We could all do with a laugh nowadays and, thanks to the miracle of streaming, some of the best comedies of all time are now just a click away. From 1970s slapstick to 1980s political satire and 21st-century whimsy, there is something for all tastes – and, in a welcome punchline, many of the best are available to stream for free.
Here are 14 hilarious picks to set your funny bone tingling – and without the need for an expensive subscription.
Rowan Atkinson’s disaster-strewn everyman drags silent comedy kicking and screaming into the modern sitcom era with his masterful command of slapstick and his endless repertoire of silly expressions. Described by Atkinson as “a child in a grown man’s body”, Mr Bean is a wonderfully silly creation – a buffoon in a tweed jacket and red tie who can’t leave the house without leaving a hilarious trail of disaster in his wake.
The heyday of Margaret Thatcher was also the golden era for political comedy. There is no better example than the late Rik Mayall’s brilliantly awful creation Alan B’Stard, an avaricious, unctuous Conservative MP whose lust for power and wealth provided a merciless and hilarious snapshot of the greed and corruption unleashed by 1980s turbo-capitalism.
The 1970s were a high watermark for melancholic British sitcoms: gentle chucklefests where the laughter often came with a side-serving of existential angst. The best-known example is undoubtedly The Good Life, in which Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal play a suburban couple trying to escape the rat race by becoming entirely self-sufficient, featuring grazing goats and cabbage patches – to the quiet horror of their conventional neighbours (Penelope Keith and Paul Eddington).
It sounds ridiculous, but spoke to a growing suspicion in the 1970s (and beyond) that the suburban dream of a nice house and a solid job might not be all it was cracked up to be.
Leonard Rossiter is masterful as an everyman who develops a sudden case of Walter Mitty syndrome and is waylaid by a devastating midlife crisis. He fantasises about ditching his wife for his secretary and leaving behind his dull life in the ’burbs. Having first aired in 1976, is visibly of its time: the shirt collars are huge, the cars tiny, the furniture 50 shades of beige.
But its exploration of midlife ennui and the feeling that somewhere out there is the better life that we deserve to lead are timeless. As is Rossiter’s performance, which walks a tightrope between hilarious and anguished. It’s meets Samuel Beckett – a crossing of the streams that only the 1970s British sitcom could pull off so skilfully.
Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em
Oooh Betty! With that catchphrase, a comedy colossus was born in the form of Michael Crawford’s disaster-prone Frank Spencer – a walking calamity who can barely get out of bed without falling flat on his face, yet, whose love for his wife (the aforementioned Betty) sprinkles sweetness into the slapstick.
Jazz Club, Ted and Ralph, Swiss Toni – 30 years later, ’s riotous sketches are enjoying a second life via social media and YouTube. But if you want to consume Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson’s gonzo 1990s chortle onslaught in their original 30-minute format, the whole thing is there to be streamed. You do? Ooh, suit you, sir!
Patricia Routledge’s Hyacinth Bucket is one of the great sitcom creations – a suburban social climber for whom keeping up with the better-off neighbours is not just a passing fancy but an entire life’s mission. A lesser comedy would have made Hyacinth the punchline – but Routledge’s performance is generous towards Hyacinth, and her desire for respect. After all, who hasn’t felt a quiver of envy when a neighbour rocks up in a shiny new car or treats themselves to upgraded windows? Deep down, there’s a bit of Bucket in all of us – and Routledge knew that, if some viewers were laughing at her, many saw something of themselves in her desperation to be taken seriously.
One Foot in the Grave
At some point in our lives, we all either become a grumpy old man or find ourselves in alarming proximity to one. That is why Richard Wilson’s magnificently curmudgeonly Victor Meldrew was such a hit with the viewers. Everyone has met a Meldrew – a cantankerous sod whose dearest wish is to be left alone for five minutes. But the world keeps finding ways to get on his nerves – with invariably hilarious consequences, largely thanks to the fantastically fed-up Wilson and his pithy catchphrase, “I don’t believe it!”
Science fiction and comedy are uneasy bedfellows, but they work together wonderfully in Rob Grant and Doug Naylor’s cult series about low-ranking crewman Dave Lister (Craig Charles), who awakes from suspended animation aboard the mining ship Red Dwarf to discover he is the last living human in the universe. There’s a stonking cast – including Chris Barrie as bossy hologram Arnold Rimmer and Danny John-Jules as a cat who has evolved into a human. also comes with the bonus of the kind of atrocious special effects that will warm the heart of anyone raised on zero-budget BBC sci-fi such as and early .
Ronnie Barker and Richard Beckinsale are a hilarious double act as inmates thrown together in a cell in fictional Slade Prison. While life behind bars might not seem an obvious source of comedy, Barker and Beckinsale have cracking chemistry – and the whole thing is elevated further by Fulton Mackay as grotesquely small-minded and authoritarian prison officer Mr Mackay.
From Steptoe and Son to British comedy has a long tradition of building shows around grumpy, unpleasant protagonists. One of the best examples is , in which misanthropic stand-up Dylan Moran excels as a wilfully obnoxious owner of a second-hand bookshop. He has a fabulous foil in Bill Bailey, playing a sweet-natured metal-head who always seems to have just fallen out of bed, banged his head and is left to stumble about in a daze.
Political satire was never as deft, nor more prophetic, as in Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn’s marvellously understated skewering of Westminster. Paul Eddington is outstanding as the perpetually frazzled cabinet minister Jim Hacker, though his thunder is thoroughly stolen by Nigel Hawthorne as the magnificently Machiavellian senior servant Sir Humphrey.
brims with pithy wit worthy of PG Wodehouse. But it also has the measure of British politics. When Sir Humphrey outlines to his boss the long-standing British strategy of rendering co-operation between European nations “futile and impotent”, he is casting a cold eye at the anti-European instincts that reached a fever-pitch with Brexit.