Hi-de-Hi!


Hi-de-Hi! is
a BBC television sitcom shown on BBC1 from 1 January 1980 to 30 January 1988.
Set in 1959 and 1960 in Maplins, a fictional holiday camp, the show was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft, who also wrote Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum amongst other programmes. The title was the greeting the campers heard and in early episodes was written Hi de Hi. The series revolved around the lives of the camp's entertainers, most of them struggling actors or has-beens.
The inspiration was the experience of Jimmy Perry, one of the writers. After being demobilised from the Army, he was a Redcoat at Butlins in Filey and Pwllheli during the holiday season.
The series gained large audiences and won a BAFTA as Best Comedy Series in 1984. In a 2008 poll on Channel 4, Hi-de-Hi! was voted the 35th most popular comedy catchphrase. In 2014, Jimmy Perry confirmed that Hi-de-Hi! would be repeated, and it began a rerun on 2 February 2015 on BBC Two as part of Afternoon Classics, alongside 'Allo 'Allo!, To the Manor Born and Open All Hours.

Synopsis

Hi-de-Hi! is set at a holiday camp in the fictional seaside town of Crimpton-on-Sea, Essex.
Loosely based on Butlins, Maplins is part of a holiday camp group owned by Joe Maplin, with Yellowcoats replacing Redcoats. Cambridge University Professor of Archaeology Jeffrey Fairbrother, who had become tired of academia, has been appointed the new entertainment manager. He is clearly unqualified for the position. This has annoyed the camp host, Ted Bovis, who had expected the post.
The job of camp comic is given to the naive but kind-hearted Spike Dixon, who wants an introduction to the world of show business. Many episodes involve Ted Bovis attempting to scam the campers as well as the well-meaning Fairbrother, who also has to avoid the romantic approaches of the chief Yellowcoat and sports organiser, Gladys Pugh.
The other main characters in the show are out-of-work actors, actresses and entertainers at the tail end of their careers. These include Fred Quilley, a disqualified jockey; Yvonne and Barry Stuart-Hargreaves, former ballroom champions; Mr Partridge, a music hall star reduced to performing Punch and Judy puppet shows, despite hating children; and Peggy Ollerenshaw, an eccentric but ambitious chalet maid who dreams of becoming a Yellowcoat.

Characters

Several underlying themes were apparent throughout the show's run. For the characters, working at the camp was either a step up or step down the ladder of success in show-business. The younger staff were keen and enthusiastic about their jobs, which they saw as a lucky break at the start of their careers. For the older members of the staff, the camp was a step down from past glories. Caught in the middle were staff members close to middle age who still believed they could achieve fame and fortune, and were reluctant to accept that working at a holiday camp was the best they would ever do.
The changing nature of British society was reflected in the series. The erosion of class boundaries that occurred in the post-war years, and attitudes to these changes, was illustrated in the character mix. Jeffrey Fairbrother's determination to leave a promising career in academia for something "real" was met with horror by his upper-class family and incomprehension by the Dean of his college, who visited the camp to persuade him to return to Cambridge. Yvonne and Barry Stuart-Hargreaves looked down on almost everyone at the camp, save for Fairbrother – although they were disappointed in his insistence that they take part in "vulgar" games as part of the entertainment, believing he should stand up for people of "his own class". Conversely, the societal changes were welcomed by other staff, particularly Ted and Spike, who believed that Peggy's attempts at becoming a Yellowcoat were thwarted by prejudice against her working-class background, as the current Yellowcoats were middle-class and well-spoken.
The series was set at a time of change in the fashion of the so-called traditional British holiday. During the years after the Second World War, British holiday camps flourished, as people were celebrating with fun and laughter again after years of austerity and wartime hardship. The series was set towards the end of this period, when the original format of holiday camps was coming to an end. Despite the feeling amongst many staff that their brand of fun and entertainment for the whole family was a tradition that would endure, the emerging popularity at the time for self-catering and holidaying abroad meant the camp was unlikely to survive in its original format. The closing storyline of the series was the camp undergoing drastic changes to modernise with the times, meaning that many of the staff would lose their jobs as their particular talents were no longer required.

Episodes

The pilot episode was broadcast on 1 January 1980. Hi-de-Hi! ran for nine series totalling 60 episodes, between 26 February 1981 and 30 January 1988. Because of the programme's popularity, the BBC decided to air series 3 and 4 back-to-back, the only time the BBC has ever done this with one of their own shows, which means that some sources refer to both series as series 3.

