A British sitcom or a Britcom is a situational comedy programme produced for British television.
Jennifer Jane Saunders is an English actress, comedian, singer, and screenwriter. Saunders originally found attention in the 1980s, when she became a member of The Comic Strip after graduating from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama with her best friend and comedy partner, Dawn French. With French, she co-wrote and starred in their eponymous sketch show, French and Saunders, for which they jointly received a BAFTA Fellowship in 2009. Saunders later received acclaim in the 1990s for writing and playing her character Edina Monsoon in her sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.
Dawn Roma French is a British actress, comedian, and writer. She is known for writing and starring on the BBC sketch comedy series French and Saunders (1987–2007) with her best friend and comedy partner Jennifer Saunders, and playing the lead role of Geraldine Granger in the BBC sitcom The Vicar of Dibley (1994–2020). French has been nominated for seven BAFTA TV Awards and won a BAFTA Fellowship with Saunders in 2009.
The Royle Family is an English sitcom produced by Granada Television for the BBC, which ran for three series from 1998 to 2000, and specials from 2006 to 2012. It centres on the lives of a television-fixated Manchester family, the Royles, comprising family patriarch Jim Royle, his wife Barbara, their daughter Denise, their son Antony and Denise's fiancé David.
I'm Alan Partridge is a British sitcom created by Steve Coogan, Peter Baynham and Armando Iannucci. Coogan stars as Alan Partridge, a tactless and inept broadcaster. The first series, broadcast in 1997, has Coogan living in a roadside hotel after having been left by his wife and dropped by the BBC. The second, broadcast in 2002, sees Partridge living in a static caravan after recovering from a mental breakdown. Iannucci said the writers used the sitcom as "a kind of social X-ray of male middle-aged Middle England".
Richard Keith Robert Coles is an English writer, radio presenter and Church of England priest. He first came to prominence as the multi-instrumentalist who partnered Jimmy Somerville in the 1980s band the Communards. They achieved three UK top ten hits, including the No. 1 record and best-selling single of 1986, a dance version of "Don't Leave Me This Way".
Pauline Perpetua Sheen is an English actress. She began her career with roles on various television series, before fronting her own comedy sketch show, Pauline's Quirkes, in 1976. She later starred as Vicky Smith on the BBC drama series Angels (1982–1983), and achieved fame with her portrayal of Sharon Theodopolopodous on the long-running sitcom Birds of a Feather, for which she won a British Comedy Award and was nominated on three occasions for a National Television Award. In 1997, she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress for her role in the BBC miniseries The Sculptress. Between 2010 and 2012, Quirke played Hazel Rhodes on the ITV soap opera Emmerdale.
David James Stuart Mitchell is a British comedian, actor and writer.
Anne Reid is a British stage, film and television actress, known for her roles as Valerie Barlow in the soap opera Coronation Street (1961–1971); Jean in the sitcom dinnerladies (1998–2000); and her role as Celia Dawson in Last Tango in Halifax (2012–2020) for which she was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress. She won the London Film Critics' Circle Award for British Actress of the Year and received a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in the film The Mother (2003).
Thomas Anthony Hollander is a British actor. Hollander trained with National Youth Theatre and won the Ian Charleson Award in 1992 for his performance as Witwoud in The Way of the World. He made his Broadway debut in the David Hare play The Judas Kiss in 1998. His performance as Henry Carr in a revival of the Tom Stoppard play Travesties earned nominations for both the Olivier Award and Tony Award.
Darren John Boyd is a British actor who starred in the Sky One series Spy, for which he won BAFTA TV Award for Best Male Comedy Performance. His work in television and film spans comedy and drama.
The IT Crowd is a British television sitcom originally broadcast by Channel 4, created, written and directed by Graham Linehan, produced by Ash Atalla and starring Chris O'Dowd, Richard Ayoade, Katherine Parkinson, and Matt Berry. Set in the offices of the fictional Reynholm Industries in London, the series revolves around the staff of its IT department: technical genius Maurice Moss (Ayoade); work-shy Roy Trenneman (O'Dowd); and Jen Barber (Parkinson), the department head/relationship manager who knows nothing about IT. The show also focuses on the bosses of Reynholm Industries: Denholm Reynholm and, later, his son Douglas. Goth IT technician Richmond Avenal, who resides in the server room, also appears in several episodes.
Sam Bain is a British comedy writer, best known for the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show. He attended St Paul's School in London before graduating from the University of Manchester, where he met his writing partner Jesse Armstrong.
Peter Dougan Capaldi is a Scottish actor and director. He portrayed the twelfth incarnation of the Doctor in the science fiction series Doctor Who and Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It, for which he received four British Academy Television Award nominations, winning Best Male Comedy Performance in 2010.
Stephen James Mangan is an English actor, comedian, presenter and writer. He has played Guy Secretan in Green Wing, Dan Moody in I'm Alan Partridge, Seán Lincoln in Episodes, Bigwig in Watership Down, Postman Pat in Postman Pat: The Movie, Richard Pitt in Hang Ups, Andrew in Bliss (2018), and Nathan Stern in The Split (2018–2022).
Miranda Katherine Hart Dyke is an English actress, comedian and writer. Following drama training at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts, Hart began writing material for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and making appearances in BBC sitcoms, including Hyperdrive (2006–2007) and Not Going Out (2006–2009).
Outnumbered is a British sitcom about the Brockman family, starring Hugh Dennis as the father, Claire Skinner as the mother and their three children played by Tyger Drew-Honey, Daniel Roche and Ramona Marquez.
The Inbetweeners is a British coming-of-age television teen sitcom, which originally aired on E4 from 2008 to 2010 and was created and written by Damon Beesley and Iain Morris. The series follows the misadventures of suburban teenager William McKenzie and his friends Simon Cooper, Neil Sutherland and Jay Cartwright at the fictional Rudge Park Comprehensive. The programme involves situations of school life, uncaring school staff, friendship, male bonding, lad culture and adolescent sexuality. Despite receiving an initially lukewarm reception, it has been described as a classic and amongst the most successful British sitcoms of the 21st century.
Miranda is a British television sitcom written by and starring comedian Miranda Hart. It originally aired on BBC Two from 9 November 2009, and later on BBC One. Developed from Hart's semi-autobiographical BBC Radio 2 comedy Miranda Hart's Joke Shop (2008), the situation comedy revolves around socially inept Miranda, who frequently finds herself in awkward situations. The show features actors Sarah Hadland, Tom Ellis and Patricia Hodge. It was filmed in front of live audiences at the BBC Television Centre and The London Studios.
Friday Night Dinner is a British sitcom created by Robert Popper that aired on Channel 4 from 25 February 2011 to 1 May 2020. Starring Tamsin Greig, Paul Ritter, Simon Bird, Tom Rosenthal, and Mark Heap, it follows the regular Friday night dinner experience of the Jewish middle-class Goodman family in North London. Following the conclusion of the sixth series and Ritter's death in 2021, it was announced that the show would not return. The show is filmed using a single-camera setup.
