Father Ted is 20 years old this week. Now let me pause for a moment, so you can all feel old, and then I'll move on.
It's arguably one of the finest sitcoms ever broadcast on British TV; it was just three series long, but really captured the imagination; people today will still randomly interject with things like "FECK! ARSE! GERLS!", "Ah go on, go on, go on, go on..." or "Careful now. Down with this sort of thing".
But one of the things it does well - and the larger subject for the thread - is the absurdity. Only Fools and Horses, for instance, or Cheers, or Friends, they're all still somewhat grounded in something that's recognisably The Real World. Father Ted, though, does something different. It's a world that looks like the real world, but is significantly skewed. The bits where it's weird are played entirely deadpan; this is a world that has its own rules, and its own bizarre internal logic. And that's the sort of thing I love.
Take for instance, the very first episode, where the cast take a trip to Craggy Island Funland:
Absurd, yes. Funny to look at. But still something that makes a kind of sense when you're familiar with how the world works.
And there's similar oddities, too. The group of priests getting lost in a department store. The father with warehouses full of Nazi memorabilia. The Irish entry to Eurovision. The 'All Priests Stars in Their Eyes Lookalike Competition'. They all make a kind of sense in this world. It's cohesive. Still absurd, but it works.
That's got me thinking about other sitcoms that fit that bill; sitcoms that aren't really in the real world but do have their own internal logic. Arrested Development. Spaced. Community. It's Garry Shandling's Show. Sean's Show. Soap. Yonderland. And then... then I drew a blank. Didn't quite want to count League of Gentlemen, given the implication is that *outside* Royston Vasey, the world is just about sane. But it came to my notice that that's really the sort of thing I adore: once you're invested in a world with a disproportionate quantity of priests, or one where a frozen banana stand is genuinely regarded as a viable investment, or one where there's an uncontrollable primal urge to join in with a finger-gun battle, just the existence of a bit more weirdness to flesh the world out goes a long way. Sitcoms where the world itself is amusing, not just the people in it.
So... are there any other sitcoms along those lines I've missed? Animation has plenty, of course - the advantage of just being able to draw the weird stuff in your mind - and there's a few on radio too, with You'll Have Had Your Tea and Bleak Expectations springing to mind - but it seems significantly rarer in live-action, and that's something I'd like to see more of.
