A British sitcom or a Britcom is a situational comedy programme produced for British television.
Glynis Margaret Payne Johns was a British actress. In a career spanning seven decades on stage and screen, Johns appeared in more than 60 films and 30 plays. She received various accolades throughout her career, including a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award as well as nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Laurence Olivier Award. She was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood and classical years of British cinema.
The Young Ones is a British sitcom written by Rik Mayall, Ben Elton, and Lise Mayer, starring Adrian Edmondson, Mayall, Nigel Planer, Christopher Ryan, and Alexei Sayle, and broadcast on BBC Two for two series, first shown in 1982 and 1984. The show focused on the lives of four dissimilar students and their landlord's family on different plots that often included anarchic, offbeat, surreal humour. The show often included slapstick gags, visual humour and surreal jokes sometimes acted out by puppets, with each episode also featuring a notable selection of guest stars and musical numbers from various performers.
The Comic Strip are a group of British comedians who came to prominence in the 1980s. They are known for their television series The Comic Strip Presents..., which was labelled as a pioneering example of the alternative comedy scene. The core members are Adrian Edmondson, Dawn French, Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer, Peter Richardson and Jennifer Saunders, with appearances by Keith Allen, Robbie Coltrane, Alexei Sayle and others.
Black Books is a British sitcom created by Dylan Moran and Graham Linehan, and written by Moran, Kevin Cecil, Andy Riley, Linehan and Arthur Mathews. It was broadcast on Channel 4, running for three series from 2000 to 2004. Starring Dylan Moran as Bernard Black, Bill Bailey as Manny Bianco, and Tamsin Greig as Fran Katzenjammer, the series is set in the eponymous London bookshop and follows the lives of its owner, his assistant, and their friend. The series was produced by Big Talk Productions, in association with Channel 4.
British humour carries a strong element of satire aimed at the absurdity of everyday life. Common themes include sarcasm, tongue-in-cheek, banter, insults, self-deprecation, taboo subjects, puns, innuendo, wit, and the British class system. These are often accompanied by a deadpan delivery which is present throughout the British sense of humour. It may be used to bury emotions in a way that seems unkind in the eyes of other cultures. Jokes are told about everything and almost no subject is off-limits, though a lack of subtlety when discussing controversial issues is sometimes considered insensitive. Many British comedy series have become successful internationally, serving as a representation of British culture to overseas audiences.
Erika Rose Alexander is an American actress, writer, producer, entrepreneur and activist best known for her roles as Pam Tucker on the NBC sitcom The Cosby Show (1990–1992), and Maxine Shaw on the Fox sitcom Living Single (1993–1998). She has won numerous awards for her work on Living Single, including two NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series. Her film credits include The Long Walk Home (1990), 30 Years to Life (2001), Déjà Vu (2006), Get Out (2017), American Refugee (2021), Earth Mama (2023) and American Fiction (2023), for which she was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Performance.
Green Wing is a British sitcom set in the fictional East Hampton Hospital. It was created by the same team behind the sketch show Smack the Pony – Channel 4 commissioner Caroline Leddy and producer Victoria Pile – and stars Mark Heap, Tamsin Greig, Stephen Mangan and Julian Rhind-Tutt. It focuses on soap opera-style twists and turns in the personal lives of the characters, portrayed in sketch-like scenes and sequences in which the film is slowed down or sped up, often emphasising the body language of the characters. The show had eight writers. Two series were made by the Talkback Thames production company for Channel 4.
Desmond's is a British television sitcom broadcast by Channel 4 from 5 January 1989 to 19 December 1994. Conceived and co-written by Trix Worrell, and produced by Charlie Hanson and Humphrey Barclay, Desmond's stars Norman Beaton as barber Desmond Ambrose, whose shop is a gathering place for an assortment of local characters. The show is set in Peckham, London, and features a predominantly black British Guyanese cast. With 71 episodes, Desmond's became Channel 4's longest running sitcom in terms of episodes.
Heil Honey I'm Home! is a British sitcom, written by Geoff Atkinson and produced in 1990, which was cancelled after one episode. It centres on Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, who live next door to a Jewish couple, Arny and Rosa Goldenstein. The show spoofs elements of mid-20th century American sitcoms and is driven by Hitler's inability to get along with his neighbours. It caused controversy when broadcast and has been called "perhaps the world's most tasteless situation comedy".
Sean Hughes was a British-born Irish comedian, writer and actor. He starred in his own Channel 4 television show Sean's Show and was one of the regular team captains on the BBC Two musical panel game Never Mind the Buzzcocks.
15 Storeys High is a British sitcom, set in a tower block in south London. Created and co-written by Sean Lock, it originated as two radio series broadcast in 1998–2000, transferring to television in 2002–2004. The television series starred Sean Lock and Benedict Wong.
"Meltdown" is the sixth, and final, episode of science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf Series IV and the twenty-fourth episode in the series run. It was first broadcast on the British television channel BBC2 on 21 March 1991. Written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, and directed by Ed Bye, the episode, featuring Wax-Droids of famous historical figures involved in a war of good versus evil, was originally supposed to open the series but was postponed due to the Gulf War conflict.
No Problem! is a Channel 4 sitcom that ran from 7 January 1983 to 1 June 1985, created by the Black Theatre Co-operative. The show was written by Farrukh Dhondy and Mustapha Matura, from the Black Theatre Co-operative. Twenty-seven episodes were broadcast of the programme, which focused on a family of Jamaican heritage, the Powells, living in a council house in Willesden Green, London. It was voted Britain's 100th best sitcom in a poll carried out by the BBC.
Soupy Norman is an eight-part Irish-Polish television programme broadcast by RTÉ. It aired weekly on Thursday nights at 23:05 on the RTÉ Two channel, in ten-minute segments. The series ran from May to December 2007. The show is a comedic re-dubbing of the Polish soap opera Pierwsza miłość, which has been running on Polsat television since 2004.
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.
A sitcom is a genre of comedy centred on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use new characters in each sketch, and stand-up comedy, where a comedian tells jokes and stories to an audience. Sitcoms originated in radio, but today are found mostly on television as one of its dominant narrative forms.
FM is a British sitcom which aired on ITV2, starring Chris O'Dowd, Kevin Bishop and Nina Sosanya. The series followed the lives of two DJs and their producer on their FM radio programme, "Skin 86.5 FM". The show also featured music from real-life artists and guest stars from the music industry.
The Random Years is an American sitcom created by Michael Lisbe and Nate Reger that aired for four episodes on the United Paramount Network (UPN) in March 2002. The series centers on childhood friends Alex Barnes, Wiseman, and Todd Mitchell and their lives after graduating college while living in Chinatown, Manhattan. Storylines focus on the characters' jobs and romantic relationships, often including their neighbor Casey Parker and their building superintendent Steve.
Joel Homan is a former American child actor. He is best known for his role as Dominic Hughes in the CBS sitcom Yes, Dear.
