New top 20 compiled by comedy experts

Fawlty Towers has been named the greatest British sitcom of all time a new poll

 Radio Times magazine questioned a panel of 42 comedy experts to come  the new list, with John Cleese’s 1970s comedy coming ahead of Father Ted in second and I’m Alan Partridge in third.

All but two of the shows – Father Ted and Peep Show - aired on the BBC, and only one – Detectorists – began in the last decade.

Fawlty Towers co-writer Connie Booth, who  also played Polly, said the show was such as hit ‘because it allows infantile rage and aggression a field day in a buttoned down, well-mannered English society’.

She added: ’It's unique in being a farce, with all the plot surprises and precision that the style requires. And it doesn't hurt that the star of the show is a six-foot-five comic genius. If he was shorter I can't imagine how it would have worked."

The full Radio Times list is:

1. Fawlty Towers (1975-9, BBC Two)
2. Father Ted (1995-8, Channel 4)
3. I'm Alan Partridge (1997-2002, BBC Two)
4. Blackadder (1983-9, BBC One)
5. Dad's Army (1968-77, BBC One)
6. Only Fools and Horses (1981-2003, BBC One)
7. Porridge (1973-8, BBC One)
8. The Royle Family (1998-2012, BBC One)
9. Absolutely Fabulous (1992-2012, BBC Two)
10. Dinnerladies (1998-2000, BBC One)
11. The Thick of It (2005-12, BBC Four and Two)
12. The Office (2001-3, BBC Two)
13. Peep Show (2003-15, Channel 4)
14. The Vicar of Dibley (1994-2007, BBC One)
15. The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976-9, BBC One)
16. The Young Ones (1982-4, BBC Two)
17. Gavin & Stacey (2007-10, BBC Three and One)
18. The Good Life (1975-8, BBC One)
19. Detectorists (2014-17, BBC Four)
20. Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (1973-4, BBC One)

Published: 9 Apr 2019