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''Britain's Best Sitcom'' was a BBC media campaign in which television viewers were asked to decide the best British situation comedy. Viewers could vote via telephone,
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, or
BBC Online BBC Online, formerly known as BBCi, is the BBC's online service. It is a large network of websites including such high-profile sites as BBC News and Sport, the on-demand video and radio services branded BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds, the childr ...
. This first round of voting was conducted in 2003, after which the BBC published a list of the top 100 selections. From this list, they produced a 12-episode television series broadcast by
BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream a ...
from January through to March 2004. The series was a retrospective that examined the history and qualities of the contending programmes. In the first episode,
Jonathan Ross Jonathan Stephen Ross (born 17 November 1960) is an English broadcaster, film critic, comedian, actor, writer, and producer. He presented the BBC One chat show ''Friday Night with Jonathan Ross'' during the 2000s, hosted his own radio show on ...
summarised the progress of the poll and presented
video clip Video clips refer to mostly short videos, most of the time called memes, which are short videos of silly jokes and funny clips, most of the time coming from movies or any entertainment videos such as YouTube. The term is also used more loosely ...
s from the 50 sitcoms that received the most votes. Each of the next ten weekly episodes, one hour in length, focused on one
sitcom A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ...
. In each episode, a different celebrity presenter advocated a particular sitcom, delivering 20 reasons why it deserved viewers' votes. The sitcom's writers and actors, as well as celebrity viewers, also shared their own perspectives and memories. In the 90-minute series finale, transmitted live, Jonathan Ross announced the top sitcom to be ''
Only Fools and Horses ''Only Fools and Horses....'' is a British television sitcom created and written by John Sullivan (writer), John Sullivan. Seven series were originally broadcast on BBC One in the United Kingdom from 1981 to 1991, with sixteen sporadic Christmas ...
,'' with ''
Blackadder ''Blackadder'' is a series of four period British sitcoms, plus several one-off instalments, which originally aired on BBC One from 1983 to 1989. All television episodes starred Rowan Atkinson as the antihero Edmund Blackadder and Tony Robins ...
'' in second place and ''
The Vicar of Dibley ''The Vicar of Dibley'' is a British sitcom which originally ran on BBC One from 10 November 1994 to 1 January 2007. It is set in a fictional small Oxfordshire village called Dibley, which is assigned a female vicar following the 1992 changes ...
'' in third place. Notably all finalists were BBC productions, with ITV and Channel 4 sitcoms not appearing (''
Father Ted ''Father Ted'' is a sitcom created by Irish writers Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews and produced by British production company Hat Trick Productions for Channel 4. It aired over three series from 21 April 1995 until 1 May 1998, includin ...
'', the highest-ranked non-BBC sitcom, was at number 11).


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* {{IMDb title BBC television documentaries BBC television comedy 2004 in British television Top television lists British television-related lists