Comfort classic

All sitcoms have something to say about the eras they are made in, but few sum up an era so definitively as Men Behaving Badly, the no-­holds-barred slice of 1990s lad culture created and written by Simon Nye. 

Today, looking at this raucous tale of two best mates making complete, often drunken, idiots of themselves, it is tempting to dismiss Gary and Tony, played by Martin Clunes and Neil Morrissey, respectively, as disgustingly sexist bores short on social graces and big on schoolboy humour. 

When a new BBC Three comedy made its low-key debut in the spring of 2007, no one imagined that Gavin & Stacey would go on to become the comedic equivalent of a national treasure. 

Despite its two writers’ utter lack of experience as screenwriters – James Corden and Ruth Jones had met as actors on Kay Mellor’s slimming club drama for ITV, Fat Friends – it soon became clear that here was a startlingly original show blessed by a group of fully realised characters, a script crackling with wit and an unusually brilliant cast. 

Little, it seems, has changed in the 36 years since Edge of Darkness was first shown. Conspiracy and cover-up, environmental devastation and the threat of nuclear destruction were stitched into the fabric of the 1980s and are no less relevant now. 

If this were all that Edge of Darkness had offered, however, it wouldn’t be so fondly remembered or, indeed, recognised by many critics as British TV drama’s finest moment. 

When it arrived on our screens in 2002, Spooks was truly revolutionary. British telly had mastered the cerebral spy thriller – most notably with the BBC’s revered adaptation of John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, starring Alec Guinness as master spy George Smiley – but Spooks was different. 

Sitcoms as perfectly realised and executed as Channel 4’s Drop the Dead Donkey are exceedingly rare. That this newsroom caper, set mostly in the offices of Globelink News, was a topical satire, filmed partly the day before transmission to keep the material as up to date as possible, speaks volumes of the skills of creators Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, the brilliant ensemble cast and its director, the energetic Liddy Oldroyd. Unusually, Oldroyd directed all six series, some 65 episodes. Tragically, she died in 2002, aged 47, four years after Drop the Dead Donkey ended.

To create a successful sitcom is one of the most difficult tasks in the TV firmament. To create a successful British sitcom that survives for 12 years, nine series and 54 episodes is staggering.

Unlike in the US, producers rarely have writers rooms on this side of the Atlantic, where teams of wordsmiths endlessly hone scripts to keep a show up and running. Remember, Fawlty Towers closed its doors after just two six-part series.

It’s a sign of a true TV phenomenon when any one of a handful of catchphrases, a haircut, a song about a malodorous puss or just a single word – “Pivot!” - can instantly propel you back to the turn of the millennium and six people gathered in a West Village apartment, always strangely affordable, or on their local coffee shop sofa, always strangely available.

There is, surely, no more fitting comfort comedy for lockdown than The Good Life, a tale of stay-at-home self-sufficiency. Tom and Barbara Good were the original artisan couple: sowing spuds, brewing booze and weaving wool.

The 1970s BBC sitcom was created by John Esmonde and Bob Larbey, friends since their Clapham schooldays, who had already created one comedy classic, ITV’s Please Sir!. That starred John Alderton as an idealistic English teacher at a tough secondary school.

Seen again, almost three decades on, with the world at a virtual standstill due to Covid-19, Pole to Pole can induce mixed reactions. Michael Palin’s most adventurous trek is a delight. It overflows with the presenter’s love of travel and discovery, which, frustratingly, is precisely what we are missing right now.… Our only option is to soak up the sights and hope that, one day soon, we will be able to follow in Palin’s footsteps.

Father Ted is one of TV’s greatest British sitcoms – up there with other giants of the genre such as Fawlty Towers, Gavin and Stacey and The Thick of It. It is plain loopy – daft, surreal, edgy in its debunking of the Church and blessed by four timeless characters.