Greatest American sketch comedy TV show of the late 20th century

surely a lock for KITH? I don't have much exposure to most of these though.

We in the UK only got to see "Kids in the Hall" and Rowan and Martin.

So...

How late is late 20th century?

SCTV was Canadian.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F152Gv0haE8

I'm cool with all of these:

The Ben Stiller Show
The Carol Burnett Show
Chappelle's Show
In Living Color
Kids in the Hall
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
SCTV
Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
You Can't Do That on Television

and Canada is in (North) America.

KITH, also Canadian.

So, Your Show of Shows.

created this poll so I could vote for KITH

The Red Skelton Show was a variety show (w/Red's excruciatingly unfunny slapstick skits) IIRC not sketch comedy like Laugh-In/SNL et al

voted SCTV

opened this thread so i could vote for KitH

Will probably vote for In Living Color for its first three seasons' worth. The dropoff was so steep, though.

upright citizens brigade by a gigantic margin

yeah I feel like some of the stuff on the IMDB list doesn't really apply to sketch comedy as I think of it but I didn't know enough about it to leave them out.

though I deliberately left out Robot Chicken on a personal whim.

Shit, I voted UCB but forgot about Tim and Eric which I really think is the best.

chappelle

Idiot Box is so slept on

also WTF not putting the Andy Dick Show and putting on dumb shit like Dmirtieii Martin

Exit 57 also not on there, but MIND OF MENCIA IS REPPIN

yeah the andy dick show was hilarious

what about "doggyfizzle televizzle"

looking forward to pissing you all off w/my mr show vote

I added Mind of Mencia and left off the Andy Dick Show to stimulate invigorating discourse, mission accomplished.

Andy Dick show was so great

"What are you, some type of commode-ian?"

what about "doggyfizzle televizzle"

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, February 10, 2010 2:45 PM (21 minutes ago)

oh my god thank you for reminding me of this

anyway chappelle's show by a mile of the ones i'm familiar with

sctv
i'm old btw

I'd add HBO's Not Necessarily The News.

Was Almost Live shown outside of Seattle? I saw it there (Almost Live airing before Saturday Night Live, hence the name), loved it at the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzwbhKFVQ3A&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOvT4aWrzXU&feature=related

how about John Byner's BIZARRE - where SuperDave Osbourne got his start and since it was on Showtime, swearing and boobs!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmh17XmAyvI

sctv
i'm old btw

― velko, Wednesday, February 10, 2010 3:11 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Kids in the Hall >>>>>>>>> Mr. Show >>>> Chappelle >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>everything else is almost total shit

Almost Live was also on Comedy Central. Sometimes we would act out the High Fivin' White Guys bit on middle school band trips.

Other also-rans left out: Vacant Lot, Jenny McCarthy show

oh shit i totally forgot about BIZARRE, my vague memories are that it was pretty fucking awesome

also "The Edge" which was pretty memorable for the Bill Plympton bits

The Whitest Kids U Know (I guess this is a thing?)

this has only been around for like 2-3 years so doesn't really count anyway. what little i've seen of it makes me think it's probably better than i'd assume from the terrible name though.

had no idea the Andy Dick Show had stans, would any of you nutjobs have actually voted for it?

re: Andy Dick Show
The trajectories of the careers of Ben Stiller Show cast frighten me.

The Amanda Show ftw

love KITH the most by far, easy vote. after that, I'll stump for SNL and Chappelle's Show and Ben Stiller and In Living Color, and i wish i'd seen more SCTV, and the Dana Carvey Show had its moments. lotta stuff that just rubs me the wrong way, though, especially Mr. Show and The State and Upright Citizens Brigade.

Opened this thread to vote for KITH, noticed it was specifically for American comedy and found myself in a pickle, which was promptly resolved by realizing that KITH was (puzzlingly, but apparently intentionally) still among the nominees. Given that, I have to vote for KITH despite the inaccuracy. It's among my top five all-time favorite shows period.

If not KITH? I think I'd have to go with Mr. Show.

