No wrong answers. Could be a game show, docu-series, fiction, sci-fi, anything that didn’t make it but should have.
The League of Gentlemen
15 Stories High, it was an absurdist sitcom featuring the wickedly funny and sadly taken too soon Sean Lock, living in a council apartment and the bizarre shit going on around him.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4_pgKoxgBa1AOAYHvr3lkkaY5Mxd2YGm
I highly recommend the episode Blue Rat, but all 12 episodes are available on YouTube.
Spaced (1999–2001).
I’m genuinely curious how well known or underrated this one is.
Along with the mighty boosh (which is very… different) it is required viewing.
I always felt Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace deserves more recognition.
Matthew Holness has continued to do Garth Marenghi stuff post-TV series. You can actually read some of the novels Garth Marenghi wrote, and they’re just as good (by which I mean awful, in excellent ways) as you’d expect them to be. He’s even on a book tour right now!
I know writers who use subtext, and they’re all cowards.
It’s actually a work of art how meticulously they achieve the low budget 80’s B-horror aesthetic; acting, direction, cinematography, editing… everything. The random jump cuts (cemetery shotgun, lol), amateur framing, disjointed voiceovers, walking to nowhere at the end of a scene, or entering a scene for far too long, a Tombstone blowing in the wind.
It’s extremely difficult to intentionally make it all so shit while being so fucking funny. Perfection. Oh, and no fucking canned laughter!
The reason they only did one series is that everything you describe is much more expensive than doing it properly. It was the most expensive show Channel 4 had ever done to that point.
It’s amazing and I think about it often!
Also has a special place as the start of both Richard Ayoade and Matt Berry’s careers! Came out in January 2004 and they wouldn’t be seen on the Mighty Boosh until later that same year in May.
Absolutely!!
Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe/Newswipe shows.
A lot of people missed those back in the day and they missed them as the origin of the voice of our generation: Philomena Cunk. I really miss her compatriot Barry Shitpeas.
Also Charlie Brooker’s police procedural sendup A Touch of Cloth starring John Hannah is similarly criminally underrated.
Just imho Brooker’s comedy is way better than his dark scifi of Black Mirror.
Touching, Cloth.
We’re going to lose face, Cloth.
I shall find this squad’s duty register, and have you cut from the same, Cloth.
“I want that report on my table first thing tomorrow morning, Cloth”
“But sir-”
“On my table, Cloth!”
Absolutely! Screen Wipe was outstanding. Black Mirror is fine
Dead Set was a bit of fun too
I really liked a sitcom called Detectorists (2014-2017) from and with Mackenzie Crook. Ran for three seasons. Not many people know about this show here in the Netherlands. I hoped it had stayed on for longer.
The Detectorists is one of those shows that those who love it, LOVE IT, and those who don’t have never heard of it.
It’s genuinely one of the loveliest, most beautiful TV shows I’ve ever watched. It’s a truly happy space to be in, with almost no mean-spirited jokes.
I’m so glad someone mentioned this show. It was lovely!
Great show
an absolute gem!
calm, beautiful, funny!
Black Books was great.
The little book of calm!
best depiction of a choleric autist so far
It has its flaws, but I quote The IT crowd almost weekly
I enjoyed it in the past, but lost all ability to after it became known what a piece of human shit Graham Linehan is.
Pretty much all of the cast have done better things without him which are more worth watching.
100% it sucks having to reccomend the show, after hearing what he did/is doing.
I first learnt about it via an HBomberguy talk (and wikipedia research to confirm)
I’m disabled.
Leg disabled!
And how did it happen, if you don’t mind me asking?
Acid.
I think that’s one of the best episodes in the history of TV.
Sir, the police are here.
They would like to speak to you about some irregularities in the pension fund.
Good morning, that’s a nice tnetennba.
A fire? At a Sea Parks ?
IT Crowd
Definitely worth mentioning but also definitely not underrated! We still quote it almost daily “Awright, 'arry? D’you see that ludicrous display last night?” 🤣
They just walked it in!
For us it’s always “Fire. Exclamation mark. Fire. Exclamation mark.” and Matt Berry’s “Faaaaatheeeeeeeeeer!!”
Father Ted is also incredible and highly underrated.
The young ones
Loved the bands on there!
That introduced me to Motorhead and then to full on grindcore
That’s what I love about summer.
Tea on the lawn.
That’s what I love about summer.
Tea on the lawn.
Summer’s a bummer.
Fuck me, good pull. Extremely underrated!
The misfits. A show about a group of working class juvenile delinquents who suddenly get random super powers.
Ughhhh my husband and I used to LOVE this show when it was airing.
Went off the rails a bit towards the end though.
I still shout “Save me Barry!” from time to time.
