Welcome, weary traveller. You join me in part three of my run down of the best 50 sitcoms - ever! I know, it's exciting isn't it?
Who'd have thought that the best way to work it out was for me and the wife to settle down in a hotel bar, drink a load of wine and then spend hours scribbling out each other's suggestions in a furious rage?
Part one is here, part two is here, and now, for your enjoyment and erudition, I present - part three!
30.
How I Met Your Mother 2005-2014 Disney
And yet. It seems to sit slightly outside the world of mainstream sitcom. It's not as cosy and obvious as Friends or Big Bang Theory. It has a more interesting narrative style, playing with non-linear story structures as well as having postmodern fun with the conventions of the form. There's a more frank approach to sex and grown up relationships. And there's some properly dark humour in there too.
A lot of that dark humour is intentional, Some, though, comes from unfortunate lapses of judgement on the creative side. For a show that's barely ten years old, there seem to be a lot of moments where you think, "Ah, you wouldn't get away with that now." There are some strong female characters in the main cast, but women in general don't generally fair so well.
However. All round, this is a fun show with great performances, some properly clever jokes and a lot to say about romance. Just avoid the last series, which is garbage and almost invalidates the whole thing.
29.
The Office (UK) 2001-2003. iPlayer
Another big difference in opinion between me and the wife on this one. We're starting to see a clear difference, aren't we, between my opinions (wise, intelligent, well thought through) and hers (demented). I tend to like comedy that elicits a variety of responses, not all of them comfortable. She's much more of the opinion that a comedy should make you laugh, not stare at a cushion for ages afterwards questioning everything you thought you knew.
Writing it down like that makes it sound like I'm the one who's got it wrong, but let's not think about that. Let's rejoice in one of the most influential and well written sitcoms ever. The Office is brilliant. Its characters are sharply written and perfectly cast, pulsing with internal life. The scripts are led by those characters with impeccable logic. And there's perfect use of the documentary format, with half the show's meaning coming from the side-eye glances to camera and the revealing cutaway interviews.
I guess it can be quite hard to watch people being so relentlessly miserable, and so I concede that I wouldn't want all my comedy like this. But there's a warmth at its heart that stops it becoming an exercise in cynicism, and I think that's why its appeal has endured.
28.
Detectorists 2014-2022 iPlayer, Netflix
Some shows blow you away the moment they walk through the door. In they swagger, full of cool ideas and laugh out loud moments, changing your life with their dazzling smile and strong grasp of interpersonal character dynamics.
Some, like Detectorists, sit quietly down without a fuss and just chat to you, gently and without obvious fireworks. You'll smile, sure, and you'll enjoy your time together. But you don't spend the next day spinning around in a cluster of cartoon hearts, telling everyone you've fallen in love.
Then, one day, you're there, watching Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook wander across a field, sweeping for metal in the low, golden sun of a Summer evening. You fall into the comfortable, human rhythms of their conversation. And you realise... there's been a smile on your face for half an hour. You adore this world, and you want to stay here.
You're in love. With two weird little blokes who haven't found what they are looking for, but carry on anyway.
Watch this. It's delightful.
27.
Uncle 2012-2017. iPlayer
One of those comedies that loads of people recommended to me, for ages, without success. Then, one day, I watched it, loved it and recommended it straight back to them. It is testament to their patience that they just went 'OK, thanks', rather than murdering me to death.
The titular uncle is Andy - a shambolic manchild who is suddenly called upon to look after his nephew, Errol. They instantly form a classic double act - Errol is as erudite and fey as Andy is slovenly and uncouth. Their interactions are a delight to watch and form the core of the experience.
Also great is that Andy is a musician, and so there are songs. These are sort-of part of the narrative, but often burst out into fourth-wall-breaking showstoppers and are as funny as anything else in the show.
So, yeah. I recommend it. Unless you recommended it to me in the first place, in which case... I thought it was merely fine.
26.
Motherland 2017-2022 Netflix
This is a fantastic show and if you haven't seen it, you definitely need to get on it. It's about a bunch of mothers who hang out together while their kids are at school, failing in various ways to make sense of their lives. It's not so much about being a parent as it is about trying to work out who you are in the void between dropping the kids and school and picking them up again.
Our players are mostly women, though we have one bloke in there: the hapless Kevin who is as excluded as the mothers from the world of Alpha Masculinity. That's the real joy of this show - it's written by women and fundamentally exists to explore women's lives through comedy, in the way that men's lives have been for decades.
Looking at the scoring, I again find that Wifeface has scored this much lower than me. What's wrong with her? Doesn't she know that this is groundbreaking, emancipating stuff? It's literally made for her. I like it, because I'm unusually sensitive for a man. But surely she's, like, legally bound to enjoy it? Look - all the men in it are jerks! Don't women love that?
Honestly. Emily Pankhurst must be wondering why she bothered.
25
Flight of the Conchords 2007-2009 Sky
If you like nerdy boys singing smart, offbeat, comedy pop songs, well have I got the show for you. Well, I have two - there's also The Mighty Boosh, from around the same time. But I'm less bothered about that.
