I quite like Car Share and The Office has grown on me, but I feel it greatly overrated. I doubt either would come near my top 100.
British Sitcoms - My Top 100 Page 2
Quote: Bill Poster @ 26th February 2018, 1:01 AMWhat about The Squirrels?
It rarely gets mentioned in any list ,good or bad.
Written by Eric Rising Damp Chappell and much funnier than that other sitcom depicting office life.
It's got some really good actors in it too.
Blimey you've dug up one I hadn't heard of for about 40 years but I remember it being on clearly now, Hepton and Jones yes, really good actors. I have a very vague memory of Roy Kinnear in this if it's the same sitcom I'm thinking of, did he replace Jones when he became 'Orrible Ives for Porridge or something? Not sure about that now it may be a salesman thing I'm seeing him in.
The Office was a gem I still think but Fall and Rise of RP was the best satire on office life. Another very good office sitcom which I loved was It Takes A Worried Man which vanished into obscurity when it ended for some unknown reason. I wish C4 would repeat their comedies more, still waiting to see Fairly Secret Army again.
Quote: Aaron @ 26th February 2018, 12:40 PMI quite like Car Share and The Office has grown on me, but I feel it greatly overrated. I doubt either would come near my top 100.
Interesting.
What do you think are the best series in the last 20 years then?
And, also, how do you view all these things?
Is it DVD?
It's probably a daft question but I would really like an answer as I'm not very technically minded and don't know the range of options plus Daily Motion with an advert every six minutes can only be tolerated for a few hours at a time before becoming like torture.
Quote: Alfred J Kipper @ 26th February 2018, 12:57 PMBlimey you've dug up one I hadn't heard of for about 40 years but I remember it being on clearly now, Hepton and Jones yes, really good actors. I have a very vague memory of Roy Kinnear in this if it's the same sitcom I'm thinking of, did he replace Jones when he became 'Orrible Ives for Porridge or something? Not sure about that now it may be a salesman thing I'm seeing him in.
The Office was a gem I still think but Fall and Rise of RP was the best satire on office life. Another very good office sitcom which I loved was It Takes A Worried Man which vanished into obscurity when it ended for some unknown reason. I wish C4 would repeat their comedies more, still waiting to see Fairly Secret Army again.
I will check out It Takes a Worried Man.
Fairly Secret Army is an interesting one. It wasn't terrible but it had a lot of obstacles - being on Channel 4 was one, then deemed obscure, and also the fact that they were prevented access to the original house and had to contrive to burn it down in the script. Plus there were worries that it was too right wing in some people's opinions at a time when there were sensitivities about the Government.
The fact that it wasn't a standard sitcom fits in well with the original thing about C4 which is that it was completely crackers, sometimes great and sometimes awful. After Dark is one show that stands out in my mind and, later, The Big Breakfast, which I think of as wonderful in spite of not liking many of the people involved. It was the closest we ever came to The Banana Splits which was, of course, the greatest American show of all time in any genre.
Quote: A Horseradish @ 26th February 2018, 2:01 PMWhat do you think are the best series in the last 20 years then?
That's a very difficult question! I'm not sure, in all honesty. I'd have to think very carefully to create any kind of real list, never mind ordered, but a few that spring to mind:
Bad Education, Green Wing, Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps, Bromwell High, SunTrap, Hebburn, The Inbetweeners, Derry Girls, My Family, Still Open All Hours, Absolute Power, Chambers, Perfect World, My Hero, Friday Night Dinner.
Quote: A Horseradish @ 26th February 2018, 2:01 PMAnd, also, how do you view all these things?
Is it DVD?
It's probably a daft question but I would really like an answer as I'm not very technically minded and don't know the range of options plus Daily Motion with an advert every six minutes can only be tolerated for a few hours at a time before becoming like torture.
I never watch things online - it doesn't even occur to me to try to find them on YouTube, Daily Motion or elsewhere. For older titles I have an extensive (1,700+ and always growing) collection of DVDs and Blu-rays; plus a further extensive archive of off-air recordings of titles that have yet to be made commercially available.
Thanks Aaron.
I have only seen six of the fifteen you mention.
Your DVD collection is similar in size to my CD collection.
I don't understand Blu-ray.
On one occasion, have a look at a couple of programmes on Dailymotion with its repetitive adverts and then imagine doing that 150 times in about four weeks along with an equal number of YT viewings.
You can have my white coat if you don't already own one.
The young ones
Bottom
Are you being served?
Quote: Phil Taylor @ 26th February 2018, 8:40 PMThe young ones
Bottom
Are you being served?
Being served by the young ones bottom?
edit: sorry, I see what you meant now.
Quote: Aaron @ 26th February 2018, 2:40 PMThat's a very difficult question! I'm not sure, in all honesty. I'd have to think very carefully to create any kind of real list, never mind ordered, but a few that spring to mind:
Bad Education, Green Wing, Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps, Bromwell High, SunTrap, Hebburn, The Inbetweeners, Derry Girls, My Family, Still Open All Hours, Absolute Power, Chambers, Perfect World, My Hero, Friday Night Dinner.
