Sir Humphrey runs the minister; Margaret Thatcher's favourite programme.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge talks to the camera through grief and a hot priest; two perfect seasons.
An American football coach takes over an English Premier League club; kindness as a plot.
A study group at a community college and the paintball episodes; six seasons and no movie yet.
A fine-dining chef takes over his dead brother's Chicago sandwich shop; the kitchen as panic attack.
Tina Fey runs a sketch show under Alec Baldwin's executive; the fastest joke rate on television.
The Ministry of Silly Walks, the Dead Parrot and the giant foot; 45 episodes from 1969.
One year at a Michigan high school in 1980; eighteen episodes and every future star.
Larry David plays Larry David, improvised, for twelve seasons of social crimes.
Mark and Jez in a Croydon flat, filmed from their eyes with their thoughts on the soundtrack.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a vice president surrounded by idiots; the best insults on television.
A Korean War field hospital for eleven seasons; the finale is still the most watched episode ever.
Lucille Ball and the chocolate factory; the sitcom that invented the three-camera format.
Four boys in a Colorado town since 1997, written a week before air; the satire nobody escapes.
Donald Glover manages his rapper cousin; the series that could be anything each week.
The Cheers psychiatrist hosts a Seattle radio show with his brother and father; the best-written sitcom.
Four Native teenagers in Oklahoma trying to get to California; the first all-Indigenous writers' room.
Rowan Atkinson through four eras of English history; the last scene of Goes Forth.
The Boston bar where everybody knows your name; eleven seasons of Sam and Diane, then Rebecca.
A start-up with a compression algorithm and the tech industry as farce; Mike Judge.
Malcolm Tucker swears his way through Whitehall; Armando Iannucci before Veep.
Aziz Ansari in New York and Modena; the "Thanksgiving" episode.
Issa Rae in South Los Angeles through her late twenties; five seasons of friendship.
Brad Pitt as an unintelligible boxer and an 86-carat diamond; Ritchie's follow-up.
A boy sent to a Swedish village in the 1950s compares himself to Laika; Hallstrom's breakthrough.
Gazpacho with sleeping pills and a Madrid penthouse; the film that made Almodovar international.
Tati at a Brittany seaside hotel, a tennis serve and a squeaking door.
David Brent at Wernham Hogg in Slough; twelve episodes and a Christmas special that invented the form.
Two out-of-work actors go on holiday by mistake to the Lake District; the British cult comedy.
A man beaten and left with amnesia starts over among Helsinki's container dwellers; Kaurismaki.
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