Blackadder (1983)

The essential one. Each series drops a new Edmund Blackadder into a different century: 1485 at the end of the Middle Ages, Elizabeth I's court, the Regency, and finally the trenches of 1917. Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis wrote the first series, and it is the weakest; Ben Elton replaced Atkinson as Curtis's co-writer from Blackadder II, and that is where most people should start. The jokes about ruffs, Baldrick's turnips and royal idiocy are sublime, and Blackadder Goes Forth turns the comedy into something genuinely moving by its final scene. A 2004 BBC poll voted it Britain's second-best sitcom, behind only Only Fools and Horses.