On the BBC:
I don't know many TV ones but among the most popular sit-coms of the last few decades but in no particular order here, were:
Till Death Do Us Part No-one would have the courage to make that nowadays for fear of being accused of racism etc. by our current times' serried ranks of humourless third-party offence-takers, who'd be unable to see it was not itself "-ist" but actually mocking such "-isms".
The Good Life - whose popularity with the male half of its audiences was no doubt helped by Felicity Kendal, in her role as Mrs. Good. (Jenny?, Gerry?) The fictional husband's name was Tom, giving a sly but possibly accidental name reminder of the MGM animal-cartoon classic!
Butteflies - teasing us for its entire run of series, right to the very last two lines of dialogue, by what we were led to think might develop into an affair. I think ITV made a similar show some years later, but derivative, less credible, and pale in comparison.
Keeping Up Appearances - I always think of Hyancinth insisting her surname be pronounced "Bouquet" when I hear journalists fall for the English spiv Dominic Chappel similarly insisting on the French-sounding "Chappelle".
Blackadder - an interesting concept that, placing successive series in successive stages of English history.
Yes Minister - becoming [I]Yes Prime Minister[/i]. Its writers were invited to America to create a version there, tailored to US politics.
Only Fools And Horses - I wonder how many realise that under the purely sit-com element was actually a continuing story? In later years the BBC re-ran episodes but randomly, losing the story-lines.
Steptoe And Son.
[I]Dad's Army [/i] - its success due significantly to the writers' experiences. Now being run in radio form, on BBC R4 Extra.
Very important to some of these was the dramatic pathos that counterpointed the jokes. A few ended their last series on a very sharp note indeed: from the bitter end to the gentle "will they...?" frisson in Butterflies, via the sudden fortune but felling of loss in Only Fools..., to the deaths on the WW1 front-line in Blackadder. Ten years after its last episode, the BBC re-united the Butterflies cast for a single, (Christmas-time?) sequel, as gentle in its comedy as the series had been, showing the characters' corresponding ageing and development, and finally resolving That Question in just two lines.
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And whilst these were not situation comedies, let us not forget:
The Goodies - played by members of the team whose show celebrates its 50th Anniversary of its launch -
- Monty Python's Flying Circus. This had a radio predecessor....
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Whilst on the Wireless, at first on the Light Programme re-named Radio Two with the 1960s launch of Radio One and contemporaneous adoption of blandly numerical names for the channels, we had:
I'm Sorry I'll Read that Again - not really sit-com though sharing that genre's taste for stock jokes. This was the predecessor in cast and to some extent, style, to those TV shows MPFC and The Goodies; but also drew on the anarchic style of the 1950s The Goon Show.
Round The Horne, with Kenneth Horne as central character and often the straight man to Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams. Again, not really sit-com but with thread sketches, its humour was very edgy for the time, especially in its sit-com-esque sketches about the very camp, homosexual shop-keepers played by Paddick and Williams. Their dialogue's strange slang, lost on the innocent, was genuine among London homosexuals of the time. This was around the time the 19C UK law forbidding homosexual acts between men, was repealed. Williams later made his own show, ''Beyond Our Ken'.
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For situation comedies though, the 1950s-60s brought:
Hancock's Half Hour, starring Tony Hancock and Sid James.
The Navy Lark, and a later land-bound similar,
- The Embassy Lark.
The Men From The Ministry - about two hapless senior civil-servants, well before TV's Yes Minister.
The Clitheroe Kid - the central character, a boy aged about 12, never aged, but the real James Clitheroe playing that role did, and he made the mistake of touring the show after its radio days were over. He became so type-cast he did little or nothing else of any note, and as he aged far beyond the puberty he played, the show became absurd and eventually sank. Very sad decline.
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Coming up-to-date, in the last few years, Radio Four's 6.30pm comedy slot has hosted among others:
Clair In The Community - originating as a newspaper cartoon strip, about a team of city-bound social-workers whose own lives are not much less chaotic than those of their clients. Claire is their condescending, bossy, jargon-and-PC-spouting, leader; played in a manner reminding one of the Labour MP Diane Abbott on a bad day, but with humour.
Cabin Pressure - a somewhat unlikely one, centred on an airline's particular flight crew.
I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue - its by-line is "The antidote to panel games". Another not sit-com as such but with stock situations, in the form of comic games like "One Song Sung To The Tune Of Another". Its a rather risqué game show that takes the merciless mickey out of the genre.
Whilst bang up to date, the Radio Times for this coming week lists 2 sit-coms:
The Quanderhorn Experimentations - sci-fi theme.
Cooking In A Bedsitter. A romantic comedy, its says, inspired by >Katherine Whitehorn's cookery-book. Rom-com is not my style, though!
There are two others whose names elude me, both based around a creative but struggling individual with just a few other characters. One is a rather mediocre but easy-going composer whose ambitions are far lower than his talents, judging by the songs he tries out on his long-suffering friend and neighbour. The other is a would-be writer of similar mediocrity, lucky to pick up advertising-agency work, and with a very acid view of modern life and its appalling treatment of the English language.
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Some of those old radio comedies are being repeated on the digital channel, BBC Radio 4 Extra, as are suitably re-written versions of some TV sit-coms.
I'm sure I have missed some gems, others will recall!
