Best: Hot Fuzz (2007)
Yes, everyone loves Shaun of the Dead (we do, unreservedly). But Edgar Wright's countrified cop caper deserves some love, as it has always lurked in the shadow of its wildly successful older, undead brother.
Wright once again shows off his gift for genre-juggling, coming up with a hilarious hybrid of Bad Boys and Midsomer Murders . Simon Pegg's by-the-book city cop Nick Angel is transferred to the sleepy, bucolic village of Sandford, not long before a succession of grisly murders begins.
Wriಞght handles the climactic shootout with the same assured touch he brings to comedic scenes (or zombie chil🌃ls), and he nabbed himself one hell of a cast, too.
Worst: Sex Lives of the Potato Men (2004)
A viewing of Sex Lives of the Potato Men could rightly put you off British comedy for life. It concisely captures all that is awful about our nation's worst humorous output. Despite a cast that have graduated from decent TV comedies (Mackenzie Crook, Mark Gatiss), this one has more chance of actually making you vomit than eliciting a laugh.
First time director Andy Humphries has thankfully steered clear of fiction since this disaster. The sex jokes are crude, lacking any wit or insight, from a script that feels like it made it to the producer's desk after being confiscated from a group of Year 8 lads.
Diabolical: suitable only for use as non-violent self-flage🎀llation.
Best: Carry on Screaming! (1966)
For better or worse, it's impossible to think about British comedy without paying tribute to the Carry on… series. Often awful, the films have amassed a committed fanbase over the years, and you'll more than likely associate them with some nostalgic memories of soggy bank holidays.
If you ever intend to watch one of your own volition, Carry on Screaming! is the way to go. There's the familiar double entendres, saucy shenanigans and bustiness aplenty, but the more discerning film fan is rewarded with a bit of a Hammer Horror send-up as well.
Hard to believe that this was the twelfth entry in the indefatigable series, and as well as the satirical swipes at contemporary horrors, Screaming also scares up a few chills.
Worst: Carry on Columbus (1992)
There were a fair few entries from the Carry on… heyday that could have easily qualified for the worst entry. But it's this all-advised shot at relaunching the franchise in the 90s that walks away with the ignominy of being branded the very worst in a notoriously patchy series.
Following a fourteen year hiatus after Emmannuelle , Columbus is the 31st intstallment in the series. It is simply a staggeringly bad film, which could be partly blamed upon writer Dave Freeman's 10 day deadline to deliver the script. Or it could be down to the fact that the unfunny innuendo had failed to magically become funny again during the series' absence.
The prese💜nce of TV funnymen Rik Mayall, Martin Clunes and Alexei Sayle does nothing to alleviate the ominous feeling of vultures c𒁏ircling above this moribund franchise.
Best: Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
Way before Eddie Murphy was donning multiple guises to play entire families, Alec Guinness turns in a marvellous performance (or eight) as the D'Ascoyne family. Dennis Price is the impoverished, illegitimate heir to the family title, who plans to take back his rightful status by way of 'wholesale homicide'.
This vintage Ealing comedy still impresses today, with a thrillingly dark script, slyly subversive subtext, and, of course, that tour de force performance from star-on-the-rise Alec Guinness. Even the make-up effects haven't aged anywhere near as badly as you'd expect (especially given the fate of the Back to the Future high-def transfer).
A true vintage gem.
Worst: Casino Royale (1966)
Daniel Craig and Martin Campbell proved that you could make a superb action thriller from Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel. Thankfully, that superior reboot is the movie that comes to mind when the name is invoked, rather than the poor comedy that arrived while Sean Connery was still donning the tux for the 'proper' series.
Producer Charles K. Feldman grabbed the rights to Fleming's novel but couldn't strike a deal to make the movie with EON, so instead went down the satire route. The film went through at least five directors en route to the big screen and it shows: it makes little sense, and the gags are unable to land a decent hit on Connery-era Bond (those movies didn't exactly take themselves too seriously in the first place).
And don't let the starry line up fool you: the combined power of Peter𒆙 Sellers, David Niven, Orson Welles, Woody Allen and original Bond girl Ursula Andress can't ꩵplaster over the always-evident cracks.
Best: In the Loop (2009)
TV-to-movie crossovers and laughs haven't always made frequent bedfellows in British cinema history, but thankfully Alan Partridge overseer Armando Iannucci made it work with this (sort-of) telly transfer.