The stage show

Hi-de-Hi was made into a musical, called Hi-de-Hi – The Holiday Musical, in the early years of the show. Labelled as a "summer pantomime" by its critics, the production featured most of the TV cast plus several new characters. It did not follow the television storylines, but it was a success nonetheless. It did a summer season in Bournemouth in 1983, a Christmas season in London in 1983 and a summer season in Blackpool in 1984. It was short lived, however, when some of the cast complained that filming the TV series and doing the summer show limited their offers of acting jobs elsewhere.
At the height of its popularity, the BBC had plans to make it into a feature film, but this did not come to fruition.
In August 2009, a Hi-de-Hi! stage show toured in Torquay.
In March 2010 the show was revived for a six-month national tour produced by Bruce James Productions Limited and written by Paul Carpenter and Ian Gower, adapting scenes and storylines from episodes of the television series including A Night Not To Remember and Maplin Intercontinental. The audience were treated as campers during scenes involving camp entertainment which included musical numbers and audience participation. The production starred two members of the original cast, Barry Howard, reprising his role of Barry Stuart-Hargreaves, and Nikki Kelly, originally Sylvia, taking the role of Yvonne Stuart-Hargreaves. The tour also starred Peter Amory as Jeffrey Fairbrother, Abigail Finley as Peggy Ollerenshaw, Rebecca Bainbridge as Gladys Pugh, Damian Williams as Ted Bovis, Ben Roddy as Spike Dixon, Richard Colson as William Partridge, Andrew Fettes as Fred Quilley, Kate Burrell as Sylvia Garnsey, Lauren Harrison as Betty Whistler and Carrie Laurence as Tracey Bentwood. Several performances of the tour had to be cancelled due to low ticket sales despite positive reviews.
Following the end of the tour an amended version of the script was made available for amateur performances, the script lacks many of the camp entertainment scenes including the musical numbers whilst adding a subplot featuring Ted's ex-wife from the episode Trouble and Strife. The original tour set and costumes are available for hire from Bruce Jones Productions Limited.
Amateur productions include those by the Teignmouth Players Amateur Dramatic Society at the Carlton Theatre, Teignmouth, The Western College Players at the Drum Theatre, Plymouth,, and The Halifax Thespians at the Halifax Playhouse in March 2012. In May 2019, the Brookside Theatre, Romford staged a production.
Ballywillan Drama Group in Portrush will perform the play in April 2020 at the Riverside Theatre, Coleraine.
A stage play for amateur production by Paul Carpenter and Ian Gower is available from Samuel French Ltd of London

Theme music and merchandise

Hi-de-Hi! had a rock and roll style theme tune called "Holiday Rock". Sung by Ken Barrie on the series opening titles, the song was later released as single with the main vocal part sung by Paul Shane and the Yellowcoats. It became a UK Top 40 hit in May 1981 and Shane and members of the cast performed the song on Top of the Pops that month.
Hi-de-Hi! was one of the first BBC shows to capitalise on the merchandise market, with products such as board games, albums, books, toys and T-shirts available to buy.

Filming

The location scenes of Hi-de-Hi! were filmed at a real holiday camp run by Warners in the town of Dovercourt near Harwich, Essex.
The pilot episode and first two series were all filmed during early spring before the holiday camp was opened to the public for the summer. This is noticeable during outdoor scenes, because most of the trees on the camp site are bare. Since it was so cold during filming a lot of the outdoor scenes, the cast were continuously complaining about having to appear in summer clothing, and Jeffrey Holland was treated for hypothermia during the first series because his character spent most of the time in the swimming pool.
In keeping with a number of popular BBC comedy series, such as Croft and Perry's previous hit Dad's Army, as well as Steptoe and Son, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? and several others, in 1982 a series of BBC Radio adaptations of episodes was unofficially green lit. However, due to the changing demographics of various BBC Radio output in the early-mid 1980s, the plan was dropped.

After ''Hi-de-Hi!''

Several principal cast members were reunited in another period piece by the same writers called You Rang, M'Lord?, which piloted in 1988, and ran for four series to 1993, and again in Oh, Doctor Beeching! by David Croft and Richard Spendlove from 1995 for two series.

DVD releases

Series One and Series Two, including the pilot, were released in a boxed set by Universal Playback on 3 March 2003, followed by a boxed set of Series Three and Series Four on 5 April 2004. The Series 5 and Series 6 was released in a boxed set on 23 October 2006. Universal Playback encountered problems when releasing the first four series on DVD because they did not hold the rights to the soundtrack. As a result, some of the episodes were edited. Series Seven was released on 5 May 2008. Series Eight and Series Nine were released in a double pack on 22 September 2008. A complete boxed set containing all 9 series has also been released.