Ask Lemmy

The League of Gentlemen 

Spaced (1999–2001).

I always felt Garth Marenghi's Darkplace deserves more recognition.

Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe/Newswipe shows.

A lot of people missed those back in the day and they missed them as the origin of the voice of our generation: Philomena Cunk. I really miss her compatriot Barry Shitpeas.

Also Charlie Brooker's police procedural sendup A Touch of Cloth starring John Hannah is similarly criminally underrated.

Just imho Brooker's comedy is way better than his dark scifi of Black Mirror.

I really liked a sitcom called Detectorists (2014-2017) from and with Mackenzie Crook. Ran for three seasons. Not many people know about this show here in the Netherlands. I hoped it had stayed on for longer.

Black Books was great.  

It has its flaws, but I quote The IT crowd almost weekly

IT Crowd

The young ones

The misfits. A show about a group of working class juvenile delinquents who suddenly get random super powers.

I'm gonna say Broadchurch. I don't think it was unpopular, but I have to look it up every time to remember the name. It features a past and future Doctor (as in, Dr Who). David Tennant was a Doctor before he was on Broadchurch, and Jodie Whittaker was a Doctor after. She plays a mum whose child goes missing, and he's the inspector sent to her remote (?) village to investigate. That's the first season. The second season deals with the town's issues with the bad guy from the first season, and I forget what the third season's about, but it's all good.

They made an American one, and some of the same people were in it, but it only lasted one season. So I'd say go with the British one.

I also appreciated Torchwood. It's an adult sci-fi series set in the Dr Who universe, and it had its ups and downs (mostly downs), but it was generally worth watching. Unfortunately, the lead actor had a bad habit of pulling his pecker out backstage to prank his coworkers and he got canceled for it. Nobody said he ever abused them or that he pulled it out in public, it was just schoolboy antics backstage, but it was enough. Not defending him, I'm just saying he's not a nonce or a public menace. He just has a problem with boundaries. So, while I don't dislike him as an actor, being a viewer, I fully understand why people don't want to work with him anymore. Torchwood has continued as audiobooks, I think, or maybe something like a podcast where they act out roles? They call it something else, like an audio drama or something. So I'm not sure if there are actual books they're reading from or just a script that isn't available in print, the audio recordings being the only medium. There were also a couple games as I recall, but nothing good. A less problematic and more straightforward series (albeit, American) is Warehouse 13. Same thing. Shadowy organisation collects alien relics and stores them for the government. Hijinks ensue. W13 was fun at first, but really didn't go anywhere. (Also, it was on Syfy, if that tells you anything — as in, the network couldn't be arsed to spell "sci-fi" properly and they cared about as much about how to make good sci-fi as they did about spelling it properly.)

I really, genuinely, have always loved Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. It's got a reputation of being lowest-common-denominator toilet humour, which... it always was. And it had a lot of problems, the worst being that three fifths of the original cast had quit by the end.

But it also had an awful lot of heart. A totally different writing style to any other sitcom I've seen. An amazing dedication to silly wordplay. They were constantly trying new things (two public votes, two musical episodes, a horror episode, and a live episode). And there were some genuinely great performances, particularly from Natalie Casey (who carried the heart of the show in later seasons), and, weirdly, Beverley Callard.

Even when it did totally fall apart towards the end, they brought in new cast members and somehow managed to make it feel like a return to form.

Also The Murder Game, a BBC crime-scene investigation reality show that I desperately want the right TV executive to hear about so they can reboot it. 😬

I enjoyed Being Human. Not normally into the vampires and werewolves thing but I enjoyed it.

Two old ones that still hold up.

"The Prisoner."

Imagine if Franz Kafka and Ian Fleming collaborated on an episode of Dr. Who

https://youtu.be/osNmf_zmSyE?t=11

"Connections"

Science documentary that explores how progress twists and turns and almost never goes in a straight line.

https://youtu.be/XetplHcM7aQ

The Thick of It

A show regarding a random UK ministry and the random cluster fuck off politics. The 12th Doctor is an enforcer from the PM's office with a prolific use of profanity.

The writer ended up creating Veep in the USA.

In the flesh

BBC Show - Post zombie apocalypse, they’ve managed to cure the zombies and they’re trying to re-integrate into society.

I forgot about Look Around You. Classic stuff.

Are you being served, it was a great sitcom

Life On Mars

Inside Number 9. I don't hear much talk about it, but for me, it's up there with Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, etc. for a series of short stories with twists.

The Young Ones

Does That Mitchell and Webb Look count?

Can't say I have a hugely encyclopedic knowledge but: what if I told you there was a sketch show with Olivia Colman, Martin Freeman, David Mitchell, Robert Webb, and Matt Holness (et al)? With the writing staff including Richard Ayoade and Ricky Gervais?

That show exists, and it's called Bruiser. It got 6 episodes in 2000. As with any sketch show, they're not all home runs, but there are some truly great sketches in there.

Absolutely Fabulous is a great sitcom about a teenaged girl dealing with her narcissistic mother's shenanigans. funny AND has some real moments.

Time team. That shit was amazing. It went on for like 20+ years and EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. it was fascinating. The closest thing we have now is josh gates' expedition unknown, which is really hit and miss. Recently it's been so picky about things they're likely to hit on that some seasons only have 4-6 episodes. He tries to make the finds to be to big. Time team found all kinds of fantastic things because they were just looking for historical significance, not mountains of treasure. But they always found treasures of some kind. That was a really great, fascinating show.

I'm also a really big fan of top gear.

Hyperdrive with Nick Frost, Kevin Eldon and Miranda Hart

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperdrive_(British_TV_series)