Phil's Top 14 Comedy Series - Part One

In this fourteen-part series I'll be taking a look over a fortnight at my favourite comedy series of all times, the ones that always make me laugh and are able to watch over and over again.

But before I kick off with number fourteen in the series it's bwst to look at some of the almost rans. There's the fantastic Rowan Atkinson in 'Mr Bean', a comedy series that splits people down the middle but I personally love the slapstick humour. Then there is the seminal classic 'Only Fools and Horses' that is definitely up there, especially due to its hilarious 'Heroes and Villains' episode and the emotional "conclusion" to the story, but it loses some points due to the ill advised three episode return a few years later after it was supposed to have finished.

'My Hero' is another almost ran, at least from the Ardal O'Hanlon era, but lost its pace after a while. Then there is also a nod to the recent 'Mrs Brown's Boys', a modern classic but perhaps too early to appear, and 'The Brittas Empire', a surreal sitcom that I'd love to watch again. Finally, there is the Danny Wallace-led 'How To Start Your Own Country', a funny six-part series that looked at making your own country from scratch that I still refer to occasionally in conversation thanks to its songs, plus it was one of the first series to fully embrace concepts such as the red button and the power of the internet to any great degree, and if it had appeared only a few years later would have been made even more popular through the power of Facebook and Twitter.

Anyway, onto my main countdown...

14. All Along The Watchtower

I'm going to start with the most obscure entry in my list. From spring 1999 and only running for one series of six episodes this sitcom was set at a massive Cold War airbase in Scotland and followed the arrival of Flight Lieutenant Simon Harrison to the village and air base where he had to deal with a variety of surreal Blackadder-esque characters and equally weird plotlines.

Now my memory of this sitcom is a little bit hazy as it's yet to be repeated on television or receive a DVD release but I remember it as being funny and well-written and deserving re-commissing even if that never came. Certainly a comedy series with more potential than the one series we got, I hope one day that it will be repeated or released for home viewing so I can once more see it, but I think I'll remain living in hope.

Sadly, an enjoyable premise and some wacky characters wasn't enough to save this series from disappearing into the archives with now only a Wikipedia page to keep its memory alive.