I rag a lot on the modern TV and TV-watchers, BUT ...

From 1999 to his untimely passing in 2010, on every Saturday night, I would walk to my brother-in-law's house about 1/2 mile away at 7:00 PM, and we would set a UHF antenna in the east-facing window that would pick up a little university station about 100 miles away. From 7:00 to 12:00 every Saturday night, this station broadcast British comedies.

We almost never missed a Saturday night, so we did this about 500 times in that 11 years. I insisted to Fay (and it didn't always go down with her) NOT to plan anything else on a Saturday night. I was hers the other 163 hours during the week, go anywhere, do anything, spend any money, be with her all the time, but 7 to 12 on Saturday night was my and Phil's night.

He'd fix up some snacks and drinks, and we'd watch anywhere from 6 to 10 episodes of various shows in that 5 hour period.

The station ran every episode of whatever series they had on hand. We watched the entire series probably 5 times through of "Are You Being Served?", "Keeping Up Appearances", "As Time Goes By", "Good Neighbors" (the one with Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal {FWOOOOAAAR!!}), "Mr. Bean", "To the Manor Born", "May to December", 'Allo 'Allo, "BlackAdder", "Monty Python's Flying Circus", "Fawlty Towers", "A Fine Romance", "Waiting for God", "Mulberry", "Vicar of Dibley" and quite a few more. "Are You Being Served?" probably has 100 episodes and we went through them all 5 times.

We always skipped "Absolutely Fabulous", being a bit over the top and too much like American comedy, but we liked all the rest. Often we had "Last of the Summer Wine", "Open All Hours", "Is it Legal?", "Brittas Empire", "Red Dwarf", "Executive Stress", "Father Ted", and "No Job for a Lady".

I know that there are hundreds more, and some very popular ones like "Dad's Army, "Yes Minister", "Only Fools and Horses", and "Murder Most Horrid" that we never saw, but we stuck to the ones that the station had, and enjoyed ourselves enormously.

Any pub quiz night that has anything about the above shows, I'm on it.

Anyhow, that's my bit of Anglophilia for the day.

Lannis