Benidorm's last ever episode: an abrupt end for this old-fashioned comedy – review
After 11 years, cameos by everyone from Joan Collins to Cilla Black and Spandau Ballet’s Tony Hadley and enough single entendres to provision a Carry On boxset, the sun has set on Brits-abroad chuckle onslaught Benidorm (ITV).
The bombshell news of the series’s abrupt cancellation had been dropped by creator Derren Litten on Twitter earlier in the week. ITV’s official line is that no decision has been taken but, with ratings down 400,000 on last season, the consensus is that this was indeed the final curtain (aside from a UK stage show tour in the autumn and winter and a rumoured spin-off set in moderately less sweltering Scarborough).
Given that Litten made the announcement only a few days before the episode went out, it’s possible that Benidorm’s fate was sealed just recently. How else to explain so low key a sign-off? The credits rolled immediately, and rather abruptly, after holidaying couple Billy (Steve Edge) and Sheron Dawson (Julie Graham) had enjoyed a 25th anniversary kiss by the pool and Monty Staines (John Challis) and Joyce Temple-Savage (Sherrie Hewson) vowed to work on their recent marriage.
Former conman Monty’s threat to take up a job in Luton – “Loooton?” gasped Solana resort manager Temple-Savage, as though it were on the far side of Jupiter – was the closest thing to a cliff-hanger and several plot lines, such as sweet holiday rep Sam Wood’s quest for love, were essentially unresolved. That said, if ex-Frankie Goes to Hollywood singer Holly Johnson was the most high profile guest they could score for the last ever instalment, perhaps it was time that Benidorm packed its bags.
Since first airing in 2007, the series has been on the receiving end of enormous snobbery – invariably from the sort who wouldn’t be seen dead catching a tan in what they would doubtless regard as package holiday purgatory. But, whatever the elitists think, Litten is to be commended for resurrecting, with uncanny fealty, the innocent inanity of the golden era of British sitcoms even as he side-stepped its less savoury aspects – i.e. the racism, sexism and homophobia.
Benidorm’s heart was always located somewhere adjacent to the right place. And so it continued through to the end, though it was as ever a bit strange to hear broad japes delivered without the traditional laughter track – all those fnar fnar quips left to hang surreally in the Spanish haze. Billy and Sheron exchanged barbed one-liners but had a tender snog; an implied romance between swinging pensioner Jacqueline Stewart (Janine Duvitski) and fugitive Ron (he’d faked his death and moved to Spain) was heartwarming rather than course.
A threat to the future of the Solano resort via a takeover by a hotel chain – a perfect out had Litten wished to apply a full stop – was meanwhile snatched away at the final moment when Temple-Savage’s boss (Michael Fenton Stevens) promised that her job would be secure. Nobody even mentioned Brexit as a potential fly in the Brits-in-Spain ointment.
The old-school gags, it is true, crumpled in the heat as often as they soared. Yet they arrived at such a breakneck tumble that the high miss-to-hit ratio felt irrelevant. There is a place for lowest common denominator humour on the schedules and Litten did a reasonably efficient job tickling ribs without rubbing anyone the wrong way (the kind of innuendo you might let slip following a Benidorm binge). Now that it's gone, we might wonder how easily ITV cook up a replacement.
