The news that Rewind TV is to show the 1984 ITV milkman sitcom Bottle Boys again in full from Monday July 20 brought a shudder to those in the know. Bottle Boys is an infamous low watermark in the generally wonderful genre of British TV sitcom. But it’s not the only one.
Here we scrape the bucket for the very worst sitcoms that British television has ever excreted. And for fans of plumbing the depths, get ready: Bottle Boys isn’t even number one.
20. Up the Elephant and Round the Castle (ITV, 1983-85)
Jim Davidson starred as dyed-in-the-wool Cockney “sparra” Jim London in this prototype for Men Behaving Badly. Our Jim behaved badly by not doing very much at all – he spends most of the 22 episodes in his inherited Victorian terrace half cut, mouthing off at the DHSS, shouting at the (always unseen) squatter upstairs and batting off the “birds” who, mystifyingly, kept popping round to try and have their way with our boy.
It was a role straight from Davidson’s music hall stand-up schtick and someone must have liked it – two years later Lucky Jim got an ITV sequel, Home James (1987-90).
19. Don’t Drink the Water (ITV, 1974-75)
Less ‘Espana por favor’, more ‘no gracias’ for Stephen Lewis, Pat Coombs and Derek Griffiths – IMDB
Beware the sitcom solo spin-off (see, for example, Joey after Friends), and so it proved with this hoary appendage to Ronald Chesney and Ronald Wolfe’s late-1960s hit On the Buses. Don’t Drink the Water followed Buses’ Cyril “Blakey” Blake (Stephen Lewis) after his retirement from the Luxton & District Traction Company, as he escaped to the sun in a flat on the Costa Brava.
His apartment block was called El Paradiso and so, obviously, proved to be anything but, as the series worked its way through every Brits Abroad, xenophobic cliché you could think of – it even lobbed in some fusspot German neighbours once it tired of mocking lazy Spaniards.
18. The Royal Bodyguard (BBC, 2011-12)
David Jason was in his 70s while playing what was essentially a part-time action hero – Des willie/Hat Trick/BBC
The return of David Jason to mainstream sitcom was big news in 2011, when The Royal Bodyguard was given a primetime, Boxing Day berth.
Unfortunately, it was bad enough to send you straight back to Only Fools and Horses reruns, not least because Jason was in his 70s by the time he was asked to play a character who was essentially a part-time action hero. His alter ego, Guy Hubblem, had fallen into the role of Palace Security Chief by accident, of course, after he happened to save the Queen’s life. But nothing in the stodgy, joke-adjacent dialogue ever did enough to paper over the Jason-shaped credibility gap.
17. ‘Orrible (BBC, 2001)
Ricky Grover and Johnny Vaughan were ‘Orrible – Richard Kendal/BBC
In the Nineties there was a short-lived vogue for giving fresh and fashionable TV presenters sitcoms of their own (see also Sam’s Game, below) which was why Johnny Vaughan, flying high on the success of The Big Breakfast, found himself starring in this duffer.
Vaughan played an Acton mini-cab driver called Paul Clark, who was fancy free, foul-mouthed and full of it. A post-watershed slot allowed Vaughan and co-writer Ed Allen to make ‘Orrible just a little bit risqué, which was supposed to be a point of difference – but the swearing and drug-use didn’t make Clark likeable, just insufferable. Hence, ‘Orrible was greeted mostly by jokes about its title.
16. Chalk (BBC, 1997)
Must try harder: Nicola Walker with David Bamber in Chalk
Through Press Gang, Doctor Who and Sherlock the writer Steven Moffat has given British television some of its best ever moments… but every day has its dog.
Moffat’s, he would probably agree, is this early school-set sitcom (Moffat was a secondary school teacher before he wrote Press Gang) which follows the travails of deputy head Eric Platt (David Bamber) as he does to secondary school education what Basil Fawlty did to hotels. That analogy was part of Chalk‘s problem – the BBC compared it to Fawlty Towers in its marketing, thus setting it up against the greatest (discuss) sitcom of them all. Chalk could not, and did not, compare.
15. The Wright Way (BBC, 2013)
Health and safety gone mad with David Haig – Matt Squire/BBC
Ben Elton was another writer touched with greatness (he co-wrote Blackadder and The Young Ones) who nonetheless could serve up a stinker. The Wright Way was quite literally health and safety gone mad (Gone Mad was an alternative title), an exasperated harrumph at arch jobsworth Gerald Wright (David Haig), a man who never met a nit he didn’t want to pick.
In his biography Elton revealed that Wright was originally written for Rik Mayall, but even Mayall’s comic genius couldn’t have rescued a trite set-up laden with tumbleweed one-liners.
