TV Burp (found Australian adaptation of "Harry Hill's TV Burp"; 2009)
Harry Hill's TV Burp was a British comedy TV series produced by Avalon Television that was broadcast on ITV from December 22nd, 2001 to April 7th, 2012. The series was written and hosted by British comedian Harry Hill and featured him riffing on clips from various programs that had aired on British TV throughout the preceding week, often focusing on the unintentional humor drawn from out-of-context pieces of action or dialogue within the original programs. The show aired for 15 series between 2001 and 2012, and was a massive hit with both audiences and critics, regularly receiving viewers in the millions throughout the entirety of its run and winning a BAFTA award for Best Entertainment Performance in 2009.
TV Burp
Given the massive success of Harry Hill's TV Burp in its home country, it would seem natural that foreign TV executives would want to export the format of the series to other countries. An attempt at this came in 2009 when Australian TV network Seven began production on an Australian adaptation of the series simply titled TV Burp.
This version of the series was hosted by Australian comedian Ed Kavalee, and featured a far greater focus on Australian TV programming, with programs featured in the series including Neighbours, MasterChef Australia, Home and Away, and Australian Idol among others. But despite the change in host and location, the format of the original series was largely unchanged within this new incarnation, with many of the original show's elements being retained. The theme song and set of the original series are largely kept the same in the Australian adaptation, as were many elements of the original series' comedy, with recurring segments such as "TV Highlight of the Week" being maintained, along with the tradition of each episode ending with a musical performance from someone featured in one of the clips shown. However, one element of the original series that was noticeably excised from the Australian adaptation were the fight segments that were used to introduce the commercial break. These segments were removed due to Australia typically having three ad breaks in their TV programs, as opposed to the single ad break often featured in UK programming.[1]
But while the UK version of TV Burp was an instant success, the Australian version was not, with the second episode receiving only 846,000 viewers and failing to place within the top ten most viewed programs of its broadcast date.[2] Ratings only further declined from there, resulting in Seven opting to cancel the show after one series, leaving a planned second series (intended to begin airing in 2010) unproduced.[3]
Availability
Eight episodes of TV Burp were produced and broadcast between July 23rd and September 10th of 2009. But due to low viewership, footage of the series had become very rare in the years since its broadcast, with only one full episode of the series being available online, along with clips and promos from several others. Clips of the series were previously available to be streamed on Yahoo! Australia's website, but these clips have since been removed with no functioning archives to speak of.[4]
However, on August 5th, 2023, the series in its entirety was uploaded to private torrent tracking website TheEmpire by user xyssod, rendering it found. However, the audio of all these episodes was badly out of sync to the actions in the show meaning the eps are in need of extensive repairs. [5]
Episode List
| # | Air Date | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | July 23rd, 2009 | Found |
| 2 | July 30th, 2009 | Found |
| 3 | Aug 6th, 2009 | Found |
| 4 | Aug 13th, 2009 | Found |
| 5 | Aug 20th, 2009 | Found |
| 6 | Aug 27th, 2009 | Found |
| 7 | Sep 3rd, 2009 | Found |
| 8 | Sep 10th, 2009 | Found |
Gallery
External Links
References
- ↑ Blog post discussing the series. Retrieved 28 Sep '22
- ↑ Article mentioning the low viewership of TV Burp. Retrieved 28 Sep '22
- ↑ News article about the planned second series of TV Burp. Retrieved 28 Sep '22
- ↑ Archived page for the series on Yahoo! Australia's website. Retrieved 28 Sep '22
- ↑ Page on TheEmpire containing the download link for TV Burp. Retrieved 11 Aug '23