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While its heyday as a true pop culture force is (arguably) long past, MTV was, for a time, one of the most important cornerstones of American television and music. It pioneered the music video format and became a hotbed for American comedic talent. However, the first scripted comedy series to air on MTV came from across the pond in the form of an anarchic, surreal British sitcom, The Young Ones.

The Young Ones first appeared on UK TV in 1982 and starred members of comedy troupe The Comic Strip as students living in squalid shared accommodation navigating a bizarre version of 1980s Britain that included puppets, fourth wall breakage, and a surprisingly robust line-up of musical guests. Each episode would rapidly descend into chaos, as was common of the alternative comedy movement that the series embodied.

After running for 12 episodes across two seasons (which was considered a success for this sort of show at the time), The Young Ones went off the air in June 1984. A year later, in 1985, MTV aired the show as the first non-music-based show on the network, introducing a whole new generation of viewers to the unbridled weirdness of British humor in the early 80s. 

How this unapologetically irreverent show fit into MTV's early line-up is something that could be lost on modern audiences. The Young Ones was known for poking fun at the general state of both Margaret Thatcher’s Britain and the discomfort that comes from having multiple people suddenly forced to share an apartment, with plots that were mostly excuses for Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson to violently attack one another years before the two would perfect the art on the equally brilliant Bottom.

Like MTV itself at the time, The Young Ones felt raw and on the verge of unscripted despite its obviously scripted format. Plots would develop around the characters only to be interrupted by a random cutaway or one of the actors dropping his character’s London accent in favor of his native Liverpudlian to talk directly to the audience. It was such a wild show that it feels surprising that the BBC even aired it. This attitude of rebellion against conformity made it a perfect fit for MTV, which was built upon a rebellious attitude toward traditional television networks. 

The fact that nearly every episode of The Young Ones featured a musical performance by a British band certainly helped it fit into this era of MTV. Bands would take the stage in the students’ house, sometimes without any real introduction or relevance to the plot. Motorhead, for example, simply appear in the cast's home to play Ace of Spades as they try to catch a train. The story behind these performances is that the BBC offered a higher budget for variety shows than straight sitcoms, so the writers of The Young Ones shoehorned a song or two into each episode to drag more money out of the network. 

MTV was the untamed frontier of television back in the 1980s; even when it slowly moved away from the music videos that made it famous, it still embraced the weird and the unruly. As it took its place in music history, MTV brought The Young Ones, a shining example of British surrealist comedy, to the US, giving this iconic sitcom an unexpected legacy in both countries.

Ey up, it's British Week here at Popverse. From what's at the cinema to what's on the telly, and even a bit of comics and games for you, here is the highlights so far:

• Star Wars is especially British, despite what it may claim about a galaxy far, far away
• What Zainab Akhtar learned from taking a year away from ShortBox Comics Fair, and why she's excited for 2027's return
• Black Mirror's Charlie Brooker recalls challenging himself to dive into new territory: a positive ending