Rating: 
Refreshingly unshouty Kids TV fun with... Rufus Hound???
- Creepy: Rufus as Cheryl
You may know Rufus Hound best for his disturbingly mustachioed, deadpan slink through Cheryl Cole/Tweedy’s Fight For This Love
Let’s Dance for Sport Relief is a Saturday night family entertainment type show where comedians, TV chefs and other faces you know but would struggle to name recreate famous dance routines with nominally hilarious results. It is awful television.
When the dancing is good, the format is boring and when the dancing is bad it is embarrassing and uncomfortable to watch.
However, even this poor cousin of celebrity reality TV vehicles has a decent audience, and with its charitable, philanthropic credentials, the power to jump-start careers.
Hound, piggybacking a little on wor Cheryl’s popularity, deservedly romped to victory thanks to the most polished routine of the series and his tangible charisma. Evidently, think the BBC, the public have spoken; they like Hound’s dancing transvestism and therefore want to see him on television as much as the schedules will bear, but what to do with him?
Those that have been following Hound’s career a little longer will know Hound as a sort of comedian, first coming to prominence as a roving reporter type at Glastonbury, before a few appearances as presenter of an ailing Top of the Pops.
He was also briefly Claudia Winkelman’s predecessor on Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes 2, and more recently he has become a permanent guest on Leigh Francis’ Keith Lemon-fronted ITV2 panel show Celebrity Juice as well as a team captain, opposite Marcus Brigstocke, on Argumental- an original bit of comedy programming from digital channel Dave.
It’s an unconvincing odds and sods sort of CV for a man who is not quite a stand-up and a bit funny looking to be a mainstream presenter. One thing you would say, having briefly glanced at his IMDB page is that he has no form as an actor; serial voice-over merchant, occasional audience wrangler, and ironic, laconic studio guest and talking head, yes, but nothing to mark him out as a budding thespian.
Which makes Hounded all the more surprising and confusing.
Hounded is a sci-fi sit-com, commissioned for the CBBC channel but showing on BBC1’s terrestrial slot for children’s programming as well, with Rufus Hound cast in the lead role as a version of himself.
He plays a TV presenter- glib, smirking, it’s Rufus basically- blasted into a parallel dimension by his future self, and forced to live the same day over and over, Groundhog Day
Every episode Hound wakes up, gives us the skinny to camera, and then has to foil a fiendish plot to destroy the world, hatched by the evil Dr Muhahahaha. If Hound succeeds- and of course he does- the bad doctor hits a big red button, the whole day rewinds and Rufus has to get up and do it all over again.
Each new (same) day, Dr Mu – played by familiar faced actor Colin McFarlane – hatches a different scheme to try and get the better of Hound, and our hirsute, handlebar-wearing hero foils him with the aid of what looks like a plutonium powered watch, and a couple of annoying kids that turn up in whatever alternate universe Hound’s heroics are required. It’s a bit like a mix of The Goodies
- Rufus & Dr Muhahahaha
Hounded is silly and good-hearted, and doesn’t look too cheap and wobbly. The episode I saw, Eggy Breath, concerned a plot by Dr Mu to isolate the grot particle in order to give everyone on earth terribly smelly breath, and thus make the planet uninhabitable. There were needless to say lots of green burps to keep the young ’uns amused.
There were also a few good gags for a kids show, with a Douglas Adams
The acting is good, not too tongue in cheek and over the top, and even the kids performances don’t grate. Hound is steady enough too. He is likeable, and comfortable as he should be while essentially playing himself. The pot-bellied funnyman is fine when delivering his lines, and doing the gags and wry looks, and though he looks a bit awkward when pressed into any proper acting- reacting to and interacting with the set and that sort of thing- he charms his way through.
Hounded probably isn’t a show that anyone apart from Hound and the commissioner wanted to see made- he surely isn’t the buzz name on the playground- but since it has been made, you could do worse than sit down with your kids and watch it. Its a lot quieter, cleverer and subtler than much of the tweenage appropriate output on TV, and Hound and the cast’s enthusiasm for their featherlight material is infectious.
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