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Only Fools and Horses

Only Fools and Horses.... Is a British sitcom created and written by John Sullivan. Seven series were originally transmitted on BBC One from 1981 to 1991, with sixteen sporadic Christmas specials aired until 2003. In working-class Peckham in south-east London, ambitious market trader Derek 'Del Boy' Trotter and his younger half-brother Rodney, explore their highs and lows in life, in particular their attempts to get rich. Initially not an immediate hit and receiving little promotion early on, it later achieved consistently high ratings, and the 1996 episode "Time on Our Hands" (originally billed as the series finale) holds the record for the biggest UK audience for a sitcom episode, attracting 24.3 million viewers. The series bears a significant influence on British culture, contributing several words and phrases to the English language.

Only Fools and Horses

8.1 N/A
Birds of a Feather

Birds of a Feather is a British sitcom that was broadcast on BBC One from 1989 until 1998 and on ITV from 2013. Starring Pauline Quirke, Linda Robson and Lesley Joseph, it was created by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, who also wrote some of the episodes along with many other writers. The first episode sees sisters Tracey Stubbs and Sharon Theodopolopodos brought together when their husbands are sent to prison for armed robbery. Sharon, who lived in an Edmonton council flat, moves into Tracey's expensive house in Chigwell, Essex. Their next-door neighbour, and later friend, Dorien Green is a middle-aged married woman who is constantly having affairs with younger men. In the later series the location is changed to Hainault. The series ended on Christmas Eve 1998 after a 9-year-run.

Birds of a Feather

6.3 N/A
Bread

Bread is a British television sitcom, written by Carla Lane, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC1 from 1 May 1986 to 3 November 1991. The series focused on the devoutly-Catholic and extended Boswell family of Liverpool, in the district of Dingle, led by its matriarch Nellie through a number of ups and downs as they tried to make their way through life in Thatcher's Britain with no visible means of support. The street shown at the start of each programme is Elswick Street. A family called Boswell had also featured in Lane's earlier sitcom The Liver Birds and Lane admitted in interviews that the two families were probably related. Nellie's feckless and estranged husband, Freddie, left her for another woman known as 'Lilo Lill'. Her children Joey, Jack, Adrian, Aveline and Billy continued to live in the family home in Kelsall Street and contributed money to the central family fund, largely through benefit fraud and the sale of stolen goods.

Bread

7.0 N/A
Spitting Image

Spitting Image is an award winning British satirical puppet show, created by Peter Fluck, Roger Law and Martin Lambie-Nairn. The series was produced by Spitting Image Productions for Central Independent Television over 18 series which aired on the ITV from 1984 to 1996. The series was nominated and won numerous awards during its run including 10 BAFTA Awards, including one for editing in 1989, and even won two Emmy Awards in 1985 and 1986 in the Popular Arts Category. The series featured puppet caricatures of celebrities famous during the 1980s and 1990s, including British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and fellow Tory politicians, American president Ronald Reagan, and the British Royal Family. The Series was the first to caricature the Queen mother.

Spitting Image

7.2 N/A
Never the Twain

Never the Twain is a British sitcom that ran for eleven series from 7 September 1981 to 9 October 1991. It was created by Johnnie Mortimer, and was the only sitcom he ever created without his usual writing partner, Brian Cooke. Mortimer wrote the entirety of the first two series and four episodes out of six of the eighth, with the rest being mainly written by Vince Powell and John Kane. It starred Windsor Davies and Donald Sinden as rival antique dealers, and also starred Derek Deadman, Zara Nutley, Robin Kermode, Tacy Kneale, Julia Watson, Honor Blackman, Teddy Turner and Maria Charles. The title is taken from the Rudyard Kipling poem; The Ballad of East and West.

Never the Twain

7.0 N/A
Desmond's

Desmond's was a British television situation comedy broadcast by Channel 4 from 1989 to 1994. With 71 episodes, Desmond's became Channel 4's longest-running sitcom. The first series was shot in 1988, with the first episode broadcast in January 1989. The show was made in and set in Peckham, London, England and featured a predominantly Black British Guyanese cast. Conceived and co-written by Trix Worrell, and produced by Charlie Hanson and Humphrey Barclay, this series starred Norman Beaton as barber Desmond Ambrose. Desmond's shop was a gathering place for an assortment of local characters.

Desmond's

7.3 N/A
Campion

Campion is a television show made by the BBC, adapting the Albert Campion mystery novels written by Margery Allingham. Two series were made, in 1989 and 1990, starring Peter Davison as Campion, Brian Glover as his manservant Magersfontein Lugg and Andrew Burt as his policeman friend Stanislaus Oates. A total of eight novels were adapted, four in each series, each of which was originally broadcast as two separate hour-long episodes. Peter Davison sang the title music for the first series himself; in the second series, it was replaced with an instrumental version.

