After the news that all 236 episodes of Friends will be available on Netflix from January onwards, we’re looking at five other shows we hope to see on the streaming service soon.
They’ll be there for you (as long as you live in the United States or *cough splutter*employ shady means involving VPN numbers yadda yadda snip snip) but what are the other classic sitcoms we’d love to have round-the-clock access to?
We’ve put our heads together and whittled it down to five.
Seinfeld
For years the basslines between scenes used to piss us off, before we just… got it. Seinfeld remains the gold standard in terms of American comedy.
From the Soup Nazi to George’s commitment issues to Kramer’s general whackery to Bryan Cranston’s dentist to… look it’s just absolute gold and always will be.
And, unlike Friends, it hasn’t been done to death in syndication in this part of the world. Netflix need to get it sorted.
Cheers
Even just hearing the theme music takes us back to a happier time, when we thought that skulling 10 pints of glorious lager beer a day would result in uproarious laugher, cameraderie and the dry wit of George Wendt.
That’s not to say that Cheers glorified boozing, but it did introduce us to Norm, Woody, Sam, Carla and Cliff Clavin, who managed to hold down a job with the US Postal Service despite years spent holed up in the best ‘bah’ in Boston.
Cheers also gave us Doctor Frasier Crane, more of whom later, and for that alone we raise our pint class and sup.
Only Fools And Horses
Even a David Beckham cameo couldn’t spoil the legacy of the greatest British sitcom of all time. Del Boy, Rodney, Grandad, Uncle Albert, Trigger et al were a staple in our households in the ’80s and ’90s, as David Jason made an artform out of grifting, demonstrations of brotherly anguish and the word ‘plonker.’
We would very happily spend an entire week binge watching scenes like this…
And here’s Jason himself talking about the seminal moment…
http://youtu.be/JyJScnQox5Y
30 Rock
The newbie on this list, even though it finished its run back in early 2013, 30 Rock restored our faith in Alec Baldwin and gave us the comedy stylings of Liz Lemon.
And what stylings they were, as the head writer behind a successful Saturday Night Live-style sketch show blundered her way through seven mostly excellent series.
The show would ultimately be named the seventh best sitcom of all time by Vanity Fair and that was mainly down to the interplay between the show’s two leads, the best comedy duo since Dougal and Ted. We’d love to see it on Netflix.
Liz: “Why are you wearing a tux?”
Jack: “It’s after six. What am I? A farmer?”
Gold.
Frasier
The king of them all, in JOE’s humble opinion.
If Kelsey Grammer had one of the less showy roles in Cheers, the good doctor was front and centre when it came to getting his own spin-off sitcom. Possibly the only case of a show’s offspring being better than the original, the quality of Frasier never wavered for a single episode and it even ended in the best possible way.
http://youtu.be/JZTpK9VG0v8
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
