5 Greatest Comedy Characters of all time

Jim royle
Twiggy
Two ronnies.
Sheldon cooper
Young sheldon

 

Reggie Perrin (and CJ, who didn’t get where he is today by being in a list)
Basil Fawlty
Battery Sargeant Major Williams
Harold Steptoe
Mrs Overall

 

...and her macaroons

 

Nobody remember Norman Wisdom?

 

It’s funny how no one has mentioned Friends, Last of the Summer Wine, Austin Powers, The Fast Show, Any Harry Enfield, Any Vic and Bob, Gavin and Stacy, The IT Crowd, Any Viz Characters, Ab Fab….all massive shows that gave the general populace many day to day sayings at the time.

Just proves that comedy out of all art forms dates the worst.

Either it’s set in a time or circumstance that’s locked (Dads Army, Porridge) or holds us in a happy time of our lives, our is genuinely brilliant like Only Fools and Horses.

Not much comedy bears up to a rewatch now….a lot of it like Bread and Robyn’s Nest is truly awful!

 

Still love a lot of the Fast Show characters, Ted and Ralph, Swiss Tony, Rowley Burkett…., same with Harry Enfield , Vic n Bob etc It’s not that they’re not funny to me any more, it’s just it’s difficult to pick just 5


Last of the Summer Wine though, was that ever funny?

 

No, it wasn't.

 

No too northern..

 

Last of the Summer Wine largely served as a blueprint for Top Gear with Clarkson et all - with a sprinkling of racism and xenophobia

I think it ably demonstrated where the mindset of the program commissioners was - plainly they were from a certain social standing, and thought X about the watching public. It's why nearly all 70's sit coms were invariably about Middle Class couples, usually in suburbia, troubling over interior decor. Anyone notice how often the 'boss' used to come for dinner in the 70's?!

 

I think you could condense a great deal of the characters listed above to just a handful of genius writers?

 

Who?

 

100% with you.

I remember watching a program about how they made Friends. Live audience, team of writers, they'd run 3 or 4 of the same skit with different endings and see which one got the biggest laugh.

Compare that to John Sullivan, who wrote Only Fools and Horses for multiple series on his own - he was so involved he even sang the theme tune*!





*this might be a shock of Penry/Hong Kong Phoey proportions to @hailfrank

 

You still upset that Nora turned you down

 

Nora looked better in stockings.

 

Kathy Staff’s daughter lives 3 doors up from us, when she was alive it was quite surreal seeing Nora Batty popping in for a visit.

A bit like last week at Goodwood, where Rowan Atkinson was racing- you half expect him to have his helmet on backwards or a chicken on his head.

 

I don't want to know how you know

 

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I've listed him 5 times because nobody else seems to have remembered what a pivotal role he played on OFAH.

 

He also carried Roy Rodgers

 

Just about to post something similar, and also in the earlier episodes Grandad too. The uncle Albert character was nowhere near as funny, Leonard Pearce who played Grandad was a brilliant comic actor