Father Ted is one of those rare sitcoms that defies categorisation--it owes as much to Flann O'Brien and Samuel Beckett as it does to Monty Python--and its blend of satire, character comedy and anarchic surrealism has made it a cult favourite around the world. Exiled to remote Craggy Island, Father Ted shares a house with the breathtakingly stupid Father Dougal Maguire and the constantly inebriated Father Jack, who has a small vocabulary and a taste for furniture polish. Their housekeeper, Mrs Doyle, takes care of them with a never-ending supply of tea and sandwiches: "Go on now, Father, won't you try one? They're diagonal." Together they fight boredom by dressing up as Elvis, startling ducks at the fair and provoking nuns. --Simon Leake