Review: Benidorm Live

This is the real deal, the silly campery, saucy seaside postcard humour, the legacy of Carry On taken forward into the 21st century - what's not to love, especially when it's done this well, and the audience reaction proves it.

Benidorm Live review, Palace Theatre Manchester

If there's any doubt in the minds of Benidorm fans as to whether or not the long-running, award-winning ITV comedy should be brought back from its shock axing earlier this year as a film, then the Benidorm Live stage show should quash all concerns.

Benidorm Live - Palace Theatre, Manchester review

A riotous night out - especially with a group of friends, and don't worry if you haven't seen the TV show, the plot is super easy to follow and the humour will have you crying with laughter. Benidorm Live is as camp as Christmas!

Theatre review: Benidorm Live!

Times are supposed to have moved on, in British popular culture, from the days when sex was a naughty holiday pastime conjured up in a McGill postcard, and homosexuality a joke patiently played out by John Inman in Are You Being Served; but sometimes, faced with the full-on showbiz energy of a show like Benidorm Live!, at the Playhouse this week, it's possible to wonder whether the changes are much more than skin deep.

Benidorm Live review

Boldly brash - and brazen with it - the live musical version of ITV hit Benidorm combines plenty of recognition for the show's fans with the kind of comedy that would make a panto dame blush.

Benidorm's last ever episode review

An abrupt end for this old-fashioned comedy.

For sheer flamboyance, there's no beating tubby hairdresser Kenneth (Tony Maudsley), who flounced into the sea as Benidorm (ITV) returned.

He was trying to swim back to the Solana hotel, from an island off the Costa Blanca coast, but only his necklace was washed ashore. Of the rest, nothing was found, not even his silver posing briefs. If he doesn't turn up, it's a clever way to write his character out of the show -- with the possibility of a comeback one day.

Nigel Havers. as the smarmy dentist taking over Kenneth's salon, is smoothly amusing, and the wonderful Janine Duvitski as elderly swinger Jacqueline is back.

But most of the best-loved Benidorm regulars have long since departed, and the show has a decrepit air, like a cheap hotel at the tail-end of the season.

Full marks, though, to a hilarious cameo from Spandau Ballet's Tony Hadley, sending himself up as a shameless narcissist churning out the band's hits at a wedding. That was pure Gold.

In praise of Benidorm, the UK's most under-rated sitcom

It's a funny old game, comedy. Steve Pemberton's critical accolades for The League of Gentleman, and BBC2's late night cult hit, Inside No 9, are legion. But you'll be hard pressed to read glowing reviews of his eight years starring in the ITV comedy Benidorm. In fact you'll be hard pressed to read anything glowing from sniffy critics about the hit sitcom, despite its millions of viewers, longevity and viewer-voted National Television Awards. In fact, one critic went so far as to describe the viewing public a "disgrace" for voting for it.