Peter Capaldi's sweary spin doctor Malcom Tucker is one of only two characters to actually graduate from The Thick of It to Loop . When bumbling minister Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) makes an off-the-cuff remark during a radio interview, the shit hits the fan on an international scale.
It's a credit to Iannucci's direction, and a brace of great performances, that this movie can split t💃he sides of even the most politically-ignorant audience. Having Chris Addison's naive first-day-on-the-job aide at the centre of the maelstrom helps to ensure the Atlantic-hopping intrigue connects on a believably human level.
Worst: Bean (1997)
You have to be pretty confident with your movie to bestow it with such a critic-friendly tag line: The Ultimate Disaster Movie. It was hard to believe that Mr Bean could actually work as a feature-length protagonist anyway, with the gurning social misfit often outstaying his welcome in 30 minute TV slots.
But, there was a certain charm to the physical comedy meted out by Rowan Atkinson in his signature role. Shame that the film (directed by Atkinson's Not the Nine O'Clock News collaborator Mel Smith) updated the action to California, gifted Bean with the power of speech, and lumped him with a detestable American family.
A gruelling 90 minutes.
Best: Tamara Drewe (2010)
One of the best of the recent crop of Brit romcoms, Tamara Drewe brought some darkness and intrigue to a subgenre that had become altogether too saccharine. Based on Posy Simmonds' comic strip (serialised in The Guardian), it was a loose reworking of Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd .
Set in a quiet Dorset village, successful journo Tamara (Gemma Arterton) causes quite a stir when she returns home with a nose job and a pair of teeny hotpants, and sets in motion a series of events that'll impact upon the entire village.
Director Stephen Frears finds time to satirise writers, rock stars and co💎untry bumpkins in this thoroughly enjoyable flick, which sadly (and surprisingly) failed to have much of an impact at the box office.
Worst: St. Trinians (2007)
This ill-advised reboot/redo of the British schoolgirl comedy series wastes an abundance of talent on a lame, poorly executed idea. It launched Gemma Arterton onto the big screen, but by the time the unsought sequel arrived in 2009, she had already outgrown this tosh (and her appearance in the follow-up pretty much registers as a charitable cameo).
Rupert Everet🍌t takes on the dual role of Camilla/Carnaby Fritton, and Colin Firth is the Education Minister looking to have the school closed down. Rising talents Talulah Riley and Juno Temple are two of the almost-memorable students, but they're drowned, along with any sense of fun, amidst a hopelessly bloated cast of Brit TV comedy veterans, pop stars, mod🎀els and Russell Brand.
Best: A Cock and Bull Story (2005)
Michael Winterbottom has never been a director to back down when confronted with difficult material. Novels are rarely dubbed more 'unfilmable' than Laurence Sterne's Tristam Shandy , a postmodern novel written approximately 200 years before the term was coined.
How do you adapt an autobiography in which the digression-prone writer fails to actually get round to telling his life story (after going off on a tangent at the conception stage)? Well, Winterbottom went down the metafictional comedy route, making a movie in which Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are starring in an adaptation of the novel.
A spiritual sibling to Spike Jonze's Adaptation , A Cock and Bull Story is a little more esoteric in that it requires some foreknowledge of Coogan's Alan Partridge persona, and its juggling of the two world's could leave the mentally-slack members of the audience out in the cold. But, Partridge fans with🍌 a head for intellectual comedy will reap the rewards in spades.
Worst: The Parole Officer (2001)
Steve Coogan's first proper comedy lead (if you exclude the live-action Wind in the Willows ) was a big disappointment for anyone expecting Partridge levels of hilarity. The Parole Officer is far from the worst film on this list, but when it's measured against expectations, it was a total disappointment.
One of the biggest problems is Coogan's character Simon Garden. The actor is best when disappearing, Sellers-like, into a comedy creation, but he also excels playing embittered dramatic roles. Garden is just too vanilla, neither funny nor meaty enough, and it doesn't help that the film's🧔 plot struggles to make the comedy work wiಞthin a standard thriller template.
Best: Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
Inventor Wallace and his dog Gromit have brightened up Christmases over the years with their peerless 30-minute outings, and Nick Park has often been rewarded by the Academy for his troubles. Their feature debut managed to avoid the pitfalls that hinder so many telly adaptations.
