Youtube just recommended me the "Blackadder Goes Forth" ending, followed by the Doctor Who scene where Vincent Van Gogh Visits the Gallery. It's too early on a Wednesday morning to have a wet face. I'm trying to think of some other stand out scenes now from classic UK shows now.

by Dawn_Of_The_Dave

31 comments

  1. I think more than just doing it well we also seem to end it on a high. US shows seem to bleed them till they’re dry and you are left with a bad taste in the mouth

  3. Yesterday was the birthday of both Spaced and Eurotrash, both highly formative in my teenage years albeit for very different reasons.

  4. Clarkson, Hammond and May era Top Gear. The final episode with just Hammond and May in the studio… With an elephant. Heck even Clarkson’s review of the Aston Martin V8 Vantage some years earlier was amazing and felt like an ending for the show.

    Going back a bit, Not The Nine O’clock news, the never said Good bye song

  5. The two minute scene of the Fucker making his only appearance on the Thick of It is absolute magic. Tom Hollander is a treasure. 

  6. I myself am partial to Dr Who’s (Matt Smith’s) delivery of “there’s one thing you never put in a trap” but to be honest there’s loads from those two seasons.

  7. The Peep Show wedding.

    “It’s fine. I’ll just chuck it in with all my other mouldering resentments”

    “Exactly. Stick it on the bill”

  9. I agree.

    It’s a shame that now most of the money is going to American streaming services and people seem happy to not pay their TV licence which fund all these great BBC shows.

    Ultimately, ITV, Ch4 and Ch5 will probably go bust/be sold to some American conglomerates and be shut down. And the BBC’s future is anyone’s guess.

    The only option will be American streamers full of American shows with a few British-made but American-influenced programmes. Nothing experimental, nothing truly hilarious, nothing close-to-the-bone. Just stuff that fits their algorithm.

  10. Dawn returning to the christmas party in The Office gets me every time.

    Just hearing “Only You” can hit those feels.

  12. Only Fools and Horses. Fall over in the pub / bar scene.

  13. We do sitcoms and panel shows very well. I would say we still have a bit of a way to go to reach the likes of HBO dramas though

  14. Fleabag. League of Gentlemen. Psychoville. Inside No 9. Ghosts. The Life of Rock With Brian Pern. 

  15. There’s something funny I find about coincidences, just yesterday a colleague was showing me the black adder clip on YouTube, in relation to a conversation we were having about nerf guns.

  16. When I was in high school, our English teacher (a Falkland war veteran) always made us watch Blackadder Goes Forth on the 11th of November (or the closest date to the 11th if it fell on a weekend), every year, for six years in a row.

  17. Well, we *did* do TV well.

    Almost all the British TV I think is really great is from 10+ years ago. I haven’t watched or even heard of anything on the same level of being memorable on British broadcast TV since the early 2010s.

    Or maybe I’m just old and biased.

  18. Many scenes in this England series, Holy crap it’s awesome.

  19. It was recently the 20th anniversary of Green Wing. Absolute genius.

  20. Slow horses is pretty good.

    Gary Oldman is amazing as usual. How is he so consistently good?

  21. I feel like there hasn’t been a good BBC drama in SO long.

    Did anyone see the state of their most recent one: The Night Sleeper? It was absolutely awful. Full of completely shit script writing and bad acting.

    Makes me really regret paying for a TV licence, especially after they paid a paedo 400k last year…

  22. More modern than your examples but the montage of characters voting on the Good Friday Agreement at the end of Derry Girls is an absolutely beautiful piece of television, raised further by the presence which Liam Neeson brings to his role.

  23. Both those scenes kill me! Also the end of the film ‘Silent Running’… no, don’t talk about it, I’m welling up already! 😄

  27. Out of morbid curiosity I watched an episode of the new US version of Have I Got News For You and then the UK version.

    Good grief the contrast. It wasn’t so bad that I literally didn’t laugh, but it was obsessed with fart jokes for some reason and you could feel the desperation to be the centre of attention.

  28. The scene towards the end of This Country, when Kurtan and Kerry tell the vicar that he needs to go to Bristol

  30. EASTENDERS – ” You Ain’t My Mother ! ”

    Being Human – Werewolf Transformation scene

    Royle Family – Jim crying in the bathroom with his daughter realising he is about to be a grandad.

    Line Of Duty – Series 3 , not so much later ones

    Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes , not the greatest tele, but damn Gene Hunt was awesome

    Peep Show – Is that….. Normal Pooing Mark ?

Leave a Reply