Ah, The Good Life. What a classic. A celebration of simple values. A staple of British comedy and-
Wait
This isn't The Good Life
I think that it's fair to say that Rik Mayall and Ade Edmunson changed the face of comedy. There wasn't anything quite like The Young Ones. Hell, I don't even think that there's anything like it now. It was a comic revolution. Which is interesting if you check out it's development. Rik Mayall had the characters, and situations to put them in, but was struggling to come up with any real material (check out the fascinating interview with Ben Elton for more info on that). Needless to say, things worked out, and now we're here.
The Young Ones really changed the sitcom landscape. There were some absolute gems before this one, but they all existed within certain boundaries. But The Young Ones refused to play anything safe. It was edgy, it was chaotic, and it was a damn good zeitgeist for what was going on at the time. It was a series about the youth of England for the youth. This was a real game changer, and it really stood out from the relatively safe stuff before it. And it was really just about four students and their various hijinks. But what sets it apart is it's willingness to be weird, surreal and offbeat.
And it still holds up. Okay, it's pretty rough, but there's a really raw, pure, fun chaos to The Young Ones that is kind of missing from the majority of mainstream comedies. Nothing was like this, and it marked a landmark movement in British pop culture: the alternative movement. People weren't afraid to be anti establishment, and with series like this keeping it funny, things really did change. It's an unabashedly 80s series, but it revels in its own audacity, and is all the better for it. That reference to The Good Life is no coincidence, they refused to play anything safe, and better still, they knew it.
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