What Is/Was Your Favorite Sitcom?

I think my favorite will always be Taxi, but other favorites are:
-M*A*S*H
-The Honeymooners
-Night Court (not counting the last two seasons)
-Frasier
-All in the Family

IMO, great sitcoms only come along once in a great while, but it's certainly not for lack of trying. It all comes down to great writing.

Everybody Loves Raymond and Will & Grace are two recent sitcoms that pass the test.

So what sitcoms can/could bring tears of laughter to your eyes?

 

I'd pick:
Bob Newhart
Barney Miller
two great shows that quit while still at their peak, writing wise.

MASH (first five seasons only). It got really awful toward the end especially.

The Simpsons (first six seasons only). Another which has overstayed its welcome.

Fawlty Towers is probably the best sitcom ever.

 

Barney Miller is about the top of my list. Anybody remember "Lotsa Luck" with Dom DeLuise? It was on in the early 70's for about 6 months. The basic story was about a custodian with a family who freeloaded off him. There was an especially obnoxious brother in law. Probably never see it again. Another favorite was WKRP in Cincinnati.

 

Here comes one of my lists:

All In The Family
M*A*S*H
Three's Company
Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.
Dennis The Menace
Gilligan's Island
Brady Bunch
Good Times
Sanford & Son
Barney Miller
Family Ties
Married With Children
Odd Couple
Love, American Style
I Love Lucy
Partridge Family
Different Strokes
Welcome Back Kotter
WKRP In Cincanatti
The Flintstones

Clearly, I am a child of the 60s and 70s.

 

Get A Life

 

Virtually impossible for me...
Here's mine...all dear to me.
The Munsters
The Addams Family
Green Acres
Beverly Hillbillies
My Favorite Martian
Andy Griffith
Top Cat
The Honeymooners
I Married Joan
Petticoat Junction
The Danny Thomas Show
Car 54, Where Are You?
Gilligan's Island
Leave It To Beaver
All In The Family
Good Times
Sanford And Son
Married With Children
The Odd Couple
Flintstones
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
Gomer Pyle
Dennis The Menence
I Love Lucy
It's About Time
Get A life
The Real McCoys
My Little Margie

 

SEINFELD!

 

On the other side of the pond...
Fawlty Towers
Monty Pythons Flying Circus
Mr. Bean

 

A few more from this side of the water

Black Adder (in all its forms)
Red Dwarf (early series)
Steptoe and Son
Dads Army
It Ain't half hot mum
Father Ted
Porridge
The Young Ones

All the best - Andrew

 

How many of my American friends are familiar with the English sitcom on which All In The Family was based:

'Till Death Us Do Part, starring Warren Mitchell. The Kinks did the theme song for the Movie version.

Without Alf Garnett, there would have been no Archie Bunker!

I'll vote for Fawlty Towers I guess.

Michael, I don't think Monty Python is a sitcom.......but hey, that's OK, my ex-girlfriend's father once said of Monty Python:

"I think he's very funny".

 

...and by the way, which ones Pink ?

&ru

 

Just discovered this recently and agree that it is one of the greatest!

 

Not many, but WKRP stands out as a big favorite. I know a sitcom is good when I quote lines from it--"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!"

Perfect Strangers also cracked me up, since there was a lot of slapstick. The karate episode brought back all those great memories of the Clouseau/Kato encounters.

 

SEINFELD, THE SIMPSONS, CHEERS, TAXI: everyone liked these, although I didn't get around to SEINFELD until it was syndicated.

For short-lived series, I enjoyed THE PJS, GET A LIFE, SOAP, and FAMILY GUY.

 

Right now it's That 70's Show.

All time rave fave is Seinfeld.

I'll watch anyting on Grant's list except M*A*S*H, it just never clicked for me.

 

GREEN ACRES: the most subversive sitcom ever made, in a surrealistic rural locale so quirky it still makes Monty Python seem conservative. As wonderfully absurd a show I've ever seen.

BATMAN: make no mistake, this was comedy, though camp is what most people remember. Nothing quite like it, and a natural for DVD box set status.

THE HONEYMOONERS: Needs no comment whatsover.

WKRP IN CINCINATTI: A flawed mess of a sitcom, but somehow endearing.
Every character, in a way, didn't belong at a radio station--at least that one. Yet they were one strange, happy family.

