12 British Comedy Shows You Absolutely Had To Watch In The '90s

3. Red Dwarf

Del Boy never had to face a despair quid that tricked its victims into thinking they were trapped in a virtual reality game, or a psychotic simulant, or a shape-shifting emotion thief. This, in a nutshell, is why Red Dwarf was cult viewing but Only Fools And Horses was not. The tension between cheery scouse slob Lister and pedantic underachieving hologram Rimmer was a standard sitcom ploy, but it was played out in a genre that delivered an army of grateful fans. These were the dark days when sci-fi and comedy were deemed incompatible, so the petty but pithy banter as the crew battled aliens, each other and time itself was geek heaven. The series also increased the vocabulary of schoolboys when as one, they adopted Lister's favourite insult: smeghead. Classic moment: When the cat confronts the horror of being 'Duane Dibbley.'