On Fox for nearly 15 years, the show created by two In Living Color writers was beholden to no one and often about as subtle as Artie Lange laughing at a fart. Image Credit: Matt Sayles/AP/ShutterstockĪ more cultish weekend cousin to Saturday Night Live aimed squarely at teens, Mad TV‘s skewering of pop culture was a “steady diet of schadenfreude,” according to former cast member Keegan-Michael Key. “Ben Stiller was on, and Bob Odenkirk was on at least five times. “I took everything I learned on that show and, 10 years later, I did my version,” he says. Still, the host found tons of guest stars game for meta-commentary on the era of pop culture fetishization, including his former castmates on The Ben Stiller Show. Dick’s fans tuned in, however, for the narcissistic reality show-style confessionals and endless meltdowns blurring the lines between documentary and celebrity trainwreck. It’s definitely a product of the times, down to its parodies of Christina Aguilera, a reimagined Marilyn Manson (as Marilyn Poppins, singing “The Beautiful Pigeons,” naturally), and a Christian-rocker version of Kid Rock. One of the most reckless comics alive, NewsRadio star Andy Dick briefly hit the sweet spot between Andy Kaufman and Borat Sagdiyev with this two-season sketch show on MTV in the early aughts. Image Credit: Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock Still, we’ll always have the Sinéad O’Connor comedy special. Crumb, Zap Comics, Robert Williams and all of this extremely psychedelic stuff.” There’s definitely a warped, dissociative sensibility going on, which makes you wonder where these guys would have gone had the music channel given them another year. “A lot of that informs our comedy… We were really influenced by things like Monty Python and Mad magazine - but also R. “Tom and I had done an enormous amount of psychedelic drugs in our time,” Winter recalled to. against Wilson Phillips were indicative of its immense, balls-out range.

The Fifties sitcom spoof Eddie the Flying Gimp from Outer Space and a Battle of the Bands skit pitting Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. Hosted by, and frequently starring, Alex Winter (Bill from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure), this MTV sketch show offered brief, absurd, violent, and often meta vignettes similar to Tim and Eric’s comic experiments, feeling like the precursor to both YouTube and Adult Swim. Image Credit: ©MTV/Courtesy Everett Collectio And while a single season of an American spin-off on HBO had its fans, the original show was a massive hit in England, where it scored three entries in a poll of the Top 10 most popular television catchphrases. But while the show had its share of oafs and idiots, many - the “rubbish transvestite” Emily Howard pouting, provincial Daffyd Thomas, who yearned to be “the only gay in the village” - were simply misunderstood, and Little Britain‘s explorations of class, gender and sexuality always allowed for a sliver of empathy. “Comedy should exist in an area of being slightly on the edge.” That would certainly explain Vicky Pollard, Lucas’ dim-witted teenage mother who bordered on offensive and became a political talking point. “We wanted to make it kind of like a cartoon strip come to life,” Walliams told The Guardian. It was called both the heir apparent to The Goon Show and Monty Python’s Flying Circus and, per a Guardian columnist, “one of the most sneering, cold-hearted, nasty little shows ever to air on British TV.” But as divisive as Matt Lucas and David Walliams’ send-up of the country’s working-class citizens and regional grotesqueries were, there was a method to their messy looks at U.K.

Big train sketch list