The 12 best British sitcoms of the 1990s — 18 stars no | UK News
You can’t beat a basic British sitcom. There have been some absolute corkers over the a long time that have cemented British tv’s popularity for making the best comedy wherever in the world.
Of course, there have been some utter stinkers too — you’ll be able to read Gary Bushell’s verdict on the worst 11 British sitcoms ever made right here, including at least one that stars an all-time TV legend.
While many people will in all probability immediately suppose of older classics like Fawlty Towers, Steptoe and Son or Porridge as the pinnacle of British state of affairs comedy (and I wouldn’t essentially argue with them) the 1990s have been most undoubtedly also a golden age. Despite the 25 years that have handed since the 1990s ended, if you requested me to title the best British comedies, my thoughts would immediately leap back to that decade.
If you are questioning why some classics didn’t make the checklist, I’ll pre-empt you: Blackadder misses out because it was over before the 1990s started. So is The Office, which is as good as something from the nineties but didn’t first air until 2001. Razor sharp 1990s comedies like Brass Eye and The Day Today don’t make the checklist because, while hilarious and ground-breaking, they’re not sitcoms. The same goes for Shooting Stars and basic sketch show sequence like Harry Enfield and The Fast Show.
11. Mr Bean
Some might flip their nostril up at the inclusion of Mr Bean on this checklist. They shouldn’t. Of every programme included right here, Mr Bean is arguably the most watched and most profitable. It ran from 1990 to 1995 and made Rowan Atkinson even more well-known than Blackadder already had. The animated model, still voiced by Atkinson, launched its fourth sequence in 2025 and it’s discovering a entire new viewers in the streaming period.
Atkinson explained not too long in the past why he thought it was so phenomenally fashionable all over the world, despite the fact that his character nearly never talks. He said Mr Bean is “essentially a child in a man’s body” and that “across all races and cultures, the behaviour of children tends to be the same and so is easily identified and laughed at”. Whether they’re six or 36, people today are still laughing at Mr Bean the method we did three a long time in the past.
(Image: Mirrorpix)
10. Drop The Dead Donkey
This sitcom about a TV newsroom doesn’t immediately seem as iconic as the others on this checklist. But it in fact ran for longer than most of them, lasting eight years on Channel 4 from 1990 to 1998 with episodes peaking at 4.5 million viewers.
It also attracted visitor stars like Neil Kinnock and Jon Snow, as nicely as upcoming stars like Daniel Craig and Andrew Lincoln who would go on to turn into global megastars.
Its creators, Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton, based it in a newsroom for the method it “gives you constant moral dilemmas in a way that not many offices do”. Having overheard an exchange in a BBC newsroom in which an editor said “If he’s dead, he’s in” reacting to a report of a capturing, the pair wished to call it Dead Belgians Don’t Count, but Channel 4 said no. So they just made up the title that finally ended up turning into well-known.
(Image: Mirrorpix)
9. One Foot in the Grave
There’s no method any of you studying this lived through the 1990s without listening to “I don’t believe it!” It was so universally well-known that it was even included in other sitcoms on this checklist on the assumption that everybody in Britain knew it. Remember the Father Ted episode where Ted sees Richard Wilson at a vacationer attraction and thinks it’s a great concept to say it back to him?
One Foot In The Grave ran from 1990 to 2000, centred on the lives of Wilson’s Victor Meldrew and his spouse Margaret, performed by Annette Crosbie. It received a number of major comedy awards throughout the decade. The BBC sequence’ last episode led to a major controversy when ITV was accused of attempting to “rig” the scores by broadcasting the first ever jackpot winner of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? at the same time on November 20, 2000.
(Image: Mirrorpix)
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