Despite my love, it's difficult for me to think of Tim And Eric as a sketch show.

i guess KITH having an American exec producer and first run episodes on an American network is enough for it to count, although I guess you could do the classic Canuck caveat and change the thread title to "North American"

1. Kids in the Hall
2. Carol Burnett Show
3. Mr. Show
4. Your Show of Shows
5. Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!

Mr. Show

KITH is Canadian guys, unless you mean North American sketch comedy show. Still, I'll vote for it. No other show has amused me as much.

oh, nm. addressed upthread.

UCB, The State not funny

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15m_i6QPAXE

I'm trying to resist the temptation to just be a dick about this. I actually put some effort into coming up with a descriptive thread title for this because I KNEW that however I phrased it, someone would have to be nitpicky and it would turn into a boring discussion of the semantics of my thread title instead of the actual thread topic, which I actually thought might be a fun thing to talk about. So just to be clear: "America" includes Canada (which is North America; sorry I am a cultural elitist but I don't know of any Mexican, Latin American or South American sketch comedy shows to include), "late 20th century" means after 1950, which is redundant given that encapsulates almost all of the history of television, so feel free to whine about that too.

oh man I completely blanked on the Carol Burnett Show being in this list, that should be in my list, probably instead of "In Living Color"

nominate the simpsons via tracy ullman show?

as much as i love kids in the hall and mr show i can't really go against sctv. kinda changed my life. and still probably my favorite t.v. cast of all time.

BTW you youngsters who have never seen The Carol Burnett Show and this sketch in particular missed out on some great TV at the time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qqE_WmagjY

Tim Conway is tainted for me by Dorf Goes Fishing informercials.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

this thread makes me want to go back and watch Kids in the Hall and SCTV (which I grew up loving, but can't remember anything about other than Bob & Doug). I probably would have voted for Chappelle if I had seen this poll, even though about half the sketches missed horribly.

Whoops, somehow I missed this but I would've voted for The State. As a few others mentioned, it is very uneven. I forgive them for going out on a limb sometimes and coming up short, and I've become accustomed to ignoring the catchphrase character sketches that show up over and over again (that's the MTV bullshit that Pancakes mentioned above). But a few of the gags, like the race with the dad gone bad, make me laugh so hard that I couldn't really justify voting for anything else.

Mind of Mencia....1

who was this

The State could be hit or miss, for sure, but I think it gets some points on the basis of context. I can't imagine that giving a show to most other fresh-out-of-college sketch comedy ensembles would result in anything but putridity.

T-bomb

Whitest Kids U Know bomb

I'm feelin' pretty good about the results overall, except for Mad TV getting as many votes as SNL. I mean...come on.

OK I've never seen Kids in the Hall before. Which season DVD should I put on my Netflix queue?

all of them

its all pretty strong - something in the middle I guess is best, 3 or 4...?

Keep in mind that, to somewhat of a decreasing degree as the show progressed, KITH often felt more like a show composed of vignettes that were often funny rather than a sketch show per se. The writing and the performances were always very strong, but they weren't always aiming solely for laughs. Although there are plenty to be found.

Most of the time, though, they seemed to be focusing really strongly on making a scene feel as true and fleshed-out as possible rather than setting up a flimsy premise solely for the sake of a cheap gag. Which I think made the humor a million times stronger. I really wish more sketch stuff today took some inspiration from KITH.

I've probably said it a million times in different places on ILX, but KITH is very seriously in my top three shows of all time, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Except for 'Chalet 2000'.

The Carol Burnett Show 0

I HATE ALL OF YOU

<3 'kids in the hall.' though it feels like.. it was so 90's, whenever i watch clips now it strikes me just how bitter it is, and kind of misogynist, no? but still hilarious obvs

sad that there's not much love for 'in living color'

ha, talk about a show that's so 90's

it was pretty much required viewing though when i was in 4th grade

Misogyny is definitely pretty rampant in the comedy world, but KITH is one of the last comedic ventures I'd label misogynistic. I always felt like they put a lot of love and care into their female characters. Perhaps an example of what you found misogynistic would help...?

sad that there's not much love for 'in living color'

Probably because it's pretty much Mad TV, Sr.. I watched the shit out of it in jr. high, but most of it is kinda cringeworthy now.

