I think the ‘golden era’ of british TV comedy was the 60s and 70s. There was some awful rubbish too of course but it was the time of best scriptwriting and sitcoms that still stand up as funny all these years later.
My favourites would be Steptoe and Son, 'Til Death Us Do Part, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads, Fawlty Towers and Porridge.
Of recent British stuff The Office and The Royle Family are both very good and Steve Coogan’s stuff too. Alan Partridge is excellent.
Fawlty Towers is one you can watch over and over annd still be laughing. Classic stuff. Rising Damp is another timeless one that still gets the laughs. Leonard Rossiter was a comic genius.
Classic stuff !..I will probably be like that in a few years…
My brother bought me a box set of the complete Likelyu Lads and Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads for christmas and I’ve been working my way through the original series over the past couple of weeks.
It is terrific stuff. Written by the brilliant Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais who went on to pen Porridge and Auf Wiedersehen Pet amongst others the early episodes are almost theatrical in their scripting and staging. Unfortunately only eight episodes survive from the first three series made in the sixties. All very good though and still making the whole family laugh.
I’ll be moving on to the follow up 1970s series ‘Whatever Happened to…’ next which I remember better and equally fondly. If you get a chance to see any of this stuff I recommend it.
WHTTLL - The one where they’re hiding out - eventually taking sanctuary in a church, so they don’t find out the England match football result before the highlights are shown on ‘match of the day’ - all they know is “England F…” - a classic!! 
Yep, that is a great episode. As is the one when they challenge each other to a bike race. General cheating ensues and if I remember right Terry’s water bottles contain Newkie Brown. 
The problem is I don’t understand it very well
I’ll try again later with a headphone (I have hearing problems, and that tiny little speaker of my PC sounds awful), but maybe it’s the accent. I have to watch The Royle family with subtitles too, because I cannot understand the accent (from Manchester?)
[quote=“scherpschutter, post:47, topic:1397”]The problem is I don’t understand it very well
I’ll try again later with a headphone (I have hearing problems, and that tiny little speaker of my PC sounds awful), but maybe it’s the accent. I have to watch The Royle family with subtitles too, because I cannot understand the accent (from Manchester?)[/quote]
Yes, the Royle family is set in Manchester but the father (Ricky Tomlinson) is a scouser from Liverpool.
Last weekend a freind of mine showed me a British show I had never even heard of:
Garth Marenghi’s DarkPlace
We watched 3 episodes (there are only six total, I guess).
It was hilarious. I have not laughed that hard in a while.
Anybody else like this?
Friends of mine are really into peep show, i just cant stand it. It is so painfull to watch these geezers do everything wrong that can be done wrong. but the crackhead is fun if hard to understand
even we have trouble understanding them sometimes (that doesn’t include the good reverend :))