Television series

Porridge

Porridge follows Norman Stanley Fletcher, an unrepentant career criminal serving five years in the fictional HM Prison Slade, as he trades wisdom and one-liners with fellow inmates and squares off against two very different wardens. It's a sitcom built almost entirely from dialogue and character, warm rather than grim, and endlessly rewatchable for anyone who loves a script this tightly written.

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The Likely Lads1964

Same writing team, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, doing the double act that taught them how to build Porridge — two mates, one dreamer, one realist, talking their way through disappointment with real tenderness underneath the jokes.

But The black-and-white original can feel slower and more parochial than its 1970s sequel; you may prefer to start there instead.

The Likely Lads poster

Open All Hours1976

Ronnie Barker at his most nimble, playing a miserly shopkeeper with a stammer instead of a con, opposite David Jason. Same delight in language and rhythm, gentler stakes throughout.

But It's cosier and lower-stakes than Porridge — no institutional menace, just a corner shop, which some will find too slight.

Open All Hours poster

Steptoe and Son1962

The template for British sitcom entrapment: two people who can't stand each other but can't leave, either. Corbett-free but crueller and sadder, often startlingly bleak beneath the laughs.

But It's considerably darker and less consoling than Porridge — the affection between the leads is real but buried under real cruelty.

Steptoe and Son poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest1975

Same core relationship as Fletcher and Mackay — a charismatic inmate versus a system determined to break his spirit — but stripped of jokes to show how dark that fight really is.

McMurphy and Nurse Ratched are Fletcher and Mackay's power struggle played entirely straight: a magnetic rule-breaker versus an institution that cannot let him win, this time with tragedy instead of punchlines.

But It's a heavy, occasionally devastating drama with no comic relief to soften the ending — nothing like a sitcom night in.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest poster
More like this (7)

Fawlty Towers1975

Made in the same mid-70s BBC golden run, it swaps the prison for a hotel and finds the same comic engine: a smart man trapped by rules and idiots, escalating beautifully.

But It's farce over character study — Basil is a livewire rather than the still, dry wit Fletcher is, so the tone is far more frantic.

Fawlty Towers poster

Rising Damp1974

Leonard Rossiter's seedy landlord and his tenants make for a similarly confined, dialogue-driven comedy of class and one-upmanship, shot on a single grubby set with real bite.

But Some of its era-specific attitudes toward race and class have aged badly and can catch you off guard now.

Rising Damp poster

Dad's Army1968

Another ensemble stuck together by circumstance, mining warmth and absurdity from a home guard platoon instead of a cell block. Just as beloved, just as quotable decades on.

But It's gentler and more nostalgic than Porridge, with less edge and no real authority figure to spar against.

Dad's Army poster

Only Fools and Horses....1981

The other contender for Britain's best-loved sitcom, trading prison bars for market stalls but keeping the same faith in a scheming loser you can't help but root for.

But It runs for years and drifts sentimental in later seasons; the tight economy of Porridge gives way to sprawl.

Only Fools and Horses.... poster

Yes Minister1980

For the dialogue lover: a government department instead of a prison wing, but the same pleasure in watching a clever man navigate an institution built to frustrate him.

But It's talkier and more cerebral, with less physical comedy and warmth — political satire rather than character comedy.

Yes Minister poster

Stalag 171953

Fletcher's cunning, morale-boosting rebellion against the guards is a direct descendant of William Holden's operator here — the same wit-versus-authority engine, decades earlier, in a genuinely dangerous setting.

A POW camp comedy-drama from two decades before Porridge, full of scheming, black-market trading and wisecracking inmates outsmarting their captors — the prototype for every prison-camaraderie story since.

But Black-and-white, 1950s pacing, and a wartime setting that's a harder sell than a cosy British cell block.

Stalag 17 poster

The Farm: Angola, USA1998

Porridge's cosy banter and survival tips are fiction; this documentary shows the real version — men finding routine, hierarchy and even humour inside an actual system with none of the sitcom's safety net.

An Oscar-nominated documentary following inmates at Louisiana's Angola prison, some serving life, that finds the same rituals, routines and dark humour as Porridge — but every consequence here is permanent and real.

But It's sobering, sometimes devastating nonfiction with no punchlines to relieve the tension — a genuine gear change from sitcom comfort.

The Farm: Angola, USA poster

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Recommended by

Dad's Army, Only Fools and Horses...., Hancock's Half Hour, Steptoe and Son, Open All Hours, Time, Rising Damp, The Likely Lads, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?