The Best of Benny Hill [DVD]

The Best of Benny Hill [DVD]
New. Never Opened. Still in Original Shrink Wrap.

Benny Hill was always best at quasi-silent slapstick, so it's no surprise that some of the best stuff on The Best of Benny Hill seems to owe more to the work of Mack Sennett and Fatty Arbuckle than to mainstream TV comedy. .
It may also be no coincidence that, unusually, this release began life in the cinema.
There's some classic material on offer here: the extended opening item, "Lower Tidmarsh Hospital," for example, almost transcends buffoonery to become social comment, but best of all is the sketch which features Hill as a chat-show host (people really used to wear matching shirts and ties) attempting to deal with a West End star and starlet, the former monosyllabic, the latter catastrophically plastered.
Among the other items featured, the knowing send-up of the pretentiousness of avant-garde French cinema is also very funny, while the short linking items include a wicked parody of Alan Whicker.