The critics weren't kind, but Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse's comeback series made me laugh - well, at times.
Paul Whitehouse as Oliver and Harry Enfield as Jamie in Ruddy Hell, It's Harry and Paul. Photograph: BBC/Tiger Aspect/Ken McKay
So Ruddy Hell, it's Harry and Paul has ended and we can finally reach a verdict. In case you missed the final episode, it's repeated tonight on BBC2 at 10 but thus far reviews have been decidedly mixed throughout the series, so let's deal with the highs first.
As always, Enfield and Whitehouse remain strongest when attaching attitudes to stereotypes. Whether it's the Portobello antiques brigade in "I saw you coming", the Harley Street Surgeons or the upwardly mobile Guy Ritchie and Madonna, where there's pretension to be pricked, nobody does it better. And as with Loadsamoney before, Enfield remains the shrewdest of social observers. Take the girls from Café Polski - unfunny and borderline racist at first, but over the course of the series surprisingly reflective of Daily Express-style paranoia over immigration and social exclusion.
But there were plenty of reheated leftovers too. The pub bloke's cry of "Oi - back down!" was pure Frank Doberman, fat kids Jamie and Oliver unfunny retreads of the Slobs and the freakish South African, an inexplicable throwback to Jurgen the German. Equally disappointing were one-trick ponies like Abramovitch and Aragontino or the dismal Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (they're geeks, so they must have small dicks - oh please!) both of which show H and P still prone to cheap laughs, bad makeup and dodgy accents where the likes of Baron Cohen or Coogan might have delved deeper. Mind you, depth was never their thing - something that places Harry and Paul firmly in the tradition of Viz rather than Python. It also explains why their humour travels so badly (witness the lamentable overseas returns on Kevin and Perry Go Large or Churchill: the Hollywood Years.) If ever comedy needed explanation by a National Heritage plaque, then this is surely it.
So, with such mixed opinions you'd think I'd be clamouring for Harry and Paul to be put out of their misery. Ruddy hell, no! This is Enfield and Whitehouse we're talking about, and watching them search for comedy gold is more entertaining than most other comics finding it. For my money, Harry remains the most consistently funny comic we've produced since the 70s, who resurrected character-sketch comedy with Stavros and gave us more catchphrases than Dick Emery, Catherine Tate and Little Britain put together. In Whitehouse we have someone for whom the term "funny bones" might have been invented. Apart, his comedy star shone brighter than Enfield's (particularly in The Fast Show) but together again we see them for what they are - Sorcerer and Apprentice - they still working magic. If Mitchell and Webb ever come up with anything as audacious as Nelson Mandela's Smack and Crack Party Pack, let alone 20 years into their careers, I'd be very surprised indeed. In the meantime, roll on that second series.