Good selection here, and very compatible with people who prefer the older style of sitcom. I find Bad Education slightly underrated among comedy fans, maybe it's just me reading too much into it but I think it has great post-ironic themes.
If anyone reading doesn't mind ones with less laughs in I'd also recommend The Office, 15 Storeys High, Him & Her, Detectorists, etc
Quote: Aaron @ 25th February 2018, 6:40 PMWhat terrible modern bores.
Watch Laurel and Hardy instead?
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I've now had a look at most of these - Bad Education, Green Wing, Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps, Bromwell High, SunTrap, Hebburn, The Inbetweeners, Derry Girls, My Family, Still Open All Hours, Absolute Power, Chambers, Perfect World, My Hero, Friday Night Dinner. Also, Life With The Lyons, Nearest and Dearest, Up Pompeii, The Squirrels. My Wife Next Door, No Problem, Only When I Laugh, Hot Metal, Nightingales, Kiss Me Kate, Barbara, Early Doors, Him and Her and 15 Storeys High,.
These are in addition to all the ones I'd previously mentioned - or not in the case of 
Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps and, My Family which in fact I had already mentioned as not making the Top 100 and (B) Still Open All Hours which I've combined with Open All Hours, a programme that did make it into that list. My Family is not a bad series. It was borderline on whether I would include it. Lager and Crisps I can take or leave.
Anyhow, this latest lot has been considered because Aaron mentioned them or other forum members mentioned them or I only found out about them in the last few days or they are on the BBC list of 2003-4 which I didn't even know existed when I did mine. I wish I had done. It would have made my list so much easier to do but I congratulate myself both for doing it without having that list to refer to and, also actually, on the fact that most programmes in my list are in the BBC list although in some cases in a very different order.
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My main summary here is that I doubt whether any of the above programmes will make it into a revised 100. I've come to the conclusion that I am biased against most - though not all - programmes made since the early/mid 1990s and especially the ones made since 2000. There are only so many series you can watch in which the dialogue mentions shit, cancer, oral sex, paedophiles and rape alarms. All of these things say exactly when they were made just as dodgy racial words in programmes will always say those programmes were made in the 70s.
When I think about it again, I probably had already mentioned The Inbetweeners too. That is a difficult one for me because I do think it is quire funny and while crude in a Ferris Bueller on Speed way it knows its audience. Unlikely to be prime time viewing on Christmas Day, there is little risk of maiden aunts spluttering into their turkey. But at the same time it does take us all back down memory lane in a way that we might have hoped to have forgotten forever. I couldn't rate it higher than 105.
3 or 4
Most of the rest just didn't float my boat. To provide an indication, there were just two that I couldn't track down and already I can't remember which ones they are. Of the very early ones, it would be Nearest and Dearest, The Squirrels, Up Pompeii and, Life With The Lyons in that order but I really don't think any of them are strong enough to be contenders. So many series do the north better than Nearest. or the sort of ground The Squirrels covers in a more convincing way. On Up Pompeii, I can recall so vividly being told when I was an infant in the infants' playground that the title of the show was French for f**k off. I am not keen on it for that reason and I'm also not the biggest fan of Frankie Howard. Lyons is extremely early and rather lame.
No Problem might well have been the first main series with a black cast but as my list reveals there have been several since that have been very much better. My Wife Next Door and Only When I Laugh. Yeah, fair enough, but they are also rans in my humble opinion. I thought Nightingales was atrocious, Kiss Me Kate suffers from a Cosby sort of issue - one that was proven in court, Him and Her is the boring sex life of teenagers, Bad Education is brats along the lines of Please Sir/The Fenn Street Gang but not any sort of improvement and Bromwell High is half Canadian. Also, if I was going to include a cartoon it would be Zig and Zag but I haven't because I am only including human cartoons and those characters are aliens. Incidentally, I had already ruled out Mr Bean and Hitchhikers too on the grounds that, while good, they were of uncertain category.
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Most of the rest are a bit of a haze. I do think Early Doors has something. It reminds me of northern pubs when I was a student. It could end up in the Top 100 if, say, Hold the Sunset plummets. There is though a sense that it is just people talking as they speak rather than being more amusing than the average punter. Plus it does what many series do now which is to use good music to create a sense that you like the programme more than you do. Who could not like The Smiths in that context? I remember it all well. See also Gavin and Stacey and all the very late indie guitar stuff on this point.