For starters, there's a story that's actually worthy of 90 minutes on the big screen. The shorts have never underdelivered in terms of action scenes, and Were-Rabbit ups the ante with its giant bunny horror. There's also Aardman's ability to draw emotion from their clay creations (particularly silent hero Gromit), and if all else fails, you could spend the entire running time marvelling at the minute attention to detail.
It also deserve𝓀s a pat on the back, and a spot on this list, for remaining thoroughly British, even in its big screen, Dreamworks-assisted production.
Worst: Valiant (2005)
If Wallace & Gromit represents the best in British animated comedy, then Valiant is sadly the worst, unable to hold a candle to slicker US productions. A noble attempt to score some recognition for the animals who fought in WWII, the film is lumbered with some of the laziest comedy characters you're likely to come across.
⛎ Ricky Gervais shows that he's always best when working with his own material, as he struggles to bring any life to wheeler-dealer pigeon Lofty, and the rest of the cast is made up of one-note stereotypes, includin❀g pompous intellectuals, dim tough-guys and incompetent sidekicks.
Best: The Ladykillers (1955)
In the heyday of Ealing Studios, they turned out some of the finest comedies ever seen, and not just on these shores. The Ladykillers is another example (following Kind Hearts and Coronets ) of the kind of offbeat, deliciously dark comedy that they produced, the tone of which has never been matched in the five decades since.
Even the Coen brothers, purveyors of a unique brand of black comedy, are unable to deliver it in the same family-friendly manner (in fact, they failed spectacularly with their Ladykillers remake). The original sees Alec Guinness and his band of crooks move in with sweet old lady Katie Johnson, while they plan a large-scale robbery.
When the gang's cover (as a string quintet) is blown, they decidཧe they have to do away with the old lady to save themselves. Johnson's performance as the nutty housekeeper is one🅺 of the movie's coups, as she grabs some of the biggest laughs from a film that also features Guinness and Peter Sellers on top form.
Worst: Confetti (2006)
This reality-show style wedding-mockumentary arrived with fairly high expectations as the cast was filled out with some of the most promising names in British TV comedy, including new Bilbo Martin Freeman, Spaced 's Jessica Hynes and Robert Webb and Olivia Colman of Peep Show fame. The fact the script was largely improvised also added intrigue.
The end result raises the odd chuckle, but struggles to sustain momentum over feature length. Weddings and reality TV make for easy targets, and as a result Confetti lacks the sophistication of the best TV efforts ( The Office raised the bar a♏lmost too high). Plus, there's only so many awkward silences༺ you can smirk at before quickly becoming bored. Thankfully there's a hilarious moment with a Cliff Richard impersonator during the finale, but it's a case of too little, too late by that point.
Best: Life of Brian (1979)
Perhaps we have Monty Python to blame for the glut of awful TV crossovers that have blighted Blighty's cinematic reputation. The influential comedy troupe just make it look so easy, and so much fun to boot, with most of the key cast members taking on multiple roles, and throwing in plenty of slapstick alongside the satire.
Even if Life of Brian did set an unmatchable precedent for TV comedians, you can't hold anything against this relentless laughfest, which plays host to innumerable classic scenes. Credit to the team, and their tackling of an extremely controvers🌱ial topic, that the🌃y get you thinking in between the gags.
Worst: Magicians (2007)
David Mitchell and Robert Webb were riding high around the time this movie was released: successful sketch shows on radio and TV; Peep Show gaining an ever strengthening following; Apple paying them to hawk their wares. Moviedom seemed like the next logical step for the pair.
Despite playing characters who were largely indistinguishable from their Peep Show counterparts, Magicians fails to conjure up anything beyond a light snigger. The duo are fine, but the movie does little to serve their talents. Despite a distinctly TV feel, there's few of the awkward laughs these two are so used to delivering on the small screen.
Their in-built chemistry🅰 is also diluted because plot contrivances have themಌ spending a great deal of the movie apart. A potentially amusing proposition becomes an ominous warning for any TV stars staring lustfully at the big screen.
