The final episode was shown in May 2018. Car Share pulled in bumper ratings of 9 million, became (briefly) the BBC’s most-watched iPlayer boxset and won two BAFTAs. Informed but not didactic, stately without being stodgy, it showcases all of its creator’s great gifts without indulging his tendency to bang on a bit. I love this show's aesthetic: dark, grim, and violent, with blood spurts galore as vampires and other unholy beasts descend upon some truly unlucky village folk. Now that he will no longer be needed at work, what does he have to live for? Nervous breakdown seems an unlikely subject for sitcom, yet David Nobbs’s series was as perfect a realisation of suburban disappointment and male inadequacy as has ever been seen on television. This sublime political sitcom still feels fresh, thanks to co-creators Jonathan Lynn and Peter Jay’s sharp ear for the absurdities of Whitehall speech. Ronnie Barker was the petty crook and old lag using every trick in the book to make his sentence at HMP Slade more bearable – mainly by showing naive cellmate Godber the ropes and making life hard for the staff. Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, who was also behind Tom Hardy’s Taboo, has established a signature style with his trigger-happy Brummie gangster show: he drags costume drama out of country houses and into inner cities, then douses it in ye olde sex and violence. Pass the sonic screwdriver.
“Norman Stanley Fletcher, you are an habitual criminal who accepts arrest as an occupational hazard and presumably accepts imprisonment in the same casual manner…” Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais’ prison sitcom remains one of the all-time greats. The Rt Hon Jim Hacker MP is the well-meaning minister for Administrative Affairs but it’s manipulative mandarin Sir Humphrey Appleby who steals the show. We urge you to turn off your ad blocker for The Telegraph website so that you can continue to access our quality content in the future. A second series transformed it from cult hit to international phenomenon, breaking viewers' hearts when they least expected it. Flat-sharing protagonists awkward Mark (David Mitchell) and feckless Jeremy (Robert Webb) evolved scarcely a jot, remaining fundamentally awful yet oddly sympathetic.
We rely on advertising to help fund our award-winning journalism. The simple story of a family's struggles with poverty is told through the eyes of children. More than 100,000 viewers signed an online petition demanding a conclusion to John and Kayleigh’s story – and they got it. The consummate period sitcom starts with its hit-and-miss medieval incarnation, before our anti-hero becomes an Elizabethan nobleman at the beck and call of Miranda Richardson’s petulant Queenie, butler to the Hugh Laurie’s buffoonish Prince Regent and ends up in the First World War trenches. Bob Odenkirk is just so lovable, even when he's being a bit of a scumbag, and Michael McKean is the crown jewel of an amazing supporting cast. It was watched by 7m viewers, who sat in stunned, terrified silence when the credits rolled two hours later.