Should you watch The Young Ones?
The Young Ones suits people who like anarchic comedy built around absurdity, brilliant stupidity, misfits and chaos with something softer underneath. If what got you was the anarchic energy and absurdity rather than the aggressive student-house setting, The Mighty Boosh is a nearby route into the same taste. Your personal match still depends on your whole TV taste.
You may love The Young Ones if normal comedy has always seemed a little too well behaved.
This is not chaos arriving accidentally.
Chaos is the point.
People shout, collide, rebel, misunderstand each other, behave with astonishing stupidity and somehow turn all of it into something sharper than it has any right to be.
The ridiculousness is not there to decorate the joke.
It is the joke.
You may love it if…
- anarchic energy makes you laugh before the setup has even finished
- absurdity feels more truthful than realism
- brilliant stupidity is one of your favourite forms of intelligence
- misfits fighting systems is funnier when the misfits are barely functional themselves
- chaos with a little heart underneath works better for you than neat sentiment
- comedy getting completely out of control sounds like a feature, not a flaw
You may want something else if…
If you need comedy to behave itself, explain itself, or maintain anything resembling dignity, The Young Ones may feel like somebody has kicked the door off its hinges.
And if stupidity only works for you when somebody clever is standing nearby explaining the joke, this probably is not interested in helping.
The madness is not a detour.
It is the route.
Why it works
The obvious thing about The Young Ones is the chaos.
The more interesting thing is how deliberate the chaos is.
Anarchic energy runs through everything.
People do not merely fail to fit into the system.
They seem personally offended that a system exists.
That gives the absurdity somewhere to go.
Rules become invitations.
Authority becomes material.
Bad behaviour becomes structure.
And stupidity becomes genuinely funny because it is pushed far enough to stop looking accidental.
That is the trick.
The show is not pretending these people are sensible.
It keeps asking how much further they can go before sensible stops mattering altogether.
And underneath some of that noise is something softer.
Not enough to behave properly.
Just enough to make the chaos feel lived in rather than empty.
What are you actually missing?
Two people can love The Young Ones and be looking for completely different things afterwards.
If you miss the anarchy
You may want comedy that feels as though nobody is supervising it.
Rules exist mostly so somebody can break them.
If you miss the absurdity
You may want the strange pleasure of something becoming so ridiculous that it starts telling the truth more clearly.
If you miss the stupidity
You may want comedy that commits completely to a terrible idea.
Not a wink.
Not an apology.
Just the full disaster.
If you miss the misfits
You may be drawn to people who do not fit comfortably inside the world around them.
Even when they are also making that world considerably worse.
If you miss the heart underneath
Then the shouting and destruction may not be the whole attraction.
You may like the fact that underneath all the idiocy, these people are still stuck together.
Another way into the same taste
The Mighty Boosh lives nearby.
Both are anarchic.
Both treat absurdity as something more useful than realism.
And both understand that once a comedy has gone far enough into madness, normal rules stop being particularly interesting.
Then they split.
The Young Ones is rougher, louder and more combative. Its chaos feels like rebellion.
The Mighty Boosh is warmer, gentler and more interested in strange worlds, atmosphere and friendship.
So if what got you in The Young Ones was the anarchic energy and the pleasure of absurdity being allowed to run free, The Mighty Boosh is another route into that taste.
If what you specifically loved was the aggression, stupidity and sense that somebody might put a boot through the furniture at any moment, it may not be.
That is the point.
The show is the door. It is not the taste.
The bit a list cannot tell you
Those are all The Young Ones.
They are not all the same reason to love The Young Ones.
You may want the anarchy.
You may want the absurdity.
You may want the stupidity.
You may just want comedy that seems genuinely delighted to have escaped adult supervision.
That is why “shows like The Young Ones” is not really one question.
It depends which part got you.
This still is not your match.
TVME works that out from your whole taste — the shows you love, and the patterns that connect them — then tells you how strongly a show matches you, and why.