I like Conchords better for a couple of reasons. For a start, it seems less obviously designed to appeal to drunk students and spawn a bunch of catchphrases and memes. Boosh is funny, but it's primary intent very much appears to be 'how can I generate scenes that people will quote at one another until 3 in the morning?'.
Secondly, Conchords has better characters, better stories and better songs. The two main characters - Bret and Jemaine - feel like real people. Wide eyed romantics; children in a grown up world, using songs to make sense of the nonsense. And what songs. Both these guys would go on to bigger things, but I'm not sure they'll ever top the sentiments of "I'm not crying / I've been chopping onions / I'm making a lasagne / ...for one".
24.
Garth Merenghi's Darkplace 2004 Channel 4
Darkplace is one of those lovely secrets that is an absolute delight to discover. It's like finding a room in your house you didn't know about, full of books and sweets and music from another dimension. It is unlike other shows, and burns with a beautiful, sweet brightness for six short episodes, and then it's gone.
The conceit is brilliant. Our host - Garth Merenghi - shows us clips of a science fiction show he's meant to have made in the 1980s. That show is a glorious pastiche of cheap mid 80s TV, with dodgy effects and dodgier acting. By itself that would be pretty funny, but the genius is in Merenghi's 'present day' commentary. He's a vain, deluded man who sees not a mad, cheap production, but a piece of neglected genius.
And he may be right. His show might have wobbly sets, cliched dialogue and plots a five years old would reject as 'insufficiently coherent'. But this is a keenly observed piece of work, shot through with observations about gender representation, the fragility of the artistic temperament and the glory of making something, against all the odds, for love.
23.
30 Rock 2006-2013 ITV X
As we made our list of great sitcoms, sitting in that hotel bar, I confidently put this forward as one of the best. This joyous cavalcade of jokes, this inventive, intelligent string of character moments and callbacks. I sat back and waited for Wifeface to say something like, "Yes, that is a good suggestion. Your ideas are as wise as your face is dignified." Something like that.
Well, reader. She did not say that. She just pulled an expression which I've come to recognise as, "Yeah... that's fine, I guess. We'll include it, but only because I know you might cry if we don't." No applause. Nothing about my dignified face. Ridiculous.
30 Rock isn't "fine" - it's amazing. It has an incredibly high gags-per-minute rate, darting between deft character comedy, fun wordplay, surreal cutaways and satirical observations on the production process of TV. It's quite meta, and it leans on style over substance for the most part. But it's consistently funny and thus, for me, one of the best comedies of recent years.
Anyway. Here it languishes, in more-or-less middle place. I'm sorry, Tina Fey. I guess my wife just hates shows written and performed by women. I know, it's a daily burden, especially for a vulnerable feminist like me.
22.
I'm Alan Partridge 1997-2002 Britbox, Sky
Another glaring disparity in voting, here, between me (correctly placing this near the very top) and the wife (insanely putting it at the bottom, like someone vomiting on the Mona Lisa). One thing we've definitely learned from this experiment is that she's not as keen as me regarding comedy that makes you bite into your own hand in embarrassment and horror.
I'm a fan of Partridge in general, so this show kind of stands in for the whole 'Alan Partridge Cinematic Universe': shows like This Time, Mid-Morning Matters and Knowing Me, Knowing You (Aha!). This show is the closest of them to a fully functioning sitcom - the others are all presented as light entertainment shows of one kind or another.
And I love this. Alan is a great comic creation, made up of tiny, beautiful details that position him in a perfect tension between 'enjoyably specific character in his own right' and 'avatar of all that is shameful about being a man'. Maybe that's why Wifeface isn't so bothered. She already experiences quite enough male fragility in a daily show called 'The husband who believes he is amazing but can't remember where the baking trays live no matter how many times he is told'.
Also this show features Sally Philips, who is as delightful as she is talented. If she was my wife, I bet this would have come higher up. In fact, I bet we'd agree on loads of things. When I suggested this to my actual wife, she felt so threatened that she had to cover her mouth to stop herself weeping with sadness.
21.
Cheers 1982-1993 Paramount
Ah, we're back on safe ground. Here's a show that even me and Wifeface agree on. Cheers is great, and the only people who don't think so are terrorists. You've seen it, right? Load of people in a bar? Everybody knows your name? That's the one.
We started a big rewatch of Cheers a few years ago. It holds up amazingly well, for something that's about four decades old. It's consistently funny, with characters so well written that you quickly feel like you've known them for years. The dialogue bounces along, smart and funny, with a comic rhythm that rarely lets up. When it does, it's to allow a little time for the characters to breathe: little moments of pathos and reflection that make each person a little more real.
Cheers is like the basic textbook for sitcom, and it informed everything that came after. Why isn't it higher up on our list? Well, I guess neither the wife nor I like the way it promotes alcohol as a lifestyle choice.
Ha. Just kidding. We love drinking, and had to keep pausing our conversation about this list so we could order more wine and crisps. No, the reason is... well I think that Cheers is sort of solid and reliable. It does one thing, extremely well. And it turns out that maintaining excellence over a period of eleven years isn't enough for the exacting standards of me and Wifeface. We're like capricious Roman emperors, the tastes of whom no man can predict.
So... if Cheers didn't crack the top 20, what on earth did? The answers will definitely annoy you. Find out, here:
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