>>>>>> The episode when George (Hugh Laurie) dressed as a woman and Steven Fry's character thought it was a real woman was a riot.
>>>>
>>>>Benny Hill, Little Britain. ;-)
>>>
>>>
>>>I'll probably get slammed for this, but I never found Benny Hill all that funny. When I was a teenager I thought he was mildly amusing, but beyond that, just too crass at a low level. By contrast, Black Adder is more sophisticated at being crass :)
>>
>>Benny Hill reminded me of an even less funny Three Stooges. Never appreciated either one.
>>
>
>Lord, I hated the Stooges. It was supposed to be a male-female thing but I joined a lot of women in just thinking it was dumb. Headslaps the base of comedy? Really?

As far as I understand it, the point behind the Stooges humor was that it was cartoon violence played out in live action -- with camera tricks such as speeding-up of some action and ridiculous sound effects to emphasize the physical humor. For myself, as a child I didn't enjoy watching them (and never quite understood why my schoolmates would find it funny) -- to me it was painful to watch -- like it was lowering my IQ just by watching it. Their later works were more painful to watch as you could tell they were losing their "snappiness" (i.e. their timing got slower) as they got older. Perhaps one other thing (and perhaps they key of why I never did "get" them) -- it was hard to feel any empathy toward the characters.