I’m gonna say Broadchurch. I don’t think it was unpopular, but I have to look it up every time to remember the name. It features a past and future Doctor (as in, Dr Who). David Tennant was a Doctor before he was on Broadchurch, and Jodie Whittaker was a Doctor after. She plays a mum whose child goes missing, and he’s the inspector sent to her remote (?) village to investigate. That’s the first season. The second season deals with the town’s issues with the bad guy from the first season, and I forget what the third season’s about, but it’s all good.
They made an American one, and some of the same people were in it, but it only lasted one season. So I’d say go with the British one.
I also appreciated Torchwood. It’s an adult sci-fi series set in the Dr Who universe, and it had its ups and downs (mostly downs), but it was generally worth watching. Unfortunately, the lead actor had a bad habit of pulling his pecker out backstage to prank his coworkers and he got canceled for it. Nobody said he ever abused them or that he pulled it out in public, it was just schoolboy antics backstage, but it was enough. Not defending him, I’m just saying he’s not a nonce or a public menace. He just has a problem with boundaries. So, while I don’t dislike him as an actor, being a viewer, I fully understand why people don’t want to work with him anymore. Torchwood has continued as audiobooks, I think, or maybe something like a podcast where they act out roles? They call it something else, like an audio drama or something. So I’m not sure if there are actual books they’re reading from or just a script that isn’t available in print, the audio recordings being the only medium. There were also a couple games as I recall, but nothing good. A less problematic and more straightforward series (albeit, American) is Warehouse 13. Same thing. Shadowy organisation collects alien relics and stores them for the government. Hijinks ensue. W13 was fun at first, but really didn’t go anywhere. (Also, it was on Syfy, if that tells you anything — as in, the network couldn’t be arsed to spell “sci-fi” properly and they cared about as much about how to make good sci-fi as they did about spelling it properly.)
I lived literally 100m from the church in Broadchurch. Jodie Whittaker and Olivia Coleman’s houses were just around the corner. We lived there while they were filming the third season, so it was kinda cool to see some of the local businesses dressed up as sets.
It was a proper headfuck to watch the show, and see people walk round a familiar corner, only to suddenly be in a town in Dorset, where the rest of the filming took place.
I know the feeling. I’ve watched a couple things set in my hometown. The continuity errors are a trip.
“Fun” fact: Syfy originally was spelled correctly. Then they implemented this terrible rebranding. Though now that I think about it, had probably more to do with improving outcomes of trademark protection as Syfy isn’t a regular word. It was probably hard to go after others infringing on “Sci-fi” since that is a common word. Same probably goes for the “Trvl” channel.
Oh yes, I remember, and what’s even funnier is it was TNN (The Nashville Network) or something else not sci-fi related before that.
The network did not invent science fiction, so they had nothing to defend, and when they changed it to Syfy, no one was trying to take that name, either — and the quality plummeted after that. Probably because “well we’re no longer the Sci-Fi channel so here’s a bunch of reality TV.”
Then again, I’m also mad that most rock radio stations went away. We talk about AI slop, but the slop has been there for a while. It’s just, people used to make slop to satiate the masses. They still do, but now they use AI to do it, too. And it’s not AI’s fault, per se. The slop was always here.
The score to Broadchurch is also great!
I really, genuinely, have always loved Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. It’s got a reputation of being lowest-common-denominator toilet humour, which… it always was. And it had a lot of problems, the worst being that three fifths of the original cast had quit by the end.
But it also had an awful lot of heart. A totally different writing style to any other sitcom I’ve seen. An amazing dedication to silly wordplay. They were constantly trying new things (two public votes, two musical episodes, a horror episode, and a live episode). And there were some genuinely great performances, particularly from Natalie Casey (who carried the heart of the show in later seasons), and, weirdly, Beverley Callard.
Even when it did totally fall apart towards the end, they brought in new cast members and somehow managed to make it feel like a return to form.
Also The Murder Game, a BBC crime-scene investigation reality show that I desperately want the right TV executive to hear about so they can reboot it. 😬
best answer, the others so far mainly seem to be just lesser known rather than actually underrated
I enjoyed Being Human. Not normally into the vampires and werewolves thing but I enjoyed it.
It’s a nice show, I enjoyed it too. And I surprised the trio appeared as a household while playing the Sims 3.
But The Fades was sooooo much better, and they cancelled it to make more Being Human 😢
The Thick of It
A show regarding a random UK ministry and the random cluster fuck off politics. The 12th Doctor is an enforcer from the PM’s office with a prolific use of profanity.
The writer ended up creating Veep in the USA.
Isn’t the enforcer based on Alastair Campbell, now does Rest is Politics Podcast, or at least his reputation from the Blair period.
