Items15The creator’s order
  1. 1Seinfeld (1989)Seinfeld (1989) 8.8/10 on IMDbFirst aired 5 Jul 1989The Chinese Restaurant (season 2, 1991) Jerry, George and Elaine wait for a table, in real time, for the whole episode, and then leave. That is the entire plot, and it is the point: with no scene changes to cut away to, every small humiliation of waiting has to play out at full length, and the…0
  2. 2Seinfeld (1989)Seinfeld (1989) 8.8/10 on IMDbFirst aired 5 Jul 1989The Parking Garage (season 3, 1991) The gang loses Kramer's car in a mall car park, and the show builds a whole episode out of the universal panic of every level looking the same. The garage was a set: Jerry's apartment and the audience seating were removed to make room for it, and mirrors and…0
  3. 3Frasier (1993)Frasier (1993) 8.2/10 on IMDbFirst aired 16 Sept 1993My Coffee with Niles (season 1, 1994) The original 1993 series closes its first season at a single table in Café Nervosa, shot in real time with no scene changes or cuts. Niles asks a simple question, whether Frasier is happy, and the episode lets friends and family drift past the table while the…0
  4. 4Frasier (1993)Frasier (1993) 8.2/10 on IMDbFirst aired 16 Sept 1993The Ski Lodge (season 5, 1998) After two short scenes in Seattle, the rest of this Joe Keenan script stays inside a mountain ski lodge for a night of door-slamming bedroom farce. Keenan called it very mathematical, a precise chain of misunderstandings in which nearly everyone is quietly chasing…0
  5. 5Friends (1994)Friends (1994) 8.8/10 on IMDbFirst aired 22 Sept 1994The One Where No One's Ready (season 3, 1996) Ross needs everyone dressed and out of the door for his big work event, and the episode never leaves Monica and Rachel's living room, dining area and kitchen until the closing tag. It plays out in real time, which turns every delay into a countdown the…0
  6. 6The Office (2005)The Office (2005) 9.0/10 on IMDbFirst aired 24 Mar 2005Dinner Party (season 4, 2008) The American series takes its Scranton staff out of the office and traps them in Michael and Jan's condo for what one writer called the world's worst dinner party. The writers modelled it on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and it shows: Jim and Pam, tricked into…0
  7. 7Community (2009)Community (2009) 8.5/10 on IMDbFirst aired 17 Sept 2009Cooperative Calligraphy (season 2, 2010) Annie's pen has gone missing, again, and she declares that nobody leaves the room until it is returned. The whole episode turns on who took it, while the puppy parade the group is missing goes on only in everyone's imagination. What lifts it above a clever…0
  8. 8Community (2009)Community (2009) 8.5/10 on IMDbFirst aired 17 Sept 2009Remedial Chaos Theory (season 3, 2011) A housewarming party, a pizza waiting downstairs and a roll of a die to decide who should go and fetch it. Community's second great bottle episode keeps the study group in one apartment but splits the evening into alternate timelines, replaying the same…0
  9. 9It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005)It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005) 8.8/10 on IMDbFirst aired 4 Aug 2005Chardee MacDennis: The Game of Games (season 7, 2011) With no scheme to chase, the gang stays in Paddy's Pub and plays the drinking game they invented, part trivia contest and part drunken dare, with three levels: mind, body and spirit. Keeping all five together in one room strips away the plot…0
  10. 10Inside No. 9 (2014)Inside No. 9 (2014) 8.5/10 on IMDbFirst aired 5 Feb 2014Sardines (series 1, 2014) The British anthology's opening episode takes place entirely in one room, and much of it inside a single wardrobe. At a very posh engagement party, guests play sardines, and more and more of them squeeze in among the coats, each arrival adding another awkward personality…0