14. Sir Yellow (ITV, 1973)
A knight’s fail: Melvyn Hayes and Jimmy Edwards
In the spirit of hate-watching it really is worth dipping in to Sir Yellow now that it has resurfaced on YouTube. It lasted for one series on Yorkshire TV in 1973 with the only surprise being it was commissioned at all.
Sixties TV star Jimmy Edwards plays the yellow-bellied knight of the title, a classic sitcom shirker who spends most of the 20-minute episodes “Ye-ing” and “Tis-ing” about how uncomfortable his armour is with his proto-Baldrick manservant Gregory (Melvyn Hayes). A brutal disembowelling in Game of Thrones is considerably funnier than anything here.
13. Sam’s Game (ITV, 2001)
Ed Byrne, Davina McCall and Tristan Gemmill in the British attempt at Friends – Television Stills
Davina McCall is many things, but she is not, dare we say, a comic actress. Not on the strength of Sam’s Game, anyway, a six-part ITV flat-share sitcom. McCall played the breezy singleton Sam who sublet her flat to Alex (Ed Byrne) while enduring endless visits from the neighbours across the way™, sexy Phil (Tristan Gemmill) and wacky Marcia (Tameka Empson). Have you spotted it yet? The set-up was yet another attempt to do a British Friends – but without the comic timing in the leads and the crack writing teams that made sure every line in Friends was relentlessly funny.
12. Slinger’s Day (ITV, 1986-87)
Didn’t he do well? In short, no; Bruce Forsyth’s supermarket sitcom was a flop
Fans of the late Bruce Forsyth should not watch this sitcom. Actually, no one else should either – it starred Forsyth stepping into a role originally filled by the great Leonard Rossiter in Tripper’s Day until his death in 1984, and it showed why Brucie should have stuck to game shows.
Forsyth played Cecil Slinger, the manager of a small London supermarket where, in finest sitcom style, everything went wrong, all the time. It’s not clear whether Forsyth had dispensed with the leaden script or just chose to extemporise like he was presenting Play Your Cards Right. Either way, his mugging to camera brought to mind the worst of panto, let alone sitcom.
11. Heil Honey I’m Home! (BSB, 1990)
Neil McCaul attempted to push the boundaries of sitcom Führer than ever – IMDB
A title and set-up that were designed to arouse controversy succeeded in evoking one massive yawn – Geoff Atkinson’s 1990 spoof for the nascent British Satellite Broadcasting network was cancelled after just one episode. It posited Adolf Hitler (Neil McCaul) and Eva Braun (DeNica Fairman) as an everyday couple living in a flat in American suburbia… but with a Jewish couple as their neighbours. The idea was meant to be a parody of US sitcoms with daft premises, but satire and parody still need jokes. Heil Honey I’m Home! didn’t have any, and the seven additional episodes that had been filmed were quickly shelved.
10. Odd Man Out (ITV, 1977)
John Inman (centre) pictured with Peter Butterworth and Vivienne John – Fremantle Media/Shutterstock
Are You Being Served?‘s John Inman was promoted from supporting player and audience favourite Mr Humphries to lead this ITV sitcom. He probably wished he’d stayed in the menswear department at Grace Brothers.
Fish-out-of-water-com Odd Man Out presented him as a Blackpool fish-and-chip-shop owner, who inherits a new job running a stick-rock factory in Sussex, complete with a staff member whose catchphrase was: “How’s your rock, cock?” That gives you some idea of the level of humour, which marked a backwards step in homosexual stereotypes on TV that we all could have done without.
9. Plaza Patrol (ITV, 1991)
Cannon and Ball’s security guard sitcom was a misfire
Sometime comic duo Tommy Cannon and Bobby Ball were granted their own sitcom (a classic TV commissioning error, as this list surely shows) in late 1991 with predictable results. In Plaza Patrol they played a pair of chalk and cheese security guards at a shopping centre, with the kicker being that both of them were useless at the job in different ways. What might have worked in a two-minute skit was unendurable across six half hours, proving once again that popularity in one genre does not equal competency in another.
8. Yus My Dear (ITV, 1976)
Mike Reid getting a [Frank] butcher’s at co-star Valerie Wash – IMDB
A second entry for On the Buses’ Ronalds Chesney and Wolfe that was also one of the first screen appearances for EastEnders‘s Mike Reid. But not even Frank Butcher could save this.
