Young ones

The Young Ones is a British sitcom written by Rik Mayall, Ben Elton, and Lise Mayer, starring Adrian Edmondson, Mayall, Nigel Planer, Christopher Ryan, and Alexei Sayle, and broadcast on BBC Two for two series, first shown in 1982 and 1984. The show focused on the lives of four dissimilar students and their landlord's family on different plots that often included anarchic, offbeat, surreal humour.

The Young Ones' Vyvyan had some very metal t-shirts in his collection

It’s difficult to express adequately how distinctive and even dangerous the UK series The Young Ones felt when it landed on MTV in 1985. The angry, chaotic, hilarious series, which positively screamed opposition to conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, represented a timely injection of Monty Python-esque absurdism into the cultural landscape and was, in retrospect, a key purveyor of a scarcely diluted punk aesthetic to the mainstream audience. You know how your older brother was…

The main characters were four undergraduate students sharing a house: violent punk Vyvyan (Adrian Edmondson), pompous would-be anarchist Rick (Rik Mayall), long-suffering hippie Neil (Nigel Planer), and the suave and diminutive Mike (Christopher Ryan). It also featured Alexei Sayle, who played various members of the Balowski family—most often Jerzei Balowski, the quartet's landlord.

young ones

The Young Ones, once seen as being rather subversive, is now a British television classic. It'snow available on DVD so we can watch the mayhem all over again.

Following the news of Rik Mayall's death, we take a look back at some of the roles that made him one of the UK's best loved comedians

Flashback photos from the archive show alternative 1980s BBC sitcom being filmed on location in and around the city

As Lord Monty on the BBC's "Young Ones" in 1985. Stephen Fry is Lord Snot. LOL Young Ones is one of my favorite shows from back in the day. :)