Best: Withnail & I (1987)
Too often 'cult' movies have an air of 'you had to be there' that can be alienating for anyone who missed the joke first time round. Occasionally cult films have a tiny following for a reason. But none of these ideas (or any pre-conceived negative feelings you may have about Richard E. Grant) can affect your enjoyment of Withnail & I .
It's grey, grim, grubby and occasionally depressing. You spend the best part of two hours with a couple of failed actors (one of whom is an alcoholic). But somehow, Bruce Robinson's movie manages to be absolutely hilarious, and one that you'll return to again and again.
Many of the movie's best scenes occur when the down-and-out pair visit Withnail's Uncle Monty in the Lake District, but the whole thing is jam-packed wit🍎h ever-quotable lines, humorous situations, and more than a touch of the tragic.
Worst: Kevin & Perry Go Large (2000)
The big screen outing of Harry Enfield's surly, sketch-show teenager is enough to put you off British buddy comedies for good. It's also another negative notch on the tally against allowing our TV comedies to transfer to the big screen.
Enfield's brand of exaggerated, character-based comedy could be trying in weekly vignettes, and it wasn't exactly screaming out to be stretched to feature length. Kevin and Perry's big screen adventure sees them head to the teenaged Mecca of Ibiza with two motives: getting laid, and getting a mix tape showcasing their DJ skills to Eye Ball Paul (Rhys Ifans).
If ever you're tempted to rewatch this puerile dross, one quick listen to the tie-in single 'Bi🔯g Girl (All I Want To Do Is Do It)' should be enough to bring you back to your senses.
Best: Four Lions (2010)
Chris Morris, the firebrand broadcaster behind Jam , The Day Today and Brass Eye made his movie debut this year, tackling the topic of religious extremism and suicide bombing. Morris once again demonstrates his total lack of fear when approaching 'difficult' subject matter, as he presents the fundamentalists as a thoroughly incompetent bunch.
Morris is aided by a spot-on cast, who run the entire gambit from level-headed family man Omar (Riz Ahmed) to Nigel Lindsay's batshit-insane radical Muslim convert. Yes, it makes you think, but more importantly the laughs come thi♓ck and fast, with a gut-achingly consistent strike-rate. The final marathon-based showdown encapsulates the movie perfectly: unbelievably funny, but also tense, fast-paced, and just a little bit touc🐽hing.
Worst: Ali G Indahouse (2002)
Sacha Baron Cohen is now a bona fide movie star: with Borat he successfully transferred one of his alter egos to the big screen and was met with critical and commercial success, and he has been directed by the likes of Tim Burton ( Sweeney Todd ) and Martin Scorsese (for the upcoming Hugo Cabret ).
His big screen career🔜 looked like it could've ended where it began, though, with the Ali G movie, which seemed to wholly misunderstand the co🌳medic appeal of the character. Taken out of his faux-interview context, he just isn't that funny. The crass, puerile jokes are plentiful, but this fails to land any of the parodic blows that made the TV show so winning.
Best: A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
Pythons John Cleese and Michael Palin reteamed for A Fish Called Wanda , a rare British comedy that feels like it could be a Hollywood production (in a good way). The presence of Jamie Lee Curtis and an Oscar-winning Kevin Kline certainly helps, and this Ealing-inspired comedy found international success.
Cleese stars as Archie Leach, a lovelorn lawyer who falls for con artist Jamie Lee Curtis,🔥 who's in the country on a diamond heist. Despite a perfectly bumbling lead performance from Cleese, the film never becomes too British for its own good. As a romantic comedy, it's perfectly crafted and damn near impossible to beat in terms of laughs, tight plotting and characterisation.
Worst: Fat Slags (2004)
At some point in your life, the chances are that you've had a bit of a chuckle over a Viz strip, but this atrocity makes it hard to believe that anything mirthworthy has ever emerged from the alternative comic.
Totally devoid of laughs, the film is directed by Ed Bye, best known for his TV work (including Bottom ). Despite clocking in at a lean 76 minutes, Fat Slags is an excruciating experience of shoddily cheap prosthetics and base humour that is surely too unsophisticated for anyone over the age of 12.
A stream of embarrassing cameos (Dolph Lundgren, Geri Halliwell) provide a small amount☂ of respite for any viewer foolhardy enough to endure the full fea♏ture.
I'm the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing t𓆉he running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I've worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+, and you can often hear me♔ nattering on the Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.
