Harry Hill to write soap spoof

[Alberon]

Harry Hill is writing, but not appearing in, a new spoof soap pilot called Xtreem Soap according to Media Grauniad.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,1532671,00.html

Comedian Harry Hill is to write an ITV1 pilot for a spoof soap featuring Darren Day as a love-rat landlord and Just Good Friends star Jan Francis as his mum.

Xtreem Soap will be set in the fictional town of Waffingham and revolve around the local duck pond.

The show is being billed as a "collision of popular soap themes and characters - imagine a town where EastEnders meets Emmerdale, with a splash of Holby City and just a tiny bit of The Bill thrown in for good measure".

A lot of the TV Burp writing team are on board as well and it could be good. Though it's not nearly as innovative as the PR makes out. The Americans did much the same thing with Soap 25 years ago.

[Pinball]

I was about to say - it's been done. I've got seasons 1-3 of Soap on R1 boxset. The 4th and final season hasn't yet been released.

Soap is one of my top 5 favourite comedy programmes evarrrrr.

On that basis, and because of Harry Hill (and team's) involvement in this project, I'm really looking forward to it. The modern soap opera is a dire cavalcade of social engineering, pseudo-education and histrionic over-plotting. IMO there are only a small number of things that people can do to other people. Once the usual repertoire has been gone through a couple of dozen times with the main characters, it gets tiresome.

[Purple Tentacle]

Ooh marvellous! And written by a man who REALLY knows his soap!

[lankinpark]

I'm disappointed, to be honest. There are far better things Hill could be doing. I don't think soap really needs spoofing - it does a good job of sending itself up every now and then. Particularly with more postmodern soaps like Neighbours and Hollyoaks.

It's one of those cases like George Bush, where the jokes are so obvious you might as well let the audience do it for themselves.

That said, I do hope it's good.

[Labian Quest]

Victoria Wood also got there before them with Acorn Antiques, which was very funny so maybe there is a bit more mileage left in the idea.

[The Mumbler]

There was Brass as well (Granada, 1983-84), written by two Coronation Street writers - John Stevenson and Julian Roach.

Even What's Up Doc? on Saturday mornings did an EastEnders parody every week.

This might be good.  As long as it has some bite to it.

[Bert Thung]

I'm looking forward to this. TV Burp has proven that it is possible to make exciting comedy that's very ITV.

[Purple Tentacle]

The Real McCoy also did quite a good Eastenders parody every week.

[Helvetica Scenario]

Odd that no one has mentioned The Bureau yet.

[neveragain]

Although I would be as chuffed as anyone if this was fantastic (and hope that it is), I really don't think Hill's strict enough to make good satirical points about the genre of soap. When the thread title came up, I had nightmare visions of a giant mongoose stealing apples from the local badger parade and all of those irritatingly shit costumes he's fond of using. Perhaps, because personally I haven't been blessed to see a lot of Hillstuff, I've inadvertently pranced over the brunt of the gold. Hope that's the case, hope it really is great.

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

Watch TV Burp, neveragain - he's more than capable of this sort of thing (and it's miles away from his earlier Badger stuff). I just think he may have done it all before.

[A Passing Turk Slipper]

Even though his earlier badger stuff was 'badger stuff' it was still surprisingly good with it though, far from the Dare To Believe-like badger shite which lacked any charm or wit at all.