<*dv_0*>The cast of Hi-De-Hi, now all of course sadly dead | | Hi-De-Hi Campers | The British revel in tragedy. It is the only emotion we do well as a nation. We get distinctly uncomfortable with triumph, happiness, or joy. Unsurprisingly this is reflected in our culture, our books, films and music and in my opinion the foremost example of this phenomenon is a TV programme commonly held to be a comedy. Hi De Hi is without doubt the most depressing television programme ever made.
<*dv_1*> Tragedy and comedy have a long tradition. Hancock, Steptoe, Only Fools and Horses and even The Royal Family have all mined this comedic seam but never to the stultifying, suffocating, depths plumbed in Hi De Hi.
Maplins is a concentration camp of enforced jollity. Behind the faade of joviality the staff are forced to adopt, lies a seething mass of frustrated love, failed dreams and thwarted ambition. There is not one glimmer of light in its opaque bleakness.
<*dv_3*> Ted the camp host is a failed comedian eking out his days with petty scams. His apprentice is the ebullient naive Spike, however Teds tutelage mainly consists of imparting to Spike his own jaded cynicism.
<*dv_4*> Peggy, the chalet maid, is desperate to become a yellow coat but as she is not leggy and blonde it is a position that will always be denied to her. Does anybody ever explain to her the fruitlessness of her ambition? No, thus enabling us to witness Peggy humiliate herself in every episode whilst attempting to achieve her goal.
<*dv_2*> Ex jockey Fred Quilly could not have come to a more ignominious end, running donkey rides for the children. Dancers Yvonne and Barry Stuart-Hargreaves view themselves a cut above the hoi polloi with whom they have to work. They have turned their chalet into a refuge of chintz and china but have only created a prison, a gilded cage and constant reminder of the gulf between their self-perception and their daily reality.
Jeffrey the posh, cut glass accented camp manager, is the object of chief yellow coat Gladys Pughs ardent affection. Gladys adopts a faux upper class voice that only serves to accentuate her native Welsh accent and highlight the class chasm that will always keep them apart.
What makes Hi De Hi different from say Only Fools and Horses or Steptoe is that the tragedy is not used to bind the characters together. Disaster will loom for Del Boy and Rodney but they will unite to triumph over the temporary adversity.
In Hi De Hi the characters never pull together. There is no hope for anyone. For them there is just unremitting pain, the slow torture as they endlessly repeat themselves trapped in Maplins holiday camp, their very own hermetically sealed hell. There is something rather Orwellian in the way the greeting Hi de hi has to be answered with an immediate Ho de ho. It is amazing that a programme this dark was so mainstream. Hi De Hi ran for eight years and highlights a disturbing masochism in the British public.
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