I think the test of a truly great sitcom is, it translates well to other audiences in other countries, it can be rerun without people getting fed up seeing it on the listings, and its jokes are still funny (if not funnier) decades later.
There’re lots of British sitcoms that are still laugh-out-loud funny today (even if there are some episodes that have aged like warm milk). Blackadder (2-4), The IT Crowd, Dads Army, Only Fools and Horses. Some of the best’uns were very short runs - Fawlty Towers and Father Ted.
I’d rate The Munsters, The Addams Family, and the Beverly Hillbillies, ahead of most 80s American sitcoms that haven’t aged well at all.
Top of my list is probably controversial: Allo Allo. There’s nothing close.
The situation is Nouviens, a village in occupied France in World War 2.
The setup is simple: how does a cafe owner balance the competing needs of his annoying wife, the local German brass, the very kinky Gestapo, the fanatical Communist French Resistance, the earnest Gaullist (Not-Communist) French Resistance, two utterly hapless British airmen, a well-meaning but ineffectual British spy masquerading as a gendarme, and three lusty barmaids, without getting shot?
What sets it apart is the use of exaggerated accents to indicate who’s talking to who in what language. The British airmen and their translators talk in plummy Rep accents which the actors playing the French villagers can’t understand. The villagers talk with Pepe Le Pew accents. And so on. The British spy whose French is meant to be totally appalling gets his vowels wrong (e.g. after passing by the door and hearing three gunshots he says “Ay was pissing by the dur when I ‘eard three shits”.
On paper it shouldn’t be funny, but it is hilarious. That vaudevillian farce that makes it abundantly clear the most annoying people there are Brits, is so well done it even made the German audiences laugh on reruns.
LOL..I just saw you mention Beverly Hillbillies...
Btw, do you know the difference between a hillbilly and a hillwilliam??????
Btw, do you know the difference between a hillbilly and a hillwilliam??????