iPlayer? What's an iPlayer? ILX's top 50 TV shows of the 90s!

i'm fully prepared for nostalgia- TMNT is a serious vote for me.

I didn't vote for it, but I sure wouldn't cry if it placed.

Something tells me this poll is gonna get retarded pretty soon. In a good way.

Tragically I still say "My wife's going to kiiiiiiill me" all the time.

^^^this. And I don't even have a wife.

My votes were fairly evenly split between shows I genuinely think were great and nostalgia shows. Except Knightmare really was great - fvck the haters.

33 - Shooting Stars (BBC, 1993-present)
- 1480 points, 12 votes

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Media/Pix/pictures/2008/07/15/shootingstars460.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OydP343QxxI&feature=PlayList&p=83FB7988C1E9D5D8&index=0&playnext=1

What are the odds, eh?

lol you boring gits

Wow in fact I never even placed SS and I voted for Smell of and Big Night Out. Not saying it wasn't often v. funny and all but still.

32 - The Adam & Joe Show (Channel 4, 1996-2001)
- 1490 points, 10 votes

http://www.channel4.com/assets/programmes/images/the-adam-and-joe-show/the-adam-and-joe-show_625x352.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og1fQyN1mmg

Just how did Joe Cornish get the gig of writing the Tintin movie for Spielberg?

the "tainted by nostalgia" crowd better be prepared to rattle off a long list of Good Serious Artistic Accomplishments in Television Sciences in the Nineteen Hundred and Nineties that didn't make the poll when this is all over.

I think the poll should be tainted by what people watched and liked in the 90s.

90% of the Brit stuff that's placed thus far is completely unknown to me. I'm contenting myself with the fact that Chip n' Dale's Rescue Rangers will inevitably take the top spot.

I doubt there were very many of us who were old enough in the '90s to watch TV with a keen critical eye.

I'm 45 and still waiting for this keen critical eye business to kick in (goes back to watching Hotel Babylon).

gotta be honest i think a keen critical eye would spoil 95% of TV. i can't watch sci-fi on tv, for instance, and i'm terrified it's gonna kick in for other shows soon.

this is why I'm down to just Lost, TCM and sports

31 - The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (NBC, 1990-96)
- 1540 points, 12 votes

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4JsxGTE76PA/SKXkL8w68BI/AAAAAAAAACs/KiRQhZ6ZqLA/s320/fresh+prince.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ1NA7Mgzgw

That's it from me, tune in same time tomorrow.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Okay, that's just kinda stupid. I really do think Home Improvement might place now.

Fresh Prince is straight-up "It beats staring at a wall" TV.

incredibly rong

will smith's pretty damn great on that show.

like s1-s3 has such good gags and will smith was genuinely charming imo!!!

plus, carlton's a good foil for him.

fresh prince is the best thing if you stop watching before the boring moral bits at the end. 'the boring moral bits at the end' is basically how I imagine every episode of the cosby show is btw.

Totally expected those last two entries to place much higher than they did, Adam & Joe have had a career renaissance in the UK of late and I thought the Fresh Prince would be one of those big unifying forces given that people on both sides of the Atlantic seem to remember it fondly.

ya, i'm thinking fresh prince took a hit b/c of how much of a d-bag will smith is now :/

also the last few seasons were uncalled for

I love in Arrested Development when little George Michael stays up, with a metal funnel on his head, to watch the debut of Oz on HBO.

I dunno. I mean, I used to watch Fresh Prince, but I also used to watch, like, Suddenly Susan during a time in life when I was seemingly completely devoid of critical faculties. Granted, I haven't watched it in a decade+, so I have no idea how it holds up.

Gave plentya points to A&J; love 'em, love 'em, love 'em. They're just naturally hilarious people, and they got on TV. And they had loads of great ideas! Fantastic stuff.

They repeated some of the early Fresh Princes on BBC2 about ten years ago, and they were pretty good. Nice loose performances, and surprisingly political - I mean it wasn't Do the Right Thing, but there was more of that kind of stuff than I remembered.

dug the occasional meta-joke on Fresh Prince.

i'm shocked how low OZ is. i know it also listed in the '00's poll - but most of it was in the 90's no?

i didn't vote for Oz or Freaks and Geeks, because i put them both very high on my 00-list. also thought Fresh Prince would place higher, i still catch reruns of it time to time and it's definitely a lot better than staring at a wall. the boring moral bits are no worse than the ones on Office US

Good to see Dave from Derek and Dave make an early appearance in that Smell Of opening:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3Rc5dNDB2M

also, didn't vote for F&G for the same reason as everyone else, although it's much better than anything that has polled so far imo.

i didn't vote in the 00's poll so i had no beefs putting F&Gs up there!

high points of SS for me:

last 30 seconds of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tTEPMQ1vNY

this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMPJZ4YZnqI

this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiZZ_Cv2J9Q

I have never even heard of most of the British stuff that's been listed so far.

Except for Red Dwarf, which was a guaranteed channel change for me after my mom stopped watching Are You Being Served or whatever on PBS.

I'd be interested to hear some more US reactions to the Reeves & Mortimer clips. I suspect their humour is very culturally specific.

i don't think it's just that it's culturally specific (although of course it's very, very british), it's also you have to have seen their shows from the start and know what vic and bob are like. not that they have a broad decade-long narrative, but i don't think clips work out of context.

that said, i totally lost my shit once typing "shooting stars" into youtube. two hours. gone.

SS is fine as it goes, but two hours of it... ?

Both of the clips for R&M didn't seem like anything other than regular ol' people bein' goofy (which can be fun), but maybe I am missing a bunch of British referential humor buried deep within.

I think it's more that we just find that kind of goofiness particularly funny - the second one is a parody of a show very few non-brits are likely to have seen, as well.

SS is fine as it goes, but two hours of it... ?

― DavidM, Tuesday, December 8, 2009 6:43 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i was stuck in an airport and it had been a long day

WTF only 10 votes for Adam & Joe? It was brilliant! I remember the toy parody things being among the least good bits as well, but they seem to be all I can find on Youtube.

Adam & Joe would have had 11 votes had I actually got round to doing this.