yeah 'in living color' was required viewing when i was in middle school, that and 'arsenio hall'. i really appreciate the late 80's/early 90's pop culture a lot more now. from my POV by mid-90's everything got all bitter, cynical and dark, it prob took me & my friends like a decade to be able to take anything seriously again.

far as 'kids in the hall' go, watching it now it just strikes me that obvs most of the female characters are the kids themselves in drag, and.. well, exactly, when the whole show's female characters are men in drag, they can tend to be awfully exaggerated in kind of stereotypically sexist ways. not that it's not funny as hell, which is the most important thing.. comedy is not supposed to be nice.

xp first few seasons puts it in a class above madtv though, don't care how far it fell

Most of the time, though, they seemed to be focusing really strongly on making a scene feel as true and fleshed-out as possible rather than setting up a flimsy premise solely for the sake of a cheap gag. Which I think made the humor a million times stronger.

this made it kith v. watchable but it was so measured sometimes it wasnt one i came to expect lols from (of course 'expecting lols' from a lot of this dreck is a much more frustrating approach). still never seen mr. show

In Living Color had the absolute biggest dropoff in quality of any show I've ever seen. The first two seasons were great, and then season three was just so incredibly awful and unfunny, and later on it got to be so bad that it became easily the worst show on television.

KITH has good stuff throughout but it's most consistent in S2 and S3

Awww, I kind of <3 whoever voted for Hee-Haw.

Hahaha Deric, I actually shouldn't need to ask why the h8 for Chalet 2000, but I would love to hear a h8r thesis on the whole thing. It's great whenever it comes up on the DVD commentary -- they're all still quite clearly angry at Scott about the whole thing. Vitriol is especially strong from Bruce (who hated everything about playing a beaver) and Dave (who constantly complains about Buddy Cole flying).

KITH was great straight out of the box, S1 is full of gold and noone should be shy about starting there

Yeah S1 feels like they're getting their sea legs but it is still so full of amazingly funny shit. One that always cracks me up that I never hear anyone talk about is this weird one where they're all dressed as cats in a jazz band, and Mark is reciting some bad cat poetry.

I love Chalet 2000

S1 definitely has great stuff in it, especially in the second half of the season, but I feel like it takes 8-10 episodes to get really amazing.

Seattle's 'Almost Live' is coming back - sort of. New show called 'The 206'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIsCtqbcCgY

are KITH's female characters more 'exaggerated' than, say, Lucille Ball's?

^this is a good point imo

Fridays was ABC's irascible clone of SNL minus the talent; it didn't last a year.

I really need to see more kith and Mr Show, like *any* of it really, I've enjoyed the few bits on YT I caught - they werent a thing over here.

Nor here, to the point where I assumed until today that it was actually a comedy set in a school!

Myself and Starry (late of this parish) sat down once to enjoy the first season of multiple-friend-recommended tv show Mr Show - I don't think we made it past the first episode. I am thinking it might be a hard sell to those that are, in general, post-Python.

Yeah Mr Show strikes me as that very US absurdist humour thats quite unlike brit humour. I mean I love Tim and Eric, and I know thats a real belleweather cos I meet plenty of ppl who HATE it.

Interesting that we see so many US sitcoms but never see any US sketch shows... but if KITH is considered the best ever, that's probably a good thing

kids in the hall had a late night run on channel 4 back in the day.

i'm with lex on comedy tbh.

kids in the hall had a late night run on channel 4 back in the day.

Indeed. Watched it. Couldn't understand why Channel 4 had bothered.

My memory was that it was the likeness of Mr Show to Python that was the problem - charitably it might be seen as fans attempting to take a show which was very much connected to satirising a culture that I understand, and reworking it to a culture that I was not as familiar with. I wasn't feeling so charitable at the time - it just seemed aped by idiots.

Have loved KITH since catching it late on Channel 4 in the UK, Melody Maker used to champion it a lot back in the day.

KITH was the correct answer

https://elmejorplandelmundo.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/gatitas.jpg

but Laugh-In still deserved a few votes