Harry Enfield

While BBC1 aired Lenny Henry's Danny And The Human Zoo, it can only be coincidence that simultaneously on BBC2 Harry Enfield was himself blacking up as a black-and-white minstrel and reaching for his best Brummie accent briefly to play Henry himself in An Evening with Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse.

This was a long-overdue satire on the celebrity audience, planted-question-filled "Evening With" format, even if it was also a vehicle for a 25-year retrospective, hosted by the men themselves.

Dressing up as Melvyn Bragg in order to offer intellectual justification for some of your more questionable comedic decisions, not least blacking up to play Nelson Mandela, doesn't actually make them any more intellectually justified, especially when, on the other channel, Lenny Henry's childhood is being dramatised as an exercise in positive discrimination. But the impressions were, of course, hilarious. Ian Hislop, if he saw it, might never have the courage to sneer again.

To celebrate 25 years of Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse as a telly double act, they assemble a mock "audience with" show, featuring the pair impersonating celebrities from Ricky Gervais and a foul-mouthed Stephen Hawking to, for reasons unknown, Bill Gates. Questions from the "celebs" are then used to introduce clips of their work together. They may not want to be remembered by the number of gags that fall painfully flat over what is, at best, a very mixed hour.

An Evening with Harry Enfield & Paul Whitehouse, review

What started out as embarrassing and puzzling show turned into a highly amusing special, says Christopher Howse.

Review: An Evening with Harry Enfield & Paul Whitehouse

After last year's brilliant Story Of The Twos to mark BBC Two's 50th birthday, Harry and Paul return to the channel to honour another great institution: themselves.

Why can't the BBC do good comedy anymore? Recently we've had truly awful things such as Citizen Khan, Mrs Brown's Boys and, currently showing, the embarrassing Mountain Goats. The last time the BBC managed to provoke a laugh from me was with Murder In Successville on BBC3, a channel soon to be shoved online only.

And there were laughs in the one-off special of Burnistoun, but this was shown in Scotland only. When it comes to the BBC's mainstream, UK-wide comedy, where oh where is the good stuff?

Maybe they feel this terrible dearth of excellent comedy, as they're giving us a reunion show with Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse looking back - yes, looking back - to the good old days.

The programme puts Enfield and Whitehouse on stage together in front of an admiring crowd and parodies the An Audience With... shows, but the nice twist is that when we flash to shots of the audience we see Enfield and Whitehouse in the crowd, dressed up as various famous people, and asking cheeky questions. Jimmy Carr, Harry Hill, Ricky Gervais and Prince Charles are all gloriously ridiculed and in between we have great clips of the comedy pair's old shows.

Seven questions with... Harry Enfield

One half of infamous sketch duo Harry and Paul, Harry Enfield has been satirising popular culture for decades.

Radio Times review

Reader, I LOL-ed. This is brilliant. For the third and final part of Jon Canter's blisteringly funny sitcom, time-travelling biographer James Boswell (Miles Jupp) meets Harold Pinter.

Harry Enfield is spot-on as the master of comic menace. There are a couple of obvious gags ("Would The Caretaker be different without the pauses?" "It would be... shorter.") but Canter writes with originality and depth.

Bizarrely, this would make an excellent introduction to Pinter's work. It's almost -- though it pains me to say it -- edutainment. Essential listening.

Video: Paul Whitehouse on mental health comedy Nurse

Paul Whitehouse is known for his larger than life characters, catchphrases and 25 year partnership with Harry Enfield.

This week, he returns to our screens - but his new series takes on an issue that's no laughing matter.

Nurse follows the life of an overstretched community mental health health worker, played by Esther Coles, as she does her daily rounds.