12. The Young Ones
BBCThere are countless stereotypes of social groups within society, particularly regarding the behaviour of a collective youth. As the theory goes: your standard university student is an obnoxious attention-seeker, a punk is an uncontrollable psychopath, a hippy is simply a vegetarian environmentalist that forever worries and a leader of any gang is always the slick, cool guy that gets all the chicks. The Young Ones meddles with the concept of such public portrayals and presents four very extreme archetypes of the personas mentioned. The diverse band of associates (they will often remind each other that they are not friends) live in a grubby, gloomy student house representative of Thatchers Britain. The show would frequently take shots at Margaret Thatcher and her empowerment by highlighting the effect her policies had on certain social circles. For instance, the sitcom played on the rise of unemployment figures by having Neil (the Peace Studies learning hippy) take a job in the police force due to a lack of employment options. Although the shows political attacks are unmistakable, the sitcom doesn't lose its light-hearted appeal. A fine example being the episode that sees the gang on a mock version of University Challenge to take on the Footlights College, Oxbridge a team made up of Lord Snot, Lord Monty, Mr Kendall-Mintcake and Miss Money-Sterling.