Obscure comedy that only you know about

[Ron Maels Moustache]

Maniac Mansion (1990-3)

Here's a real oddity, what started off as a TV adaptation of the Lucasarts PC game, but changed so much during development that by the time it aired, it retained pretty much nothing except the name and the family being called "Edison". Eugene Levy was one of the co-creators and the cast and crew was made up of Second City veterans like Joe Flaherty. It's very, very Canadian and reaches Shandling Show levels of meta-humour at times - the very first episode is framed as retrospectively celebrating 10 years on the air.

It also feels very novel for being a single camera family comedy with no laugh-track, nine years before Malcolm In The Middle made that more of a standard convention.   

It did well enough at the time to get three seasons, but appears to've slipped into a memory hole due to never having had any kind of home media or streaming presence

[McDead]

That sounds fantastic. Big fan of Levy and the Second City gang.

[Mr Banlon]

The Dress Up Gang:

[Famous Mortimer]

The 90s work of Tim Stack.

First up is Night Stand with Dick Dietrich, a parody of daytime chat shows. I don't remember it being particularly good, but it had its moments (and its success allowed the production company to make "Judge Judy", which was slightly more popular).

He also did Son Of The Beach, a Baywatch parody which was rammed full of special guest cameos and has aged like milk left on a radiator. In fact, both of them have aged pretty badly, coming from that Howard Stern / Adam Carolla 90s when scum tried to convince us their exploitation of women was just a bit of a laugh. Also, neither of them are that funny, which didn't help.

"Night Stand" made me remember "Night After Night", Allan Havey's show on Comedy Central, back when they were desperate for cheap content. His show would go for three hours a night (although when I watched it via download, I don't think they were that long). Although they did have segments, a lot of it was just Havey riffing, and he didn't have an audience, just the crew, although he did occasionally do an "audience of one" segment.

"Night After Night" was kind of a real talk show, so I'm not sure how interesting most of it would be, but some of the clips available are brilliant. They made 480 episodes, and, best as I can tell, never repeated it or made it available otherwise, so you're relying on people who recorded it making it available on Youtube.

[McChesney Duntz]

Never gets referenced anywhere, possibly because it included profanity and nudity and America is still not fully capable of accepting the existence of the word 'fuck' and bosoms.

Oh fuck off, you tit.

[lestergunn]

Danger Theatre - I've had a search but couldn't find it mentioned in here. Two different shows in a 30 minute slot, introduced by Robert Vaughn. One was either always or usually The Searcher (a motorcyclist, searching). The other was a one-off, sometimes featuring Adam West (Miami Vice-style '193 Marina Del Ray'). Memory is patchy, so some of this may not have taken place. Not laugh aloud funny but usually an enjoyable watch.

[McDead]

Really liked the Searcher, yeah. They're all on YouTube, and while they're not great (they feel like they're written by someone who loves comedy but has no idea how to write it) Diedrich Bader is very, very entertaining as a himboish Johnny Bravo/the Tick type hero.

[spaghetamine]

The Dress Up Gang:

I love the Dress Up Gang so much, such a sweet and cosy watch with an excellent soundtrack too. I've found myself returning to it when times are bad as there's something very comforting about it. Cory posted on Instagram recently that he and Donny are working on a feature length film so hopefully that ends up seeing the light of day.

[Sonny_Jim]

Kenny is fucking ace, it's by far the best thing Shane Jacobson has done.  It's all very understated, not the cartoonish bollocks he gets up to now.

I've tried to find this TV show before, but maybe I've made it up?  70s cop show parody with a team of 4-5 young adults who travelled around in a van solving crime.  One of them was mute and wore headphones constantly (I think the characters name was 'Phones').  Must have been shown on C4 late night during the 90's.  You'd think with that level of detail I'd be able to find the bloody thing but I can't.

[McDead]

Kenny is fucking ace, it's by far the best thing Shane Jacobson has done.  It's all very understated, not the cartoonish bollocks he gets up to now.

I've tried to find this TV show before, but maybe I've made it up?  70s cop show parody with a team of 4-5 young adults who travelled around in a van solving crime.  One of them was mute and wore headphones constantly (I think the characters name was 'Phones').  Must have been shown on C4 late night during the 90's.  You'd think with that level of detail I'd be able to find the bloody thing but I can't.

This was EXTREMELY hard to find, but I think it's Funky Squad:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funky_Squad

[Sonny_Jim]

Haha no shit, that's it!  I'll check it out, thanks.

[McDead]

Why are so many of these shows Australian??