Campion

6.3 N/A
Hi-de-Hi!

Hi-de-Hi! is a British sitcom set in Maplins, a fictional holiday camp, during 1959 and 1960, and was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft, who also wrote Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum amongst others. It aired on the BBC from 1980 to 1988. The series revolved around the lives of the camp's management and entertainers, most of them struggling actors or has-beens. The inspiration was the experience of writers Perry and Croft: after being demobilised from the army, Perry was a Redcoat at Butlin's, Pwllheli during the holiday season. The series gained large audiences and won a BAFTA as Best Comedy Series in 1984. In 2004, it came 40th in Britain's Best Sitcom and in a 2008 poll on Channel 4, 'Hi-de-Hi!" was voted the 35th most popular comedy catchphrase.

Hi-de-Hi!

7.1 N/A
Brass

Brass is a British comedy-drama series created by John Stevenson and Julian Roach, and produced by Granada Television for ITV and eventually Channel 4. Satirising the working-class period dramas of the 1970s and the American supersoaps such as Dallas and Dynasty, Brass was unusual for ITV comedies of the time, as there was no laugh track and the humour deliberately kept extremely dry, using convoluted wordplay and subtle commentary on popular culture. Set primarily in Utterley, a fictional Lancashire mining town in the 1930s, two feuding families—the wealthy Hardacres and the poor, working-class Fairchilds, who lived in a small terraced house rented from the Hardacre empire.

Brass

6.1 N/A
Chelmsford 123

Chelmsford, Britain in the year AD 123; there is a power struggle between Roman governor Aulus Paulinus and the British chieftain, Badvoc. Britain is a miserable place, cold and wet – just the place to exile Aulus for accidentally insulting the Emperor's horse, but also give him something useful to do. Aulus, probably a play on Aulus Platorius Nepos, the governor of Roman Britain between 122 and 125, was a rather delicate Roman, who was usually outwitted by the scheming Badvoc, who hadn't had a haircut for twenty-five years.

Chelmsford 123

7.4 N/A
Lytton's Diary

Lytton's Diary is a 1985–86 British comedy-drama programme created and written by Peter Bowles and Philip Broadley. Produced by Thames Television for ITV, it originated as a single play on the anthology programme Storyboard before expanding into two popular series, known for their mix of glamour, intrigue, and social commentary. Bowles stars as Neville Lytton, a suave and successful Fleet Street gossip columnist for the Daily News. Lytton navigates the world of high-society scandals, political corruption, and personal challenges, balancing his professional life with his love life and his ambition to write a novel.

Lytton's Diary

7.3 N/A
Fresh Fields

Fresh Fields is a British situation comedy written by John T. Chapman and produced by Thames Television for ITV between 7 March 1984 and 23 October 1986. A ratings success at the time, the show is well remembered for its opening titles featuring a silhouette of a person in a rocking chair. It stars Julia McKenzie and Anton Rodgers as Hester and William Fields, a devoted middle-class couple with an idyllic suburban lifestyle. William works while Hester keeps home. The crux of the show was that she was always looking to try new hobbies or find ways to improve her life, much of which exasperated her hard-working husband. The family home had a granny flat attached, in which Hester's mother Nancy lived. She was divorced from Hester's father Guy although remarried him as the series progressed. The couple had a daughter called Emma who frequently telephoned but never appeared. Her husband Peter did appear often. They later had a son — the Fields' first grandchild — whom they named Guy, after his great-grandfather. Perhaps, the best remembered supporting character was Sonia Barrett who would frequently pop round to borrow items to replace hers due to breakage, theft or mislaying. Hester was not perturbed by this, as the two were close friends, but it used to irritate William. Sonia had the show's only catchphrase — she would always knock on the back door of the Fields' home and then say It's only Sonia! as she walked in. This would sometimes lead to applause of recognition from the studio audience, a phenomenon more regularly seen within American sitcoms. Sonia's husband John appeared on occasion, as did William's secretary Miss Denham, played by Daphne Oxenford.

Fresh Fields

6.8 N/A
French Fields

French Fields is a British situation comedy. It ran for 19 episodes from 5 September 1989 to 8 October 1991. It was written by John T. Chapman and Ian Davidson and was produced by Thames Television for ITV. The series starred Anton Rodgers and Julia McKenzie as husband and wife William and Hester Fields and followed the series Fresh Fields, which ran from 7 March 1984 to 23 October 1986. At the end of the last series of Fresh Fields, William accepted a position with a French company. French Fields follows Hester and William after they make the move to Calais. Other regular cast included their French real estate agent Chantal, who was also the Fields' neighbour to the left. On the right, were the horrible and snobbish English couple the Trendles. Hester and William also coped with Madame Remoleux, an unintelligible and ancient French woman who lived in and cared for the estate — called Les Hirondelles — where they all lived. Also, popping in on a regular basis, were local farmer and mayor Monsieur Dax and his daughter Marie-Christine, to whom Hester did her best to teach English. Nicholas Courtney also appeared frequently as the Marquis.

