Did you catch BBC One’s celebratory The One Lenny Henry earlier this year?
Buoyed by the success of the excellent The One Ronnie and sensing an opportunity to bring fans of a 1980s comedy to the channel in a wave of nostalgia, this was a vehicle for Lenny Henry to revisit his traditional stand-up and characters recipe that served him so well in the past… until he went too far and got obsessed by Delbert Wilkins.
If you’re of the right age, you might recall how the occasionally funny The Lenny Henry Show degenerated from being a reasonable comedy showcase into being a sitcom about a self-obsessed pirate DJ. Somehow the BBC commissioned two series of this risible crap – but then they quite literally threw money at all sorts of rubbish in those days, so this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
So The One Lenny Henry reverted to the original format of the Midlander’s original shows, but sadly much of it is stand-up, something which Henry is apparently congenitally awful at. His character comedy – Wilkins aside – is far better, allowing him to get into costume and do some acting.
Acting is where Henry seems to have succeeded most in his career. Chef! was years ahead of its time, and if anything that this very likeable comic has done is overdue a revisit it isn’t his stand-up routine, it’s the show that pre-empted the rise of Jamie Oliver and other celebrity chefs. Meanwhile Henry proved his acting ability by starring in Othello at the West Yorkshire Playhouse… which again begs the question that I’ve been teetering upon throughout this piece.
Why bother with the stand-up? Henry being multi-talented is fine, but he really should at least get some decent material. I’m sure this isn’t a race/culture thing; Lenny Henry has always effortlessly appealed to a multi-cultural audience. No, this is down to poor writing, something that is highlighted in the difference in quality between stand-up and sketches in The One Lenny Henry. It’s the same difference that can be found in most of the early episodes of The Lenny Henry Show.
It’s also the difference that can be seen when you compare The One Lenny Henry with Big and Small, the children’s show about two furry characters that you will find most mornings on the CBeebies channel. Here, Lenny is excellent, portraying two characters with humour, warmth and the odd touch of pathos.
At times it is funnier than his stand-up.