Geoffrey Hutchings

Geoffrey Hutchings obituary

Shakespearean actor who played many familiar roles on film and television.

It's more of the same ribaldry as the third series of the comedy about the Spanish resort continues. Madge (Shelia Reid) is uneasy when her estranged daughter Valda (Lorraine Bruce) turns up in the sunny resort and is convinced that she is there only for Mel's (Geoffrey Hutchings) money. Though that should be the least of her worries as a professional con man (Robin Askwith) arrives.

This popular, tasteless and occasionally funny drama following British people in a holiday resort returns. Tonight, Mel (Geoffrey Hutchings) enlists the help of Mick (Steve Pemberton) to open his new mobility shop, with disastrous results. Meanwhile Martin (Nicholas Burns) has a new girlfriend, Brandy (Sheridan Smith). The comedy is hit and miss, but the performances are good, and so Benidorm wins points for trying.

Derren Litten's Costa-del-Hell comedy returns for a third series. It's the same gallery of grotesques who gather once again by the pool of the all-inclusive hotel Solana: the fractious Garvey family; corpulent swingers Donald and Jacqueline; and drip Martin, who has mislaid his wife and arrives instead with a brassy blonde called Brandy (guest star Sheridan Smith) in tow. By now we're used to Benidorm's broad comic brush. The characters don't just argue, they hurl curses at each other. If someone has an out-of-date mobile phone, it's not just a few years old but a big 1980s brick. When a character gets comically sunburnt, it's because he was wearing a silver suit and riding a 12ft-high bicycle. Nothing happens by halves. But although the comic timing is laboured, the re-creation of hellishness can be spot on. The scene where The Oracle (Johnny Vegas) is driven mad by his mum's trivia-quiz ignorance is inspired, and Geoffrey Hutchings' scooter mogul Mel is superbly awful.