Joly made a name for himself as the sole star of the show, which he produced and directed with cameraman Sam Cadman.

Trigger Happy TV and World Shut Your Mouth, his other major show, would both be categorised as deadpan or "dry humour".

The show consists of Joly deliberately entering into ludicrous or embarrassing situations in public places, which were filmed surreptitiously by Cadman.

Sketches took place in a variety of locations, though most appeared to be filmed on the streets of Central London and Cheltenham.

Unlike most hidden camera shows, many of the scenes in Trigger Happy TV do not revolve around trapping normal people into embarrassing and impossible situations.

Such scenes include Joly answering a gigantic novelty mobile phone and shouting at the top of his voice into it (normally in quiet locations like golf courses, cinemas, libraries and parks), a chef chasing an actor in a large rat costume out of a restaurant, and two actors dressed as masked Mexican wrestlers getting into spontaneous fights in grocery stores.

Other scenes included people dressed as animals breaking into a fight and the progress of various costumed pedestrians (such as a snail and an old man) across a zebra crossing in London.

Joly also often dressed as a Cub Scout, a foreign person with bad English, or a park attendant.

He notes in the booklet of the soundtrack CD for Series 2 "Also Johnny Vaughan ask me why all the music is so sad and not plinky-plonk, happy-clappy cartoon type stuff, 'cos I don't want to be the Big Breakfast, 'nuff said."

This aired prior to screenings of Trigger Happy TV in the USA and earned critical acclaim, with one reviewer Bob Croft, for the LA Times, calling Joly "the funniest man in Britain".

The series was subsequently broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK, under the title "Trigger Happy TV USA."

Though Joly did cameo sporadically on the show (he appeared to a greater or lesser extent in 4 episodes), he was very unhappy with the programme and called it "Trigger Happy by numbers".

The British series 1 and 2 episodes also aired in the US on Comedy Central, but with different music from that used in the UK, and with a few scenes edited out.

Separate "Best of" collections have been released on VHS and DVD for each of the British Series 1, 2 and 3 (Christmas Specials), with each containing an amount of unseen footage.

The three individual releases have also been released together, along with "Being Dom Joly" as a box-set entitled "Trigger Happy TV Complete", again on both VHS and DVD, along with unseen footage of "Being..." All of the British episodes are available to view online in the UK on Channel 4's All 4 service, and available for download from the UK version of iTunes.

On 5 September 2015, Dead Parrot gained rights to start showing clips and full episodes on their YouTube channel.

Perhaps the most notable absentee from the soundtracks, considering prominence during the series, were Eels, whose song "Novocaine for the Soul" was often used but appeared on none of the CDs.

Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind" was also used multiple times in the series, in the street-artist segment, but he would not give permission for the song to be included in a compilation.

"Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five" by Paul McCartney and Wings was also used for the oversized men segments but was not on the soundtrack.