We’re huge fans of all kinds of comedy, here in the MTW house, but British comedy is in a different league and there are so many shows that we’ve loved, some of which span decades. Comedy is a great source of stress relief for me; nothing takes away the stresses of the day better than sitting down to watch something that’s so funny, I can’t help but laugh. Mayfair Granite have asked me to share some of my favourite British comedies with you, so here they are:
The Young Ones
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Some of my earliest memories are of watching taped episodes of The Young Ones when I was even smaller than Sausage but the humour definitely had an effect on me as I was growing up (perhaps I can blame my slightly anarchic leanings on Rik?!). The characters are so perfectly ludicrous and it also introduced me to bands like Motorhead and Madness, forming a lifelong love of both.
The Good Life
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The Good Life, if you haven’t already seen it, was a mid-70’s comedy about a Surbiton couple who decided to get out of the rat-race and become self-sufficient by farming their own land, growing fruit and veg and keeping various livestock (including Geraldine the goat!), much to the disgust of their close friends and perennially middle-class neighbours. The Good Life is one of those shows that’s a bit like a security blanket for me, I can watch it over and over again and always feel happy when I watch it.
Alan Partridge
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I know a lot of people can’t watch Alan Partridge purely because of the extremely high cringe-factor, and I must admit to watching through my fingers sometimes (“Lynne. The brass dimmer switches, the granite worktops and your eight thousand pounds a year are all paid for by Eurovision thong contest, boob olympics and a wet Christmas.”) but it’s genuinely one of the funniest shows of all time and well worth trying to watch if you haven’t already.
Pulling
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Pulling was a mid-noughties show about three women who live in Penge, one of whom had just recently jilted her fiance at the alter. The characters are hilariously outrageous (Tanya is my absolute favourite) and the whole show is just brilliantly written. Sharon Horgan, who you’ll probably recognise from the more recent show Catastrophe, is perfect as Donna and the cameos by Paul Kaye are some of the funniest parts of both series’.
Only Fools and Horses
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You can’t talk about British Comedy without mentioning Only Fools and Horses. This show is loved by 90 year olds and nine year olds alike (I once overheard Sausage and one of her cousins “playing” a game of OFAH, but no-one wanted to be Cassandra!!). I think the reason this show worked so well was because we genuinely cared about the characters (the episode where Uncle Albert runs away from home still gets me in the feels every time…) and it’s so cleverly written that even slightly adult humour is included in a way that the kids are still oblivious to.
There are SO many more I could write about individually, but I don’t want to bore you, so if you haven’t already, may I also recommend that you watch Red Dwarf, Peep Show, Father Ted, Black Books, The IT Crowd, Black Adder, Ideal….there are just too many to name! What’s your favourite British comedy?
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