Five Great British Sitcoms to Watch on Netflix

Best British Sitcoms on Netflix

There a few things the British do well.

We’re great at queuing, avoiding confrontation, music, and more pertinently, comedy. Over on these shores, being funny is almost a currency in itself, a necessary part of getting through the day, of dealing with the crap weather and those odd days of mind-numbing tedium. Naturally then, we’ve produced some of the finest sitcoms ever written, almost all of which celebrate the outsider – or the insider who feels like an outsider.

For anyone wanting to swot up on our comedic output thus far, Netflix is a great place to start, with the streaming behemoth hosting a treasure trove of comedic gold that should bring a smile to the face of even the most melancholic misanthrope. To guide you through this morass of mirth, here are five of the best British sitcoms on Netflix.

Fawlty Towers

No list of Great British sitcoms worthy of the name could leave out Fawlty Towers. It has been hailed as quite simply the best sitcom in history and, while it was written four decades ago, its universal central themes mean it’s arguably as funny now as it ever was.

The central character, John Cleese’s Basil Fawlty, is a classic sitcom protagonist, in some ways the classic sitcom protagonist. He’s a put-upon hotelier for whom everything is too much trouble and who is never ever satisfied with his lot in life. He’s trapped in the precarious position of the English middle class. On the one hand, he’s terrified of his hotel attracting the wrong sort of people and going downhill. On the other, he devotes endless energy and stress to moving up in the world, securing custom from those higher up the social scale, to improve the reputation of his establishment.

The humour comes from all sorts of places: the acutely observed sniping of Basil and his wife Sybil, the over-the-top slapstick of the Spanish waiter Manuel, and the hectic farce of Basil’s latest scheme blowing up in his face. It was genius that didn’t last long – Fawlty Towers has just 12 episodes – but what was produced is very special indeed.

Outnumbered

There’s never been a show that’s captured the frenzied, chaotic, and frankly bizarre nature of family life quite like Outnumbered. It’s a sitcom that’s shot like a documentary, a semi-improvised production that’s filmed with handheld cameras and positively fizzes with authenticity. It takes you inside the North London home of the Brockman family, turning you into an intimate spectator to their trials and tribulations.

Comedically, the parents are mere supporting players to their three children. The eldest, Jake, is the quintessential geeky teenager, embarrassed by his dad, just starting to like girls and wanting to be cool but not really knowing how. The middle child, Karen, has a mop of angelic blonde hair, an exceptionally vivid imagination and a predilection for asking her parents embarrassing questions with the wide eyed innocence that only a small child can really pull off. And then there’s Ben, the youngest, a frizzy-haired whirlwind that creates mischief wherever he goes. He’s a compulsive liar who delights in twisting his parents around his finger to get his way, having realised early on the universal hidden truth of parenthood; it’s the kids that have all the power.

Outnumbered’s greatest trick is that no matter how ridiculous the scenarios get, there’s always a truth to them. It never feels dreamt up out of thin air, but informed by real life-experience. Well, that and the fact that it’s bloody hilarious.

Uncle

Meet Andy. He’s an unkempt wannabe musician somewhere in his 20s or 30s, an overweight loser who, in the opening minutes of the first episode, is trying to think of reasons not to kill himself. His unlikely saviour is his sister, who rings to ask him to pick up his 12-year-old nephew Errol from school, having already tried every responsible adult she can think of. And from this is born a distinctly atypical odd couple comedy; two very different social misfits stumbling through life together and, just occasionally, managing to help each other.

There are some similarities to About a Boy, but this is a much grimier and more adult take on a similar concept. Consequently, it feels much closer to real life than a floppy-haired idle millionaire learning the benefits of human contact. In fact, one of the best things about Uncle is that it steers clear of the saccharine – this is a world in which almost everyone is imperfect. Errol’s mother is a recovering drug addict, and Andy is endlessly lusting after his ex Gwen, a waitress at the gay strip club owned by her transgender father.

None of this is exactly classic sitcom material, and Uncle never feels like a classic sitcom. Instead, it’s something more interesting and unusual than that; a weird hybrid of dark humour and overblown musical video parodies (yes, really) that’s somehow laced with enough heart and warmth to be genuinely affecting. Most importantly, it feels original in a way that sitcoms hardly ever do, and is a true hidden gem that’s well worth seeking out.

Peep Show

As David Mitchell, one of its co-stars, has stated, Peep Show is a conventional sitcom masquerading as a groundbreaking one. He meant it as a compliment, arguing that despite the unconventional filming style and bad language, the programme belongs in the great British sitcom tradition of shows that delve into the inner lives of losers and show their desperate and generally fatally flawed attempts at being something more.

For the uninitiated, Peep Show revolves around the lives of Mark (David Mitchell) and Jeremy (Robert Webb), two twenty-something guys sharing a flat in one of the less nice bits of London. We see most of the action from the point of view of one of these two main characters and also hear their thoughts. In Mark’s case, this means getting intimately acquainted with the mind-numbing tedium of his office job and his often catastrophic attempts to woo his colleague Sophie. When we view the world through Jeremy’s eyes, we see him laze around the flat, make faltering and often disastrous attempts to kick-start his music career, and attempt to shag just about any attractive female who comes into his orbit.

It’s hearing their thoughts that really makes Peep Show work. All of the really funny bits come either from the contradiction between what Mark/Jeremy say and what we hear them thinking, or from the general weirdness and mundanity of their internal monologues. Really, it’s one of those shows that is impossible to describe properly; it’s neither as odd nor as dull as it sounds. At its best, it’s sublime, observational comedy that observes the inner workings of your mind. Now it’s on Netflix, you’ve got no excuse not to give it a go.

The Thick of It

The Thick of It reminds us of one simple yet vital truth. Just because it’s the government doesn’t mean it’s any less subject to idiotic cock-ups, petty personal rivalries and farcical misunderstandings than any other office. The show takes us inside the fictional department of Social Affairs as it lurches from one self-generated crisis to another, with enough swearing to make a whole army of dockers blush.

It was written with the help of a civil servant turned journalist so as well as being very funny, it’s also the closest we’ll ever get to actually seeing just how badly the UK is run. This sense of authenticity is helped by the fly-on-the-wall mockumentary approach, with the cast being given enough improvisation space to let the dialogue breathe and adapt in a way that feels natural. The regular cast includes an out-of-his-depth minister and his coterie of advisors and support staff, all being herded by the mesmerising Malcolm Tucker. Played by future Doctor Who Peter Capaldi, it’s Tucker that truly makes the show, a head of communications whose Machiavellian charm hides a seething, simmering volcano that could go off at any second. He’s based on Tony Blair’s head of spin Alistair Campbell, although it’s unlikely that Campbell could match Tucker’s florid fountains of vulgarity (The Thick of It is surely the only show in history to have a swearing consultant).

Lines like “as useless as a marzipan dildo” have already become infamous to the show’s devotees but there’s more to The Thick of It than swearing. There’s a beautiful choreography to the endless rounds of backtracking and contradiction, all designed to give the impression that the government is functioning perfectly normally while it actually relies on lies, deceit and ideas knocked up in five minutes in the back of a taxi. Given what our lords and masters are currently doing, it’s as timely a watch as ever.