of the great libertines but lacked their status, attractiveness, and sexual success. Hill thus introduced into his work an ironic caricature of contemporary views of male sexuality and ego. In so doing, he comically subverted some accepted narratives of his era, as well as of the Restoration, three centuries earlier.