Every great sitcom after The Royle Family owes a debt of gratitude to it, it changed the game. Just in the same way Steptoe and Son did when it first aired in the early sixties.

I agree, it's definetly overrated, it's hard work to get through the box set, and it doesn't make me eager to re-watch it, as others do.

I've not experienced those times and I can still find it funny.

I enjoyed Harry H Corbett in Carry On Screaming.

Before he got type cast in Steptoe he was a revered actor, he was known as the British Marlon Brando. But Steptoe was so popular, that it took over his career. He probably should have gone on to be an Hollywood superstar.

I've only seen a couple of episodes of the programme and it did make me laugh quite a lot tbf.

My favourite UK Sitcom is The IT Crowd.

This was the full top twenty list to the poll in the OP

1 Fawlty Towers
2 Father Ted
3 I'm Alan Partridge
4 Blackadder
5 Dad's Army
6 Only Fools and Horses
7 Porridge
8 Royle Family
9 Absolutely Fabulous
10 Dinnerladies
11 The Thick of it
12 The Office
13 Peep Show
14 Vicar of Dibley
15 Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
16 The Young Ones
17 Gavin and Stacey
18 The Good Life
19 The Detectorists
20 Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?

I think old Alf should do a countdown thread of his top 50.

Fawlty towers was a piece of sheer genius in it's time. I remember waiting for each new episode with excitement. No other sitcom has done that for me :shrug:

Pretty hard to argue with the result.

I'm surprised Only Fools didn't finish top five, though, that strikes me as "the most beloved" sitcom or whatever.

And Father Ted continues to be overrated I see...

good list except the atrocious

9 Absolutely Fabulous

Is someone having a laugh or what?

Yes, all the viewers watching Ab Fab are having a reet laugh!

Keeping up Appearances is massively underrated.

To be fair I think at this point Fawlty Towers works OK as a "period comedy"; you could consider it a comedy deliberately set in the mid 20th century.

Father Ted I think is timeless because part of the joke is them being "out of touch" on their little island... Like you can imagine that it's set in 2019 and the rest of the world has broadband and smartphones but they're still sat round a CRT TV using their land line, and driving a 30 year old car. It actually makes it funnier :joker:.

To be fair some seaside towns are a bit "time frozen", and there's not really any situations in Fawlty Towers where modern technology would change the plot. Basil's a bit of a fuddyduddy who probably wouldn't bother with a mobile phone, especially as it would give Sybil more means to hassel him!

For me The Office, RF and AP and Phoenix Nights would be at the top but I loved The Good Life, Rising Damp, Fall and Rise of RP as I watched and laughed with me old dad.

So you have your own ones and you have ones you watched with your Dad as he loved them and you kind of knew what was going on :joker:

I dunno, the fashion is 70's through and through there's no escaping that and also you have things like WW2 references that only work in that time frame (long enough from the end of the war for the world to have moved on, but still within recent-ish living memory). The Germans episode ovciously but also the entire character of the retired military guy who seems to live there (I can't remember his name... Just that the best bit of the entire series is when he thinks the moose head is talking to him)

Here for it :clap1:

I agree with KUA being pretty much the same week in week out. There's a few amazing episodes like the boat one but there's a lot of repetition.

Alf, how do you feel about Alf Garnett and crew not being on the list?

Well it's bleedin' scandalous innit?

Innit fair eh? Innit bloody fair?

You work hard all your life, as God as my witness, and
this is how they treat ya. Well they can sod orf!

A list of top twenty British sitcoms without Yes Minister. I'd prefer it to about half of that list.

Probably would just miss out on my top 10, but definitely top 20 without a doubt.

Steptoe and Son, Allo Allo and One Foot in the Grave are the biggest omissions for me on that list.

sis you're absolutely ****ing right