French Fields

6.9 N/A
Private Schulz

Private Schulz is a six-part 1981 television comedy-drama serial written by Jack Pulman and produced for BBC Two. It stars Michael Elphick in the title role, with Ian Richardson, Tony Caunter, Billie Whitelaw, Billy Murray, and Mark Wingett. Set primarily in Germany, during and immediately following World War II, fraudster and petty criminal Gerhard Schulz is forced to serve in the SS. In a story based on the real, though unrealised, plot by the Germans known as Operation Bernhard, Schulz tricks the Nazis into making counterfeit British £5 notes, millions of which will be used to destroy the British economy.

Private Schulz

5.3 N/A
Victoria Wood

Victoria Wood was a series of six one-off situation comedies written by and starring Victoria Wood in 1989, who took a break from sketches, two years after her very successful and award winning series Victoria Wood As Seen on TV. Wood appeared as "Victoria", a fictionalised version of herself, in all six episodes - in The Library it was said that she "worked in TV" and in Over To Pam characters appeared to recognise her celebrity and in the final episode, Staying In, she was taken to a party to perform as a comedienne and was expected to go through her stand-up 'routine'. Her character often broke the 'fourth wall' of TV and spoke directly to the camera, but not in every episode. Bored with the sketch format and with a yearning to recapture previous success as a playwright, Wood came up with six individual sitcoms as a compromise. She admitted to finding the writing difficult. Though Wood was written as the central character, other lead parts were written with specific actresses in mind, like Julie Walters and Una Stubbs. "I want people to like me and the people who play my friends, and not everybody else" she said. Screenonline says of the shows "Modest in ambition and scale but rich in wit and acuity, the six playlets showcase Wood's eye for human foibles and her distinctively eccentric characters.".

Victoria Wood

8.0 N/A
The Dame Edna Experience

The Dame Edna Experience is a British television comedy talk-show hosted by Dame Edna Everage. It ran for twelve regular episodes on ITV, plus two Christmas specials. The first seven aired for the first time in 1987, the next seven in 1989. It was directed by Ian Hamilton and Alasdair MacMillan and produced by London Weekend Television. Regulars on the program, besides Dame Edna, were her "bridesmaid" Madge Allsop and Robin Houston who was the announcer, with orchestra conducted and arranged by Laurie Holloway. Each program featured several celebrity guests, usually three, but some programs included up to eight guests. There would also be other invited "guests" like Kurt Waldheim and Imelda Marcos who once introduced at stage right would fall victim to a trap door or something similar and fail to make it to their chair. The entire series was released on DVD by BBC Video in June 2004, and can now also be purchased as a complete set including the Christmas specials and the three An Audience with Dame Edna specials, plus other material. The series was released for Region 2 by Network DVD in the UK in 2007, as a 4-disc set. For reasons unknown, the Region 2 release does not include the 1989 Christmas special "The Dame Edna Satellite Experience" that ended the second series and featured Ursula Andress, Yehudi Menuhin, and Robert Kilroy-Silk. It does, however, include the one-off 1990 Christmas special A Night On Mount Edna with guests Mel Gibson, Charlton Heston, Gina Lollobrigida and Julio Iglesias.

The Dame Edna Experience

5.0 N/A
Mike and Angelo

Mike and Angelo is a British sci-fi TV sitcom series, that ran on CITV between 16 March 1989 and 7 March 2000. It centres on Angelo, an alien who came from another world during the first series; the portal from his world being that of a wardrobe in one of the bedrooms. He lives with Mike King, and Mike's mother Rita. Later series had Mike and Rita move away, with Rita's nephew Mike Mason staying on in the house with housekeeper Katy. Together, Mike and Angelo get up to all kinds of crazy adventures - all within the vicinity of the house that they live in. Angelo is always inventing something crazy, or walking on the ceiling, or summoning up historical figures from the past. They always wreak havoc together, much to Katy's annoyance, crying "ANGELO!!" in her Scottish accent constantly or Rita in her Canadian accent before her. Their neighbours are the posh Fawkes-Bentleys, in whose house some of the show's scenes are occasionally based. The 1999 series began with Angelo and Katy reading a postcard explaining that Mike was having a good time in America. In his place, Daphne Fawkes-Bentley's niece Michaela became Angelo's sidekick. For the final series, Katy's nephew, also called Mike, joined. The final series was shown in 2000.

Mike and Angelo

6.5 N/A