10 Spectacularly Bad TV Ideas That Turned Out To Be Awesome

8. The Royle Family

It is the late 90's. British television comedy had gone a bit loud with shows such as Men Behaving Badly and the Fast Show offering a 'in your face' style of humour. Caroline Aherne, who was already greatly admired for her work on the previously mentioned Fast Show and with her comedy creation Mrs Merton, is going to the BBC with a new idea for a comedy. She's hot property and the BBC don't want to lose her to their rivals, so will pretty much consider any concept. The offer is a sitcom about a family with no outwardly comedy features who live in an ordinary house in Manchester. During the show very little will happen and there will be no catchphrases (till 'My Arse' crept in) and definitely no obvious jokes. Given the climate at the time in comedy, it's amazing it got past the proposal stage. It was commissioned, but it's interesting to note the production of the show was passed to Granada and the show started life on a quiet slot on BBC 2 before rising ratings and superlative reviews forced a transfer to BBC 1. However, 15 years later the BAFTA Award-winning show is still making the occasional Christmas special and has racked up some impressive audiences on the way to becoming an absolute British favourite. It also has a firm place in the fabric of the evolution of comedy because its light-touch, character-driven observational humour paved the way for the BBC to consider less obvious sitcom formats paving the way for shows such as The Office to succeed.