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

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.

FPoBA was a great, important show

I'm glad Adam and Joe got some recognition they have bought consistent lols for many years. Still do on BBC 6.

30 - Space Ghost Coast to Coast (Cartoon Network, 1994-2004)
- 1550 points, 13 votes, 1 first place

http://api.ning.com/files/DBuu8VM3qB-pmnca503jz7IXam6GHP7erH3wKtROUq8uTm7aUZX0JKYplXlXmeNC*5g9SIoQoC*cNf0KhxHMIFiKgIl-q*tL/SpaceGhost.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb5EbZIT0b4

I'd never seen this before I started looking at clips this morning. It's funny.

29 - Knowing Me Knowing You... with Alan Partridge (BBC, 1994-95)
- 1580 points, 11 votes

http://www.techdigest.tv/alan-partridge-twitter.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29SslXv_Ja8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzC2a0znVsc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT_W6FwN_hY
You cheeky monkey

oops, try again
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT_W6FwN_hY

The last two entries are classic for all time.

28 - Friends (NBC, 1994-2004)
- 1620 points, 11 votes

http://nickbaines.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/friends.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRb92CDLlq0

No cries of outrage and disgust?

heh, from which side?

I'll rep for Friends to some extent, at its peak the writing was extremely tight, and it only became truly objectionable in the late 90s/00s. I gave it 30 points.

I'd say Friends' ranking is just about right, in that it didn't make my ballot but probably was floating somewhere just outside the top 25.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTYG84lpIQM&feature=related

2000s clip there, iirc

don't understand why some people reset their tv tastes/preferences along with Y2K bug.

Aww, Friends finished too low. I think most of the haterade this show gets is pretty knee-jerk. Yes, they're kinda lame people who get really excited about seeing Hootie & The Blowfish. But it's a good and funny show about lame people! C'mon!!! This is totally the show the Frasier fans described above: I would gladly sit and watch hours of Friends on a rainy Sunday. It's cozy.

I'm guessing that, because Space Ghost placed where it did, that Cartoon Planet isn't going to place at all. Which is a shame. CP is like the nutty cable access variety show the Space Ghost cast does on their off-hours to amuse themselves. Plus, CP has Brak, and lots of him! I love it a lot.

xp, that's the point of the decade poll.

but in the case of friends, it actually got a lot better around season 7 (first broadcast 2000), and then really hit its stride around 8/9/10. earlier seasons are not quite like blackadder 1 vs. blackadder 2/3/4 different, but they are significantly less funny.

27 - Roseanne (ABC, 1988-97)
- 1630 points, 13 votes, 1 first place

http://www.carseywerner.net/images/roseanne_cast_max.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdSeUeuoy9c

Awwwwwww part deux! Another low finish. Roseanne was probably the best traditional American sitcom of the '90s.

o but u are wrong about friends getting funnier, if anything it sags in the middle.

my point on the decades split was people not voting for something because they voted in another separate poll for it are kinda being a little silly.

xpost

(Although I realize now, saying that, that my ballot may contradict my statement...)