THE YOUNG ONES: 13 eps and out, but the only true inheritor to the Python ethos, and although erratic in quality, absolutely ROTFLMFAO hilarious when it worked.

THE ADDAMS FAMILY: I always like the house and its deadly potential.
And of course the blatant sexual interplay between Gomez and Morticia, taken to even further extremes in the two films with Julia & Huston.
And I wish there were more Wednesdays in the world, just grown up and ready for action

GILLIGAN'S ISLAND: just for Mary Ann.

FAWLTY TOWERS: Just the kind of chaos you expect from the Brits

That's pretty much my faves, discounting animation, which deserves a visual arts thread of its own, as it uses sitcom basics but takes them to a different place(thankfully). As for the rest, either too inconsistent(though with great eps scattered around, as with FRASIER)or just plain dull(anything Cosby ever did). Besides, I think the thread is meant to pick faves, not dis, so I'll let the duds lay where they belong.

ED

 

Forgot about 'Soap". Real Burt and alien Burt. "Hi, it's Chuck! Is Bob there?"

"Family Ties", mainly for the Alex Keaton character. "Hey, Al-EX!" "Hey, Ni-ICK." Or his hilarious infatuation with Liz Obeck, the girl next door. Didn't watch it as much though.

Used to watch a lot more in the 70's, and can't stand anything newer than the mid 80's. There was a time when humor aimed for something other than the crotch...

 

Yeah, I liked "Soap" but, again, it was kind of erratic and not always sure of itself. I also distrust sitcoms that insist, seemingly in EVERY episode, in trying to milk pathos or make some kind of social commentary. Worse, as time went on, sitcom writers and producers would milk the audience's emotions with sudden angry outbursts from characters. Since the term *sitcom* implies comedy, not anger, I always find this sort of crap a turn-off(admittedly, some shows did this a lot better than most). The crotch quotient, agreed, has gotten out of hand a bit, though sexual innuendo has been a staple of sitcoms from the beginning, only the more clever and less direct it was(THE ADDAMS FAMILY)the better it ages.

What bugs me about most sitcoms since the early '80s is that they're so literally *staged* that any attentive viewer can tell when and where the actors are hitting their *marks* or reading cue cards. Remember the early SNL? That gang rehearsed so well that by air time, it was as if they were acting a play where there were no cue cards; it all flowed so naturally. The best sitcoms, like THE HONEYMOONERS, are so well executed and filmed that you can get lost in them; it doesn't occur to you until after the show's over you were watching a show. More like you were a fly-on-the-wall into their living rooms, seeing and hearing their lives unfold, warts and all.

There is art and there is product; most of it now is product, but the art is where the fun and joy really is.

ED

 

With "Soap," for me anyway, it was worth wading through the other nonsense to get to the funny bits...since those sometimes had some serious belly laughs! But for the crotch stuff, I'd rather take some sly, clever innuendo that might be over many viewers' heads. This direct stuff is just annoying...very one dimensional, and just reminds me too much of being in junior high school and learing how to talk "dirty". And it's like not a moment goes by when they have to insert yet another crotch joke...as though the audience can't laugh at anything else.

It's like comedians. Rodney Dangerfield, on a couple of early albums, was still hilarous without having to be 100% in the gutter. And his innuendo jokes were even more funny because they were so tame.

'I Love Lucy" was another fly-on-the-wall show for me. You'd just get drawn into the Ricardos' living room with each episode.

 

I'd agree with John Carsell, right now That '70's Show is the best sitcom on the air. Try it, you might agree that it's very well written and acted.

All Time List:

Seinfeld
Taxi
Cheers
Mary Tyler Moore Show
Dick Van Dyke Show
Bob Newhart Show
All In The Family
WKRP
The Honeymooners
Fawlty Towers

The last, especially. John Cleese was/is a comic genius. Standout episode: when a guest dies, and they frantically try to hide the body.

 

Black Adder
Fawlty Towers (especially the "German" episode)
M*A*S*H

 

News Radio - great choice!

On top of News Radio:

Monty Python's Flying Circus
The Kids In The Hall
Seinfeld
The Simpsons
The Chris Isaak Show
Sports Night

To name a few

Craig