I have something to confess: I always thought shows being “of their time” was a bit of a get-out clause.
Some shows we call “a product of their time,” like the reality show Supersize Vs Superskinny, were always clearly “off,” I reason.
Then, I think about how much Snog, Marry, Avoid I binge-watched and realise that some of my own favourite shows haven’t exactly aged perfectly.
Maybe misery just loves company, but I was pretty interested to read the responses to a post shared in Reddit’s r/Television.
Redditor u/goatamon asked people to name “sitcoms that have aged well, and sitcoms that have aged poorly.”
Let’s start with the best-aged ones:
1) “Golden Girls is still funny.”
u/-KFBR392
“If you’ve never done it, look up Betty White bloopers on YouTube. She used to wait for the director to yell action and then would just go wildly off-script and ad-lib. The other girls would finally break because she was so damn funny.” u/AllHailKeanu
2) “Malcolm in the Middle was genuinely great.”
“My partner had never seen it so rewatched last year and it’s still brilliant.” u/spliffwizard
“The humour in Malcolm in the Middle is just timeless. Hal is one of the best TV dads to have ever graced the screen.” u/DorkusMalorkus89
3) “King of the Hill is still so funny.”
u/loodish
”Recently rewatched it. Blew my mind how relevant the first couple of seasons are.
Bobby Hill is the voice of a generation.” u/WhoFly
4) “Weirdly I think 30 Rock has aged well as a whole despite having quite a lot of individual jokes that have aged terribly.”
“The high pace and density of jokes holds up and that the characters are not generally supposed to be very good people that are in the right means that the offensive jokes don’t feel as tonally bad to me.” u/custardy
5) “Parks and Recreation still holds up fantastically. I laugh now just as hard as I did when I first watched it.”
6) “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air holds up better than expected, early ’90s fashion and slang aside.” “It’s the perfect balance of goofiness and ‘seriousness’.”
7) “Peep Show, Spaced, and The Office (UK) were all released within a few years of each other and are still great. Blackadder also.”
And as for the shows people didn’t think aged as well...
1) “My fiancée used to like According to Jim so we watched a couple of episodes.”
“The entire show is just about Jim being a selfish prick and constantly lying to his wife except for the episodes where his wife is also being selfish and lying to him. Does not hold up IMO.” u/YeOldeGreg
2) “As for ageing badly... I can’t think of a better example than How I Met Your Mother.”
“I watched it originally as it came out. I enjoyed it for the most part, even though the last few seasons were much weaker. Aside from the notoriously terrible ending, I had fun with it.
Then, literally like 2-3 years after it ended, I decided I’d rewatch it and was immediately hit with ‘why did I ever think this was good?’” u/goatamon
3) “I rewatched Men Behaving Badly and whilst I had a bit of nostalgia enjoyment but it did feel dated.”
4) “Everyone Loves Raymond. The sort of humour aimed at people in a coma.”
5) “Two And A Half Men has aged atrociously.”
“No, it was always atrocious.” u/knifetrader
6) “I can’t believe nobody’s mentioned Entourage yet. That show does NOT hold up, yikes.”
“Besides all the obvious... the overall plot is about an actor who despite being pretty much a prick career-wise, keeps falling ass-backwards into greater and greater success.” u/RoscoeVillain
7) “Big Bang Theory aged well. It sucked then, it still sucks.”
Do you agree with these or have anything to add? Let us know!