[Famous Mortimer]

Why are so many of these shows Australian??

Helps with the "obscurity" thing, for a British comedy forum anyway. Before "the internet", mostly?

Plus, it helps that a decent handful of the best comedy creators of the last 30-odd years have been from that neck of the woods - Shaun Micallef, Tony Martin, the whole Working Dog family, and Glenn Robbins, to name most of them.

[famethrowa]

Hopes were high for Funky Squad; The Late Show and Frontline had been rather brilliant and this was their next venture. But unfortunately it wasn't that good, there weren't any jokes! They just played the 70's parody thing straight.

[McDead]

Helps with the "obscurity" thing, for a British comedy forum anyway. Before "the internet", mostly?

Plus, it helps that a decent handful of the best comedy creators of the last 30-odd years have been from that neck of the woods - Shaun Micallef, Tony Martin, the whole Working Dog family, and Glenn Robbins, to name most of them.

Yes that makes sense. Then Channel 4 hoovers them all up to pump them out in a liminal "students and shut-ins only" slot, thereby adding to their obscurity.

[Famous Mortimer]

Hopes were high for Funky Squad; The Late Show and Frontline had been rather brilliant and this was their next venture. But unfortunately it wasn't that good, there weren't any jokes! They just played the 70's parody thing straight.

My goodwill for the people involved got me through a few episodes thinking it was decent, but you're absolutely right.

Because I've not seen it mentioned on here in a while, let's bask in one of the funniest things ever made. If you've not heard of this before, you're in for a treat.

[OpenMikeKnight]

It's not enormously obscure but I have never met anyone who has watched Cumbo without me sending it to them

[SirDoris]

My Best Friend Is An Alien
Randomly remembered this early 00s Canadian kids sitcom that was pretty fun. Premise is that a normal kid's school is chosen to host the son of Earth's new alien ambassador, and he and his friends get up to wild 50s B-Movie shenanigans. A pre-Arrested Development Michael Cera's in it too, which is nice. Main memory of it is that I'd randomly recorded one of the Halloween episodes on an old VHS tape, which was a surprisingly creepy story about the ghost of a plumber who haunted the school, kidnapping kids and drowning them in his toilet. Every time I've tried to find the episode to confirm if it was as terrifying as I remembered it though, I'm reminded that it's called 'The Revenge of Septic Willy'.

[BeardFaceMan]

I don't think I've ever seen anyone mention Exit 57, a 90's Comedy Central sketch show featuring Stephen Colbert, Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello and Mitch Rouse. Probably only notable as those 4 then went on to create another lesser-talked-about show, the rather excellent Strangers With Candy.

[Oh, Nobody]

Another classic "Well, I liked it" post from yer boy, Edwyn Collins vanity project West Heath Yard. Felt like it was on Channel 4 constantly but never met anybody that's heard of it.

[Famous Mortimer]

There was a thread on here a while ago about it. Another one where just the fact it exists is nice, but actually watching it was a bit of a chore (not for you, obviously).

[Oh, Nobody]

ooh I should dig that out.

[David Pielingtonburygrot]

I've sung the virtues of Peach Club on here before, but any excuse to do it again:

There are a bunch of other Peach Club videos, each with diminishing views and all of them excellent.

Also, Chris Hayward's other creation, Dr Giles Podan is great. A demented spiritual healer, who completely ruined my attempts to control my IBS on a hypnotherapy app, due to the uncanny accuracy of his woo-woo tone:

And a load of audio-only episodes here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrnNJ_dm8KCIYYVB-BRJImvXpW1THFAtF

[Famous Mortimer]

Here's a real oddity, what started off as a TV adaptation of the Lucasarts PC game, but changed so much during development that by the time it aired, it retained pretty much nothing except the name and the family being called "Edison". Eugene Levy was one of the co-creators and the cast and crew was made up of Second City veterans like Joe Flaherty. It's very, very Canadian and reaches Shandling Show levels of meta-humour at times - the very first episode is framed as retrospectively celebrating 10 years on the air.

Just watched the first couple of episodes of this (looks like the uploader had the entire run) and it's great. Definitely worth a go, if you like the SCTV crew.

[Autopsy Turvey]

Who remembers The Good Human Guide? No one, that's who! Mind you, not even I remember Whizzalongawavelength.

[Average Comedy Enjoyer]

Chris Hayward's other creation, Dr Giles Podan is great.

This is very good, is he doing an impression of someone or has he done voiceover? It's very familiar.

And the cameo from Ellie White reminds me of the exciting saga of Year Friends