Oh, damn, what a shame it’s “Elizabeth” Blackadder and not “Edmund.” I might note the Scottish paper—with a particularly dour humorlessness—makes no mention of the fictional Blackadder family tree.
So far nobody seems to have mentioned “Thompson,” a shortlived half-hour sketch comedy program starring Emma Thompson before the general public in the US had heard of her. About ten years ago, the local PBS station in St. Louis ran it – it couldn’t have been more than six weeks, which is normal for a British TV series. It was perfectly hilarious, and I’d place it almost in the same league with the classics: Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, Yes, Minister/Prime Minister, and Red Dwarf. Kenneth Branagh was in the cast of “Thompson”, too, in a context that made it fairly clear that in England, he rode to fame on her coattails, and not the other way around as happened here in the US. I don’t get BBC America, so all my exposure to these things is via PBS, which may be why I know little other than the obvious classics. “As Time Goes By” is certainly charming, and it’s well-acted, God knows, but it isn’t exactly funny.
Someone earlier mentioned “The Norman Conquests.” This was in fact a '70s trilogy of stage plays by Alan Ayckbourn, who also wrote “Absurd Person Singular,” “How The Other Half Loves,” and just about every other light British sex farce for the stage in the past thirty years or so. I once played Norman myself back in my acting days, and I saw a production of one of those plays as recently as last month. The version that played on BBC years ago, with Tom Conti as Norman, was certainly done as well as you can do that sort of thing, but stage plays just don’t translate well to TV.
[hijack]** Eve** Re. Blackadder, I think all possible Blackadder jokes would have lost their novelty value for Elizabeth Blackadder many years ago, (horrible to think 1983 was a long time ago 
)so it would probably have looked like really lame journalism by now, and maybe not a good career move.
[/hijack]
I do wish they would rerun them all though.
Monty Python, Young Ones, and Black Adder top the list - my s/o & I spent our first week getting to know each other sitting on his bed watching every single Flying Circus episode. His parents had kindly taped the Comedy Central Python-a-Thon for him.
Nothing like bonding over Pepperpots…we knew we were meant for each other right then!
They just started showing The Vicar of Dibley here and we’re already addicted.
The only other Britcom I’ve enjoyed that’s not mentioned here is The Two Ronnies, which starred Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett, IIRC. But that’s an old, old show. I saw it in New Zealand almost thirty years ago. They had a segment which was a serialized spy story, a la James Bond. The closing line, as they were stuck in some difficult situation and accompanied by the usual nubile young female enemy agents, was always: “One thing was certain. There would be very little sleep for anyone that night!”
And speaking of OLD British shows – how about The Goon Show?
A few I haven’t seen mentioned that tickled my fancy:
From a while ago a short-ish Michael Palin show called ‘Ripping Yarns’ and also the French and Saunders spoofs of Hollywood blockbusters. Also, I find most things by Victoria Wood to be excellent and, of course, none are better than the ‘Acorn Antiques’ spoof sketches with Julie Walters as the legendary Mrs Overall !!
Then there’s ‘Men Behaving Badly’ which dated quite quickly (IMHO) but has the redeeming quality of having Eddie Izzard starring in the first series.
Incidently, there is a show at the moment that’s one of the funniest I’ve seen for a long time. It’s called ‘Trigger Happy’ and I’d recommend you catch it should it arrive on a screen near you.
God, I love the Victoria Wood / Julie Walters combination.
{b]Ripping Yarns** was great! heh heh Across the Andes by Frog. Was Eric Olthwaite one of the Ripping Yarns too? Oh, why don’t they repeat it?
Citizen Smith with Robert Lindsay as a rather useless campaigner for “freedom for Tooting” was good too. Was that shown in the States?
IIRC it was Harry Enfield in the first (ITV) Men Behaving Badly. Eddie Izzard was still in his ‘If I’m seen on TV, no-one will appreciate me’ phase.
You know, I have to stop posting in the middle of the night ! It’s becoming embarrassing to wake up to what seemed a perfectly recollection just a few hours earlier – Pjen, you’re quite right.
Would that be Piggy Malone and Charley Farley?
Do you Americans know about Kenny Everett? It’s all done in the best possible taste!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1143000/1143162.stm
From BBC News, 02/06/01: Ancient Tribe Under Threat
“In the rainforest of Mexico, there still exists an indigenous tribe of Indians who live off the land and worship their ancient gods… Electricity arrived in the village eight years ago, and the most recent modern temptation is satellite TV… Mexican soaps and the universally understandable Mr. Bean are reportedly favourite programmes.”
PS In my earlier post, I forgot to list a longtime fave, Monty Python.
God I was such a HUGE Young Ones fan. Practically cause I knew one or another person that were almost mirror images of those guys.
