100 Funniest Sketches Of All Time (80 – 71)
The list of 100 of the funniest sketches of all time continues. Some forgotten favourites, some oddball choices, and consistently hilarious writing & performing. Here are sketches 80 to 71
In case you missed it:
80. The Cure – Mary Whitehouse Experience
The Mary Whitehouse Experience was a great collection of comic minds – David Baddiel, Rob Newman, Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt – and their show felt quite anarchic and fresh compared to typical British comedy shows at the time. Rob Newman was always my favourite on the show. and his spot-on piss take of Robert Smith from The Cure was so simple and silly it was impossible not to love.
79. Ice Cream - Louis CK
While there is no excusing Louis CK’s recent problematic history of misconduct, this near-perfect sketch is pretty difficult to better. Short and simple with heightening stakes and a hilarious resolution.
78. Ranch It Up - Eric Andre
Somehow I missed Eric Andre’s show when it first aired, but I am so glad I found it. It is wild, freewheeling fun and bizarrely compelling. I adore how Eric Andre is totally unafraid to immerse himself in a ridiculous character and simply go out into the world to see what kind of reaction it gets. The results are hysterically funny. Fearless, mad and original stuff. Ranch it up!
77. Camping - Human Giant
I have vague memories of Human Giant from its short lived run on MTV. I seem to recall hearing about these improv guys from Upright Citizen’s Brigade had a show. I now realise that those guys were Aziz Ansari, Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel, who all went on to bigger things (Ansari especially). The sketches are really hard to track down online for some reason so this was the best one I could find. It’s a nice glimpse of their style, that worked with a low budget but had big ambitions.
76. Argument to Beethoven's 5th - Sid Caesar
An old school sketch from Sid Caesar that dissects the dynamics of an argument and scores it with Beethoven’s 5th symphony. Each gesture and beat is measured to perfection. Recorded live to tape with no second takes. Simply class.
75. State Of The Union - Bad Lip Reading
Bad Lip Reading consistently produce some of the funniest videos around. I can’t imagine how many hours of footage they must sift through to find, dub and cut together these videos. Thank goodness they do. The absurdity of the dialogue is so good. And always funny. Very funny.
74. Ursula McCarthy News Report - Irish Pictorial Weekly
Irish Pictorial Weekly was a very funny satirical sketch show on RTE (Ireland’s National Broadcaster). It is a rare gem on a channel that hardly ever managed to get comedy right. This piece by Eleanor Tiernan is such a pitch perfect parody of Irish news reporting, and if you were to stumble across it while channel surfing, you may not realise immediately that it is a sketch. That’s how sharp the performance and writing is. Love it
73. West Side Story - House of Buggin
John Leguizamo is one of my favourite performers. I’ll pretty much watch anything he is in (Shout out to Chef and John Wick 2). When I discovered that he created, wrote and starred in a lesser known sketch show called”House of Buggin” I had to find it and watch it. It’s pretty mixed quality but this spoof of musical theatre is Leguizamo at his physical, funny best.
72. Mad Lib Theater - The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon
Say what you will about the quality of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, but the recurring Mad Lib Theater sketches never fail to crack me up. Such a simple premise. Get famous actors to suggest a series of words, wedge those words into a serious scene, and then try to perform it with a straight face. Almost all of them are funny, but this one with Benedict Cumberbatch has that magical thing where you can see the performers having fun while they’re performing. It’s just really charming and funny.
71. Chippendales Audition - Saturday Night Live
Probably the most famous sketch by Chris Farley from his time on SNL. The late great Patrick Swayze is the unsung hero in this sketch though, as he plays his role with right level of seriousness, in contrast to Farley’s over the top performance. A silly concept that trades on a few cheap laughs, and would have definitely fallen very flat in lesser hands, but ends up being a very funny sketch that is hard to forget.
