A little closer to home (a piece on British sitcoms)

While working on some of the last few posts, I was thinking about how I haven’t really talked about many sitcoms/comedy shows from the UK. With that being said, here’s a shortish (sorry for any excessive rambling) piece on some shows that stuck/resonated with me and that I still watch now, in some cases. Hope you enjoy it.

As a young teen, I loved shows like Miranda and Gavin and Stacey (especially the Christmas specials for G and S). In fact, as I often do, I got super invested in the characters and plots and spent probably more time watching them than I care to say here…   It’s not to say that I’ve stopped liking these shows altogether (we even visited Barry and the amusement park they go to in the show in 2021) but I definitely don’t watch them as much as I used to. To tell the truth, with a few exceptions, I actually just watch a lot less British TV and sitcoms now and many of my faves and shows I rewatch the most are American.

In fact, Andy Samberg, one of my very favourite American male celebs (and just faves in general), even appeared in a season of a UK sitcom. In 2012, the first season of Cuckoo was released with Andy as the titular character and starred Helen Baxendale (Emily from Friends) and Greg Davies. The first season is unsurprisingly so good as Tamla Kari, who plays Rachel, has awesome chemistry with Andy and they’re both amazing in it. So, naturally, neither of them returned for the later seasons and while I have absolutely nothing against the other/new cast members, I haven’t really watched the other seasons on principle for this reason, haha. (Feel free to comment/give your thoughts if you’ve watched the later seasons or just some of your fave sitcoms from recent years :). )

Another show that holds a special place in my heart that I was first introduced to in my teens is The Royle Family (featuring Craig Cash and the late, great Caroline Aherne who’ve both narrated the often pretty entertaining Gogglebox).  If you haven’t seen it, The Royle Family is really worth a watch. There may be a general misconception that it’s just watching the main characters sit on the sofa and watch TV and nothing happens (much like how Seinfeld was famously described and the premise of Gogglebox,  funnily enough :) )However, there is a lot more to The Royle Family than meets the eye as it contains a lot of heart, humour, depth, generational differences and a lot of wit and cleverness.

It’s not so much a sitcom, necessarily, but in more recent times, I’ve really gotten into Inside No. 9 in a big way (despite not really being A League of Gentleman person, particularly)* and we watched the latest season as a family. It’s such a dark, fascinating, complex and captivating show with consistently brilliant writing and performances from the leads and creators, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, and all the guest actors are beyond amazing too. (just to mention a few - Sophie Okonedo from His Dark Materials,  Sarah Hadland from Miranda, Sheridan Smith and Ralf Little from The Royle Family, Jessica Hynes (who's also in TRF with Smith and Little) and Sian Clifford from Fleabag, another wonderful series).

There have been some wonderful recent sitcoms too and, like many others, I absolutely love Ghosts, for instance. I also got super into Derry Girls and loved almost every episode. It came at a slightly later time in my life than a big coming-of-age classic and personal favourite Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, but it was still a powerful and important show with the focus on growing up, historical contexts and friendships as coming-of-age stories can have relevance at various different points in our life. As such, I was actually was a bit sad to see it come to an end last year. 

*I do really like the Charlie and Stella parts though and I do like them/their shows in general.