[Humphrey Hacker]

As we saw with land based TV, being high brow and sophisticated doesn't get butts on seats.  If it had survived it would have had to go downmarket to ITV's level and possibly even lower.

Heil Honey only get s reputation as being a piece of tat because that reputation is almost certainly based on talking heads to the sort of repackaged "top <something or other" stuff that Channel 5 keeps pushing out.  Those heads probably saw "key" portions of this show nicked off YouTube and made comments.

Could probably be argued Heil Honey was too clever for its own good as I don't think the pilot was that bad to be honest (and let's be fair, Hitler's been ridiculed and parodied so many times over the years in film and TV that Heil Honey looks relatively tame by comparison).  Like most things that were heavily controversial at the time, you look at it and think what's the problem here?

Maybe the context played a part. BSB wanted to make headlines and Heil Honey was chosen as the show to do so. It's plausible to assume that Jews and their supporters were livid and that would have been entirely understandable. 

Like you I've seen the pilot and I didn't find it funny at all. I don't think that anyone would dare try to recreate it now or in the future.