Remember:
-Neil the Hippie as a Bobbie “Knock Knock…open up its the pigs!”
-Neil: Well, it’s raining. My hair will lose its shape! Anyway, I haven’t got any money!
Rick: There’s plenty of money in the kitty!
Neil: Yeah, but he’s constipated, isn’t he?
Vyvyan: [wielding dagger] Well, let’s open him up, then
-RICK: [smirks] Vyvyan, Vyvyan. [Vyvyan hits Rick again, knocking him off his chair. Vyv sits down] Come on, come on. [stands] Let’s play Bottcelli! Come on, I’ll start. [laughs] I’m A.
MIKE: What?
RICK: I’m A.
MIKE: [pause] Banana. You’re a banana.
RICK: No, you don’t understand.
VYVYAN: A moron?
RICK: No, no, no. My name begins with the letter A.
MIKE: You mean Rick isn’t your real name?
RICK: Yes, of course it is.
MIKE: And it begins with an A.
RICK: Of course it doesn’t begin with an A. It’s wouldn’t be Rick if it
began with an A.
MIKE: Could be a silent A.
VYVYAN: No, no, he spells it with a silent P.
-Vyvyan pregnant, then unfortunatly realizing it is a huge fart, letting loose while handcuffed to Rick (the faces of both as he cuts the fart had me in tears from laughing so hard
My favourites have al been mentioned, but I’ll list them anyway:
The Brittas Empire
Allo Allo
Blackadder (especially Blackadder goes Forth)
Monty Python
The Young Ones
Fawlty Towers
I remember laughing until I cried at all the above at various times.
Red Dwarf wasn’t bad.
Yet, until this thread came along, I would have scoffed at the idea of liking British comedy. I’m afraid I tend to forget that my favourites are indeed British, and think of the worst ones when “Britcoms” are mentioned.
The shows that gave me this opinion include:
Robin’s Nest
George and Mildred
Are You Being Served?
To The Manor Born
I apologise to those who like the shows mentioned above, but I couldn’t stand them! And even as a toddler, I wanted to punch Tristian in the nose (George and Mildred). Annoying!
Back to the good stuff, I still say “I will say this only once”, but my friends don’t get the reference. Also “It is I, LeClare!”. It’s sad to be the only one in the crowd laughing at something you’ve said yourself.
Hey, Redboss, thanks for the tip on The Brittas Empire. I saw it listed here the other day on PBS, and caught it. What a hoot! I finally saw an episode of The Young Ones, too. It was the one where Motorhead appeared; I borrowed it off another Motorhead fan club member. One more to look out for. Sigh… So much T.V., so little time.
Not much to contribute here, but…
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The first Young Ones episode I saw was “Flood”. Among other things, the boys play hide-and-go-seek. Vyvyan goes into the wardrobe and starts pushing towards the back. Just as I’m saying, “What’s he gonna do—get into N—” he steps out into a snowy clearing. “AAAAAAAAAAA!” I was devoted from that moment on!
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Hitchhiker’s Guide shouldn’t have been live action; it should have been animated. Furthermore, I was sickened by the casting of Ford and Trillian. I always pictured Ford as looking like Hunter S. Thompson: tall, skinny, tan, bald and homely. Of course, I’m American, and most Brits don’t know what Thompson looks like, if they even know he exists, but I doubt Adams wanted Ford to be portrayed as an adorable curly-headed elf. A guy who traveled as much as he did, even if he spent five years on Earth, would be weatherbeaten, to say the least.
Trillian is not a bimbo. That’s all I have to say.
- The Fawlty Towers episode The Germans is the funniest hour of TV I’ve seen ever. I do agree with Cleese that the two halves of the episode don’t really join up, but as a Yank, I’m used to comedies being 30 minutes and dramas being one hour. So for me, it’s like seeing two killer episodes back to back. And Cleese is one limber SOB.
“I can speek Eengleesh. I learned eet froom a buk.”
Really love all the “Brit-coms” but I truly loved (until we lost C-SPAN) the actual House of Commons review. (Hope I am not offending anyone here) It was so wonderfully rude in a civilized sort of way. I became an addict. I would plan my week around it.
The Young Ones, hands down! My e-mail notification is “It’s a video nasty!”, my error notification is “Bloody! Bloody! Bloody!”, and my “oops” notification is “Pathetic.”
I think my favourite line was in “Time”, where Rick wakes up in bed with woman. He struts around the kitchen letting everyone know that he’d “had sex with” Helen Mucous:
And from “Flood”:
What a brilliant show!
Grok, you are the only poster I could find that mentioned “Doctor In The House”. It’s old but I loved it way way back when it was on PBS locally. Remember the episode where the royal family is supposed to visit the hospital? That bit with the toilet seat?
s club 7