Fifty greatest comedy sketches of all time
Nerve and IFC have produced an ambitious list chronicling the "50 greatest comedy sketches of all time." The reason I'm posting this to Boing Boing at the end of the work day, Los Angeles time, is because I've spent the last 10 hours watching these clips and accomplishing little else of worldly value. Now it's your turn. I don't care to argue over whether the precise numeric order is correct or not -- comedy's such a subjective thing, no? -- but lo, there is a buttload of greatness all up in this list. SNL, Abbott and Costello, Monty Python, Kids in the Hall, Upright Citizens Brigade, and above, the "Nairobi Trio" from the Ernie Kovacs show. Link to the list. (thanks, Rufus Griscom!)
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Who's in 2nd?
Nah, I'm not buying it. I looked through the list and saw many of my favorites. But somehow making this list makes it all less funny. For some reason it's depressing to me.
So... A horse walks into a bar...
Top 10 or top 20, that's cool. But top 50? That's a bit insane!
I'm going back to watching sleepy dogs and talking cats on YouTube.
Any list like this that doesn't have Mr. Show's "The Story of Everest" sketch in the top ten is like totally bogatoid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyrM7GxyzGg
to wit,
The Stranger
- Sean Nelson
But if I had to choose one single bit from the entire Mr. Show canon to argue for the series' unique identity (and I can, because I have seen every episode at least 900 times), that bit would have to be "Everest." There may be funnier things in the history of mankind (it's debatable), but there's something inimitable about the sheer absurdity of both the fall itself--a stumbling, splay-armed crash into a wall lined with shelves lined with thimbles, like a trust exercise gone horribly wrong--and its relentless repetition; each flawlessly timed tumble makes you feel like they couldn't possibly justify doing another one. No way. And then they do. And then they do it again. And again. And again. Until all that's left is the sense that you are watching a scene about a man who can't stop falling backwards into a wall full of thimbles, when all he wanted to do was tell his disapproving family about how he just finished climbing Mt. Everest. Kafka's wildest dreams couldn't have come up with a more Kafkaesque scenario.
yah, gotta agree with the depressing nature of it. and snl is great (esp. back in the day) but... where's the phil hartman and where's more NON SNL? also top 50 sketch comedy moments - seems oddly narrow and old fashioned. either just make it 50 favorite SNL moments or 50 greatest comedy moments in tv (because really no jon stewart here? steven colbert at least should count as sketch comedy, no?) just some thoughts...
washwords
If those were the funniest bits from The State, I'm glad that I never bothered to sit through more than half an episode.
While they deserve a certain amount of cred for remembering Ernie Kovacs, it's still too biased towards the new and popular (a large portion of the list is SNL and Monty Python).
Only one clip from the Carol Burnett? And nothing whatsoever from the Marx Brothers?
Nice try, but no cigar.
wait, you're sayin no Marx? None? Fuggedaboutit! Ain't even gonna look now. Blasphemers!
What? No Goodies? No Mighty Boosh?
I am so very glad that Ronnie Barker's "Four Candles" sketch made the list. I visited a fellow comedy geek in London two years ago, and said, "Okay, what English comedy geniuses don't Americans know about," and he popped an old Barker tribute into the VCR. Now I can't get enough. I highly recommend his sitcom "Porridge" -- set in an English prison, of all places.
Since we will all have to throw in our "How-could-they-leave-out" suggestions, I can't believe that Peter Cook and Dudley Moore didn't make the cut. It's possible that "Mini-Drama" is the most harrowing and dark comedy sketch ever to make me laugh.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=xLvPNVQXia0
* I tried watching, but the first three videos had each been removed from YouTube.
* Greatest comedy sketches? To paragraph Napoleon Dynamite's brother... "Like anyone can know that."
* That "Everest" URL really is funny.
OK, watched fork handles, feel better now
@Shawn Wolfe
Oh my god. I had never seen anything from Mr. Show before. That was pure, unfiltered Funny; I cried so hard I literally could not see.
It is a formula that, dissected, sounds hopelessly unfunny: guy crashes into wall of thimbles over and over to the exasperation of his audience. It's certainly doomed to be grist for the tired SNL mill.
Something pushes it beyond that fate, though, and I think you nailed it: it's his timing, his precise flailing straight into the wall, and the audacity to repeat the same shtick endlessly.
Truly brilliant. Thanks for the link.
No Peter Cook and Dudley Moore
No Fast Show
No Goodness Gracious Me
No Two Ronnies Mastermind Sketch
No League of Gentlemen
No Fry and Laurie
No Harry Enfield
Still, there are some good clips in the 50.
The Slate list is admirable, but definitely skewed towards latter-day TV offerings. The Abbot and Costello bit at #2 seems like a lame requirement as opposed to descriptive of anything the people who compiled the list actually knew about.
Hell, no Goon Show? No Three Stooges? No Marx Brothers?