Yus My Dear was actually a sequel to the 1972 sitcom Romany Jones, which, incredibly, portrayed real-life gypsies as work-shy boozehounds sponging off the state for four series. Yus My Dear took the same characters and transferred them from a caravan site to a council house, but continued punching down without punchlines. Not funny and not nice.
7. Piglets (ITV, 2024-26)
What happened was this: someone high-up in ITV thought it was a good idea to call a comedy set in police training school Piglets and things just got worse and worse from there. It meant that when Piglets, starring Mark Heap and Sarah Parish, launched in July 2024 it had already been condemned by the Police Federation of England and Wales, and while that could have been a scurrilous badge of honour it turned out to be a helpful preview – whatever the target of the humour was meant to be, the jokes just didn’t land.
6. Come Back Mrs Noah (BBC1, 1978)
Ian Lavender in close orbit around Mollie Sugden in the slapdash space sitcom – IMDB
Just as John Inman won himself a big new gig (see above) for his work on Are You Being Served?, so Mollie Sugden’s career also skyrocketed. Unfortunately, it blasted off into this ill-conceived mess from AYBS‘s creators Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft.
Space fiction was all the rage in 1978, with Star Wars and Blake’s 7 riding high, so you can see why Lloyd and Croft thought a story of a housewife ending up on a spaceship by accident might be just the thing. What you can’t unsee is the sight of Sugden in a spacesuit – one of the most egregious miscastings of all time.
5. Love Thy Neighbour (ITV, 1972-76)
Rudolph Walker (centre-left) and Jack Smethurst (centre-right), live together in perfect disharmony – IMDB
The idea behind Vince Powell and Harry Driver’s infamous 1972 sitcom, so they said, was to make people question racial prejudice. If that was its intention, however, it failed completely.
Eddie Booth (Jack Smethurst) was a white, card-carrying Marxist who was dismayed to find that his new neighbour Bill (Rudolph Walker) was black and a Tory. They argued and fought over their shared fence using language that was offensive then and now seems outrageous. Perhaps the most shocking thing about Love Thy Neighbour from a modern standpoint, however, was how popular it was: 54 episodes were made over eight series, and it always rated well.
4. Mrs Brown’s Boys (BBC One, 2011-ongoing)
Continuing the theme of, “Who is watching this stuff and why?”, Mrs Brown’s Boys has dominated BBC comedy since its launch in 2011. This in spite of being what the Irish Independent called “the type of show that makes you embarrassed to be Irish”.
Brendan O’Carroll dresses as an elderly woman who says “feck” a lot and the live studio audience split their sides to order. Alacazam! The end of the pier is now in your front room and it’s like Bernard Manning never left us.
3. Bottle Boys (ITV, 1984-85)
Robin Askwith (centre) and company were up with the lark – IMDB
The star of Rewind TV’s new season isn’t the worst British sitcom ever made, but that’s not for want of trying. Robin Askwith, fresh from the “triumph” of the Confessions… series, played a milkman doing the rounds in South London, and he brought with him the Confessions level of humour.
To call Bottle Boys un-PC is to credit it with forethought. It’s far stupider than that: the script is a cavalcade of boorish men laughing at each other’s boorishness, while we at home look on stony-faced.
2. Big Top (BBC One, 2009)
(L-R) John Thomson, Amanda Holden and Sophie Thompson headlined this ‘big flop’ – BBC/Big Bear Films
If you’re feeling charitable, you can perhaps forgive the sitcoms listed here that reflected the attitudes of their times, however misguided. But here we have Amanda Holden, looking for a career-boost in a top hat and leotard in a woeful series set around a travelling circus, which also starred John Thomson, Tony Robinson and Ruth Madoc.
It’s one good joke was casting Holden as a ring mistress because, it turned out, she had no circus skills at all. Big Top was soon rechristened Big Flop, and axed after one series.
1. In for a Penny (ITV, 1972)
Penny dreadful: Bob Todd starred in Britain’s worst ever sitcom, which was set in a public toilet – ITV/Shutterstock
Where “Penny” refers to urination and the setting is a public convenience. Yes, In for a Penny was the sort of programme idea that Alan Partridge might come up with for his TV comeback, and it marks the absolute low point in British sitcom.
Bob Todd played Dan the Lavatory Man, who kept his toilets spotless while indulging in what we now call “banter” with his regulars. Not content with besmirching the schedules with a fatberg of lowest-common-denominator toilet humour, In for a Penny even managed to create a Pakistani character, Ali, to insult, as well as throwing in the standard Seventies councillor for everyone to loathe. It was flushed away, quite rightly, after just six evacuations.
Bottle Boys is on Rewind TV on Monday, July 20 at 10:30am and 7pm.