There's only one way to find out - FIIIGHT!Ear cataracts?The United Kingdom's answer to Mystery Science Theater 3000 and/or The Soup. The series run from 2001 to 2012. Comedian Harry Hill goes through television programmes that had been shown that week, often Soap Operas or one-shot documentaries, and lampoons them - for weak acting, bad writing, or general WTF-factor. It's a highly Affectionate Parody, though, with lots of silly facial expressions, cuddly Radio 4 innuendo and episode-long Running Gags. Once an Episode, two characters, concepts or something which Hill finds particularly notable would have a slapstick fight on stage.It's a silly program, but surprisingly intelligent, and genuinely funny. In many ways, it's what snarky web review shows would be if they had a budget and access to the real actors and sets from TV shows - Hill uses the latter to insert himself into scenes from this week's TV and sometimes even interact with the characters.
Contains examples of:
The Abridged Series: The This Week's [Programme] In A Nutshell jokes. The most common is This Week's Apprentice In A Nutshell, which usually consists of a few seconds of a candidate explaining why they're great at a specific task, followed by Lord Sugar's finger of doom pointing them out of the boardroom.
Affectionate Parody: The vast majority of his mockery of programmes is done in this manner, which is doubtless the reason why so many programmes' actors play along and appear on his show.
Ascended Extra: Knitted Character, literally a prop from Eastenders for a few episodes before becoming a fully-fledged character on Burp.
One could potentially extend that to include Peter the Knitted Duck from the series 9 in-programme "show" "The K Factor" (an Affectionate Parody of The X Factor featuring knitted things). Peter's even got his own FB fan group!
Aside Glance (Unusual version in which Harry glances aside at a different camera and makes a quip after his own feeder line - usually him quoting the official description of a programme)
Lampshaded in one episode where Harry claimed that whatever he says on that camera is inexplicably funny.
Biting-the-Hand Humour: Generally at the expense of home channel ITV- although the first episode where the studio changed to be filmed at Television Centre liberally sprinkled mockery of a BBC show with comments about the licence fee.
Bonus points for the number of times things in programmes manage to work themselves into running gags.
Catch Phrase: There's only one way to find out - FIGHT!
Continuity Lockout: A lot of the Running Gag sections require knowledge of previous episodes (the jelly and fight competitors). A few of them are even jokes based on apparently cancelled programmes (Chippy chiiiiips!).
Don't Explain the Joke: He occasionally does this as part of a deliberately Overly-Long Gag, such as when he explained that he had amusingly been mishearing "axolotl" as "thanks a lot".
Don't Try This at Home: Never played straight. For example, in the 2012 series a washing machine falls off a scrapyard magnet and lands on his head, after which he says "Don't try this at home, kids!", does his Aside Glance and adds: "And the thought never occurred to you until I said it!"
Early Installment Weirdness: The show took several years to settle its format. For example, there was more emphasis on sketches, and the 'fights' could happen at any time and they showed one side winning, whereas in later series the 'fight' always happens at the end of part 1 and we don't see who wins due to the advert break.
Face Heel Revolving Door: The Knitted Character turned on Harry for replacing him with Mr Fuzzy. At the end of the series, he showed up to help Harry.
Hong Kong Dub: Whenever Harry's actions are supposed to be synched to taped sounds (such as when he plays a musical instrument) he will always get it wrong towards the end as a joke. He also usually doesn't bother not moving his lips when acting as a ventriloquist.
Ho Yay: Invoked between Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and a swimmer.
Living Prop: Lampshaded in "TV Burp Stars of Tomorrow, Today!" - fake talent-spotting sections showing a clip of an extra reading a particularly mundane line, walking across a room, or similar.
Mutually Fictional: An episode of Law & Order: UK had a photofit picture of a suspect dubbed "Harry Hill" due to its resemblance to Harry—then the incident was used as the basis for a sketch on TV Burp...
Mythology Gag: A Fight between a fake coyote and a fake badger from a wildlife programme elicits a "Come on, Mr Badger- for the parade is in but half an hour!", a Call Back to his old Channel Four show.
This is also used to point out something from another show that wasn't a gag, but still remained Overly Long, such as the prizes in The Gadget Show's phone in competition.
Parrot Exposition: The famous "cataracts" and "ear cataracts" sketches. It was about Val from Emmerdale finding out she has cataracts and all of the characters who are there at the reveal repeat the word "cataracts?" over and over again. Later she's accused by a man for getting upset over a misunderstanding and she asks if her ears have cataracts as well. Both times Harry asks "[ear] cataracts?" and telephones somebody which starts a chain of characters or presenters repeating the word(s).
Precision F-Strike: Dropped on the 2004 series when God strikes Jeremy Bowen for doubting Noah's Ark, saying "Don't fuck with me, Bowen!". This was when the show was still in the Darker and Edgier late-night slot, compared to the latter Lighter and Softer Saturday night prime-time slot it's probably better known to be shown at.
Real Men Cook: Averted. A Running Gag is Harry being unimpressed or even offended by TV chefs' insistence on trying to evangelise cooking to the masses, and he often makes jokes based on him living entirely off microwaved ready meals.
Rhymes on a Dime: The "TV Burp Poetry Corner" segment, which picks out lines from soaps and dramas which (presumably inadvertently) rhyme.
The Stinger - since the 2009 series, an out of context clip from a random show is played before the Avalon Television logo.
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall: There we have a Full English Breakfast Salad...
Harry: That is a crime against God!
This Trope is [BLEEP]: A wildlife presenter looking for king penguins was changed, with the addition of a few well-placed censor bleeps, into a wildlife presenter looking for "***king penguins!"
Ventriloquism: A common gag is for him to interpret the voiceover on nature programmes as being the animals speaking.
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