I was also aware of My Hero. That is pretty good but I struggle a bit with O'Hanlon in anything other than the Father Ted role for which he was made. I wouldn't like 15 Storeys High a great deal if it wasn't for the fact that it is set in a flat that is very similar to the one my Nan lived in near the Elephant. That probably isn't enough to make it highly watchable. Hot Metal, I think, has a few plus points.. I'm still toying with that one although it is no Murphy Brown. Nor is Barbara. Perfect World at least has Paul Kaye who isn't a bad actor but it is all a bit modern. Ditto Green Wing, Friday NIght Dinner and probably Derry Girls but as with Mum which everyone is mentioning I haven't given Derry a proper viewing yet. I couldn't find a Hebburn clip. That, I guess, leaves SunTrap and Absolute Power as the ones on which I remain very vague.
Footnote - I've also just seen Still Game which is apparently returning later this year.
I'm really enjoying this thread. Lots of thought-provoking, considered discussion. 
Still Game returns next week!
Ahhh, Kiss Me Kate. Loved that show. I must rewatch it soon! (When I've rewatched everything else - crikey I'm in the middle of so many things at the moment.) Sad that you don't like Up Pompeii!, but if Frankie Howerd's not your thing then I guess you wouldn't.
I've never seen No Problem (where did you find it?), but The Fosters predates it by at least half a decade.
Aaron - Thanks and there are a number of short clips of No Problem on YT. I didn't realise it was later than The Fosters about which I'm going from memory but it should have been obvious.
I will give you my angle on sitcoms with ethnicity for want of a better phrase. If there were 20 odd black sitcoms in the next three years, they would have to be assessed on merits just as any other sitcom would be. They wouldn't be of greater interest than anything else. I'm not keen on Lenny Henry's view that someone has to sit in an office and make everything absolutely representative of the population as a whole.
But even up to the 1980s/1990s, black sitcom and other black comedy was ground breaking. As a white lower middle class male, I was aware that many people I knew, white and black, considered them to be mainly for black audiences. But I always had a leaning there because it seemed fresh and vibrant and it meant more to me than the all-a-bit-Cambridge alternative comedy. In fact, when I was at York, the person who I played pool against one night wasn't Griff Rhys Jones but Lenny Henry.
So I was keen on Desmond's and also The Real McCoy and it felt a bit unusual to be so. Now that Desmond's is being shown again, I think it is even clearer just how great that series was and I've learnt about Trix Worrell who is a bit of a character. He's not often mentioned or given his due. The whole point about that series - perhaps slightly unfashionable now - was to say people of different backgrounds have very similar issues. There was a good team behind it.
I love Carmen Munroe and the late Norman Beaton whose life story could have been made into a movie. In black South London but nowhere else he was as a personality huge. He also did other things, Our school took us to the National to try to get us to be interested in Shakespeare. It was the all black version of it and Beaton was supposed to be in it but it was one of several occasions when he was up before the courts.
I did see a lot of The Lenny Henry Show which I really like. Less of Chef until recently. I read somewhere a long time ago that it was one of the worst sitcoms of all time. That's definitely not true but what is clear is that it was influenced by American sitcom makers.
Since then, the shift has been to Asians. I don't especially like the Kumars or Goodness Gracious Me so I went out of my way to like Citizen Khan and I think I do like it genuinely. Now it's the Eastern Europeans who are coming in more.
All of this on the surface is about race but actually from my perspective it is about innovation. I like it when the best of the old is combined with something very new. For example, I've got a thing about slow TV at the moment. It would bore many people stupid but as life speeds up I think it would be really interesting to slow things down in tv programmes. This could be done to an extreme in sitcom and I'm already seeing it in the likes of Detectorists etc.
What none of us wants is just the same old thing time and again.
(Just name the subject - I will give you an opinion) 
Quote: A Horseradish @ 1st March 2018, 7:51 PMI've got a thing about slow TV at the moment. It would bore many people stupid but as life speeds up I think it would be really interesting to slow things down in tv programmes. This could be done to an extreme in sitcom and I'm already seeing it in the likes of Detectorists etc.
What none of us wants is just the same old thing time and again.
(Just name the subject - I will give you an opinion)
You should like Roger and Val Have Just Got In then.
I haven't seen nearly enough comedy for a 100 list, but some of my favourites are Hancock's Half Hour, Colin's Sandwich, The Office, Operation Good Guys, Shelley, Paul Merton In Galton & Simpson's..., The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Detectorists, and Derry Girls
If you have any good recommendations based on that I'd like to hear them
Quote: behminztur @ 3rd March 2018, 7:22 PMI haven't seen nearly enough comedy for a 100 list, but some of my favourites are Hancock's Half Hour, Colin's Sandwich, The Office, Operation Good Guys, Shelley, Paul Merton In Galton & Simpson's..., The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Detectorists, and Derry Girls
If you have any good recommendations based on that I'd like to hear them
I was thinking about this the other day, if anyeone's devised a sort of sitcom family/familiar tree which links sitcoms in some ways like themes or characters or situation settings. I'm sad enough to attempt one but need to focus on other things at the mo. Would be quite an undertaking.
For HHH I'd suggest trying Steptoe & Son or for a much harsher derivative how about Rab C Nesbitt or for a retired Hancock type One Foot In The Grave.