Here is the final sketch from the Mitchell and Webb look,
Do not watch if you don’t want to burst into tears. A Chinaman costume is worn, but it is tastefully done.
:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(
Perhaps you meant “tastily” done?
That was touching.
Two others:
-the final moments of the last episode of Black Adder, in which a WW1 suicidal charge into no-man’s land is finally understood to be unavoidable.
-Rowley Birkin, QC, featured on the fast show: (relevant sketch is [url=]here)
Just to add to the catalogue, a few other comedies I’ve found almost unbearably sad:
After Hours
Idiocracy
Barton Fink
What’s wrong with “tastefully”? That’s how I usually hear it as an adverb.
It was a joke referring to the video, not an actual correction of grammar.
If Onion videos count as sketches, there’s the one about the gay nine year-old cherishing his lunch breaks because he can spend 30 minutes alone eating lunch in stairwell and get a respite from the constant bullying of the rest of his day.
If you watch the whole Mitchell & Webb episode, the final sketch is a piss-take of the Black Adder finale, which they ripped to shreds earlier as maudlin nonsense.
Ah, damn. It got me.
Incidentally, you might be interested to know that Ian McKellen will be playing “Old Holmes” in A Slight Trick of the Mind. I expect there will be a bit of this in that.
The “I Remember You” episode of Adventure Time.
pancakes3 has it: the costume involved the application of food. Sorry, I should have put a smiley in there.
Ah ha. Missed that.
Malformed link.
Barton Fink is a comedy? Can’t see it myself…
I can’t find the classic Steve Martin and Gilda Radner fantasy dance number, but that, and the film of John Belushi as an old man looking at the graves of his SNL cast mates are my two additions to the list.
While it wasn’t quite as deep, the “Simon and Marcy” episode was a bit of a tear-jerker too.
When Rodney Dangerfield died, they had a nice skit where Horatio Sands played Rodney approaching the Pearly Gates. St. Peter tells him to get in he’ll have to answer a few questions, and proceeds to feed him a bunch of set-ups for his jokes.
That kind of thing.
At the end
Benny Hill once did a silent skit about a bum sleeping on a park bench. He dances with a young lady who is really part of a wine ad on a poster; she holds a long-stemmed rose. Then the bum wakes up and is rudely hustled away by a cop. Closeup of a real rose on the bench. This always made me cry bitterly because I never succeeded socially. 
Why did you find Idiocracy’s ending sad? And did you watch the movie all the way to the end? (There’s a very cool bonus scene after the credits…)