Hebburn (2012)

While there'd been a fair amount of local radio buzz about this show, I only really made the connection the day before its first episode (or rather my wife did) that it was written by a stand up comic we'd seen recently. Written by and featuring Jason Cook, Hebburn is a comedy inspired at least partly by his own life in the South Tyneside town. I went to see Jason as part of a charity night along with a great line-up of other comedians, so not really being familiar with him I made sure to look him up online beforehand. I have to say that some of his previous TV appearances didn't really prepare me for how vicious he could be as part of an unreserved stand up gig - one heckler put down I'll always remember seemed to sum it up quite well: "Shut up or I'll fucking destroy you with words".

Unsurprisingly there was little of this trademark venom here, with his character Ramsey being something of an ineffectual rogue; selling pirate DVDs bought from a kid who had moments earlier decried him as a 'Wazzock'. The show promises to focus on the family of prodigal son Jack (played by another North East comedian Chris Ramsey) and his Jewish girlfriend/secret vegas bride Sarah. Some of the build up to the show described it as being like a North East Royle Family but (and I mean this with no hint of malice) it didn't really feel in the same league as that. While the Royle Family took itself very seriously and you always felt that the characters could be real, this established quite early on that it would be much larger than life and tend to exaggerate some stereotypes in the quest for comedy.

Despite this, I felt that it was most successful when dropping in very well observed little nuggets of real life. As an adopted Geordie Son myself, the immediate warm family welcome for Sarah felt very familiar. As was the assertion that somewhere as close as York was a vaguely exotic 'Southern' place (apparently Liverpool isn't in the North West). Perhaps best of all was the simple resolution to a discussion about helping out with the family, with Jack realising immediately that his father asking for help meant the situation was important enough to just get done, no questions asked.

Vic Reeves (using his real name Jim Moir) was a bit of a revelation to me as the father of the family. I've never been the biggest fan of his brand of comedy in general, so along with numerous reports that he could sometimes not be the nicest person in real life, I had kind of been a little soured towards him. But here he seemed to play the role pitch perfect, reigning in his personality just enough to create someone who was clearly still a joker but knew how to be serious too. I think sometimes you have to remember to try and divorce an actors individual performance from what else you know or expect from them, which suggests to me that he has done very well in the role for me to overlook all of that.

Watching it a day after it aired, I couldn't avoid hearing impressions from the local populace on the radio in the meantime. While it elicited infectious cackles from some, it seemed to draw the ire of the town's local councillor at the very least. I couldn't quite decide what to make of his viewpoint, on the one hand wondering if he had a sense of humour at all but also guessing that even if it had blown him away, he probably couldn't say so publicly. I'm not sure exactly how much I'd agree with his opinion that it just played up to false stereotypes - especially being written by someone from the area, I don't doubt that most characters had some basis in truth. I think it showed enough promise that it would be foolish to dismiss it so early on and given Jason Cook's description of the show as a whole, hopefully the heart of it will be the positive connections that people have - even if he did rather deliberately subvert this by the end of the first episode. Given that I never really expected it to be something I would feel compelled to write about, I think it must be doing something right though.