12 Most Underrated TV Shows Ever
9. Perfect Strangers
On paper, this looks like the worst example of American sitcom badness you could imagine from the seventies and eighties. Running for eight seasons between 1986 and 1993, Perfect Strangers began life as a last-minute mid-season entry into the ABC spring line-up. Featuring the odd couple pairing of fish-out-of-water immigrant Balki Bartokomous (played by Bronson Pinchot) and his neurotic, inept cousin Larry Appleton (Mark Linn-Baker), this should have been an exercise in generic hackery. Fortunately for US audiences and the network, Pinchot and Linn-Baker were comic geniuses, and from day one displayed the kind of almost mystical rapport that some double acts take years to hone and perfect.
The first season was only six episodes long: by the time the second debuted, the material had been reworked to play to the pairs strengths. Often, scenes between the two resembled perfectly choreographed stage performances rather than the traditional multi-camera studio sitcom shenanigans that audiences expected.
Perfect Strangers would never be a ratings smash, but it was consistent until changing policies at ABC and a desire for an audience that skewed younger caused the show to be cancelled with a final six-episode run broadcast in 1993. Today, Perfect Strangers is best known (if it's remembered at all) for having spun off the far more generic Family Matters, which brought the ubiquitous Urkel to American television, officially one of the most annoying characters in TV history. Let's leave you with a reminder of the magic that is The Dance Of Joy...