Also, it's a crying shame that Upright Citizens Brigade only showed up once on the list. What was really amazing about that show was that it brought incisive, Chomsky-esque anarchist politics to mainstream television, and made it effin' funny.
Madeira M'dear?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW_zi8n4HDQ
ah memories
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mgKpld58rE&feature=related
ashita
It felt like a lot of the SNL sketches were jammed in as filler. Some were totally warranted, and the appearance of the "Synchronized Swimming" sketch was a nice surprise. But Baba fargin' Wawa? No Gilda hater I, but several minutes of funny voices does not a top-10 spot holder make.
That Nairobi trio video creeps me out on a level on can't begin to describe.
Without looking at the clip or the comments, I'm going to take a wild guess and say the dead parrot sketch is there?
No Papa Lazarou?
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=a27zbNyf3x4
#21: No doubt!
Perhaps some of our older friends can tell us if there is some kind of contemporaneous cultural context that we're missing. Aside from the creepy, I wasn't even tempted to crack a smile. Not only is there no funny, there's not even amusing or even twee. WTF!?!
#22: it was number one.
I think that "Who's on First" is the funniest comedy sketch of all time, internet or television.
I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who thinks "Who's on First" should be first... only out of comedic necessity, if for no other reason.
No Wayne and Shuster?
-- I will say good day to you, top fifty greatest comedy sketches.
What, no Dane Cook?
The SCTV skit with Richard Harris singing MacArthur park on Mel's Rock Pile is one of my personal favourites, so much so that I went out and bought the album,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv2UcxJwS3A
That clip was horrifying. I need a unicorn chaser.
I understand the need to include historically-relevant yet dated sketches on a top 50 list. Should not each sketch still retain some humor? The "Nairobi Trio" was zero percent funny. Apologies for my harshing.
This is probably the least awful "XXX Best..." list I've seen. Even so, I must protest a little.
No Bob and Ray! (I... nominate... the Slow... Talker... of...}
No Smothers Brothers! (I nominate "Honey House," a guided tour of the actual house where Honey lived, and Honey played, and Honey grew up.)
It was good to see the Four Yorkshiremen up there. I was prepared to complain if they weren't. "Who's On First?" is over-rated and could have been a lot lower down (or higher up, numerically speaking).
The Sid Caesar sketch I'd have up there is "This Is Your Life (aka Uncle Goofy)."
An SNL bit I'd put up in place of one of the others would be the ad for "EYCH!", the hairball remedy cats ask for by name!
And I'd have the SCTV presentation of the Bulgarian children's classic, "Pepi Longsocks" up there. That Pepi! He is so unusual! I tell you.
Still and all, lots of good viewing in the ones that made the list, and I can't think of anything there that isn't funny at all. As I said, way better than any other numbered list I've seen. If I had more time on my hands, I'd assemble "The Ten Stupidest Numbered Lists of the Last Ten Years."
@21,24,29:
Really?
This sketch (whichevah version) always makes me giggle like crazy & ups my mood in nothing flat.
Maybe 'cuz I first was familiarized to Kovacs @4-5 years old. My father introduced me to his work via a retrospective on PBS
(I love my Pop - he gave me an education in what Funny is. Suprisingly, it turns out comedy existed before SNL. Strange but true)
The point, I suppose, is that the Nairobi Trio sketch is simply silly. It runs on it's own internal logic and doesn't try to be ironic or cooly detatched.
(By the way, I'm in my mid-30's, to answer the general query)
Mr Show is friggin brilliant, I'm so glad to see it getting some love. Apart from great sketches, the way they structured the entire show, by having sketches flow into each other in entirely unforeseen ways, was really unusual and often jaw-dropping in its creativity.
Unfortunately, Channel 4 UK often, regularly and ad nauseum compile horrible and mostly depressing lists of this kind - to broadcast on TV.
It's a cheap way to draw in viewers and usually disappoints - whatever type of list they're compiling. It's based on the list that Channel 4 UK provide and then internet votes from than list. Always a disappointment. Uurrgghh!
Yeah, um, evidently these people only have their heads halfways up their collective arses. Yes, SNL and Python did some brilliant stuff.. but please..
No "Not The Nine O'clock News"? Seriously, folks. Rowan Atkinson? C'mon. Watch this clip of The Judge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6KyA_KabNM or this clip of Constable Savage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZoSqPxsNtU
No Frantics?? I realize that their stuff is hard to find, what with not being released on DVD (yet) and all (there's a petition online, go sign it) but Boot To the Head http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5kGUW6M7W0
and Dirty Words http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q8AuX-9Hs4
are -classic-.
No MadTV? Their early years were head and shoulders above what SNL was doing at the time. Though, yeah, they've drifted some, I'll give you that.
Lastly, that gorilla suit skit is just offensive.
Oh and yes, Mr Show is funny. I'm glad you folks got to find that out.