Anybody who lives in the U.K. and watches British television will know how immensely popular American sitcoms have become on channels such as E4 and Sky Living.

The likes of Friends and Scrubs are extremely popular in the U.K. from re-runs – I remember watching Friends three times every evening for about three years – and new programs such as The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family and New Girl have also become must-watch programmes for me personally. As well as that, sitcoms that haven’t been aired in the U.K. such as Arrested Development and The Office (US) have become popular through Netflix and I’ve discovered many greats – 30 Rock, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm – from box-sets.

This got me thinking about U.K. alternatives to these much loved comedies. There are, of course, classics such as Fawlty Towers and Only Fools and Horses. Other more recent favourites have included Fresh Meat, The IT Crowd and The Inbetweeners, as well as BBC-commissioned comedies such as Not Going Out and Miranda. However, I don’t think any of these programmes quite match their American counterparts and the main reason I could think for this is that U.K. sitcoms, it seems, never get more than six episodes every series. One of the great things about programmes like Friends, Seinfeld, Frasier is the character development which can become established over many series. As soon as I start to get into the latest series of my favourite British comedy it seems to have ended as soon as it came.

I can’t quite imagine a British sitcom going on for as long, or having as many episodes as some of the great American comedies we know and love and I don’t even know if it’d work, but I’d love to see it attempted.

What are some of your favourite British comedy series and do you think they could be improved by having longer series runs?