The number of obscure, forgotten British television shows from the distant past still boggles my mind. I've been writing Curious British Telly for close to 15 years and I'm still being knocked sideways by the obscurities which suddenly present themselves. Monkey Business is yet another oddity which deserves to be held up and examined with modern eyes.
Over the last couple of years, numerous oddities of British television seem to have been sneaking out of the archives onto various members-only torrent site. This is exactly where I found Monkey Business. And when I saw the description as being a 1985 panel show featuring Floella Benjamin and biologist Jeremy Cherfas, well, I had to leap at the chance of dipping into its first episode.
Had I ever heard of Monkey Business? Had anyone ever mentioned it to me as a show to track down? Had it featured on Britain's 100 Greatest Television Programmes Ever Known to Man? The answer to all of these is a hard no. So, yes, it was perfect for Curious British Telly. The whole series was at my disposal, a total of eight episodes, but, for reasons which will become clear, I decided to treat this as a one-episode exercise.
A primetime series - it ran in a 7.40pm slot on Wednesday evenings on BBC1, where it went up against the gargantuan Coronation Street - Monkey Business is less in-depth biological exploration, more lighthearted gags and GCSE biology. To be fair, the latter is probably what a primetime audience was looking for in 1985. But what did, for the first episode at least, Monkey Business consist of?
Hosted by Henry Kelly, wearing one of the finest 1980s Argyle sweaters ever broadcast to the nation, Monkey Business is a swiftly paced panel show with Floella Benjamin and Jeremy Cherfas as the resident team captains. This opening episode also features Liza Goddard, Cliff Morgan, Michael Clegg and Pam Ayres.
It could easily be the lineup of a Blankety Blank episode from the same period, although I have to admit that Jeremy Cherfas was completely new to me. Floella Benjamin represents nothing but fond memories from my time as a young pup, so it was delightful to see her cheery disposition firing on all cylinders here.
The set is colourful, albeit very mid-1980s and could, at first glance, easily be the set from a children's jungle-based game show. Still, the computerised fruit machine monkey prop is beautifully archaic to modern eyes. The game itself is, as I said, quickfire, so the rounds come thick and fast. These involve decoding anagrams on a biological theme, composing animal-based limericks, identifying the odd-one out and filling in the biological blanks in famous song lyrics. Sure, it's fluff, but it's harmless fluff.
I had intended to cover the entire series of Monkey Business, but there's not enough there to justify a deep dive. It's amiable enough, but I reckon that once you've seen one episode you've seen them all. The guests rotated about a bit across the rest of the series - with Neil Innes, Jilly Cooper and Derek Nimmo all featuring - but panel shows of this era rarely shook things up.
Ultimately, my main bugbear with the series is that it feels much, much more like a daytime programme. Yes, with the benefit of hindsight, much of television's past was far from exhilarating or inspiring, but the basic-concept programmes we do remember always had a little sparkle - see Terry Wogan on Blankety Blank. Perhaps, one day, I'll stick on another episode of Monkey Business to accompany my lunchtime sandwiches, but, for now, I'll be seeking out more oddities.
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