Hi-de-Hi!

Hi-de-Hi!
6.7
Comic goings-on in this series. Ted's the camp comic but is always on the lookout for a way to make money. Gladys has her eye on the boss, and Peggy wants to swap her mop and cleaner's outfit for a 'yellow coat.'
匚卂尺ㄥ reviewedMarch 14, 2025
Croft and Perry's gift was to create a range of contrasting, multi-layered characters and place them in a milieu which threw them together. At the heart of Hi-de-Hi is the combination of cheeky seaside humour and the poignancy of human fragility. Ted Bovis can be brash, and always has a fiddle going, but underneath he's a broken man who failed to catch up with the fame and fortune he once pursued. The potty chalet maid Peggy dreams of becoming a yellowcoat, and although each rejection devastates her she continues in her goal with optimistic dignity. The most complex, and my favourite, character is ballroom dancing champion Yvonne, whose acerbic snootiness belied a deep vulnerability and a need to be loved. The episode in which Barry has left her and we see her bedraggled and forlorn at the chalet window is beautiful and touching. These are not two-dimensional characters in a slapstick farce, they're real people, and it's the integrity of the characterisation which makes the comedic situations so hilarious. It's because Yvonne is so prim and po-faced that, when she says to Ted 'I stood in your chalet doorway with my hand on your knob...' I laugh until my sides hurt. The awkwardness of Jeffrey Fairbrother as he desperately tries to be funny, the Punch and Judy man who hates kids, Gladys Pugh's simpering over Jeffrey...it's all funny because it's believable. Hi-de-Hi is classic comedy where everything fits together perfectly, the writing, acting, comic timing and the balance between humour and pathos is all so finely judged that it's exquisite to see.