Please god, not "The Brittas Empire"! I'll tell you anything, just make it stop!

My problem is that I need to be able to empathise in some way with the characters. And Brittas, the Fawlties and Hyacinth Bucket (to name some egregious examples of the type) aren't human, they're just B-movie monsters minus the rubber suits. Overstatement is one thing, but when the characters aren't even recognisably behaving like human beings then I'm afraid I switch off.

I know people rave about "Fawlty Towers"; I personally think it's one of the laziest pieces of writing I know of. I can certainly appreciate the imagination that went into the situations. But the "comedy" part of the sit-com equation for me comes from what people do in those situations, and there are no people in "Fawlty Towers" (with the possible exception of Connie Booth), only monsters and cardboard cutouts.

As always, YMMV. If you enjoy the situations and extreme over-reactions to them, I guess you'll like Fawlty Towers, Brittas and Keeping up Appearances.

A good one from the 70s is "Porridge" - the British antidote to tough American jail films.

Graham.