O/T Benny Hill Show

[Peter Chadwick]

Hi,

I've been spending a few enjoyable evenings catching up with my Benny Hill DVD's and watching them all in chronological order, have come to the conclusion the laughter was canned.

Listen out in particular for one lady 'cackling' every so often - she can't have possible gone to nearly every recording Benny did through the 70's.

Occasionally you do get to see 'the audience' but of course they could be from another show entirely.

Still thoroughly enjoyable stuff though.

Peter

[hartley967]

Well I certianly remember one Thames BH show. where a guy in the audience could not stop laughing and you could see Benny aknowledge that, he was not heard on any other show.

However what happened with typical comedies of that time was that some of the sketches were saved for later transmissions, so obviously they would have the contemporary audience on there.

Dont forget that laughter track engineering was also pretty primitive at that time, it always sounded false and listening to something like ' Bewitched ' was about as sophisticated as it got.

Also depends if you were watching the shows in their orginal 1969-70s broadcast format which was about 4 hour shows a year?
If you were watching the half hour export compliations that came later, then these were well butchered.

[Peter Bradford]

hartley967 said:

Dont forget that laughter track engineering was also pretty primitive at that time, it always sounded false and listening to something like ' Bewitched ' was about as sophisticated as it got.

I would have to take a slight issue with that. Done well it can be very convincing and as a member of the viewing public you wouldn't know the audio had been sweetened. As for shows that were clearly completely overdubbed with 'fake' laughter etc I think the UK produced 'The Muppet Show' would serve as a masterclass in how to do it 'properly'. Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh in saying I take 'issue' - but done well, audience sweetening can be 100% effective.