Everyone loves Raymond

dunno about the best ever but it makes me laugh. Frank & Marie are particularly brilliantly written and acted characters.

Very good, a hint of Basil Fawlty about Ray. Fake cheque book episode among my favourites. Patricia Heaton and Peter Boyle were excellent actors. It is indeed 18-odd years since it started. 'Marie' died a few months back, Frank a few years ago and tragically one of the twins committed suicide about a year ago.

Good show - debatable about best ever.
i'd rather watch Seinfeld - but the bbc
gave up on them.
they rarely screen usa sitcoms?
up to ch4 to introduce them to uk audiences.

cheers, malcolm in the middle, king of queens
and bilko - always worth watching too.

The least believable part is that Ray is a sports-writer, yet also (when comedy demands) barely literate.

Lee Mack has said Not Going Out was inspired by Everybody Loves Raymond, and weren't there rumours he was going to produce a UK version of ELR using the original scripts (god knows why)?

But even in a competition confined to sitcoms repeated endlessly on Channel Four, Will and Grace is better.

Seinfeld for me (series 1-5 or 6), but I do like Raymond above most other US sitcoms. Curb Your Enthusiasm deserves a mention too.

that is so true about him being a sports writer but also seemingly semi literate at other times.
lets the show down a bit as does their seeming disgraceful neglect of their children who seem to get shunted upstairs
for about 23 hours a day. it is still quite funny tho

It's a version of 'I Love Lucy' with slightly different characters. Nothing original.

i don't see anyone claiming it is original.

Cheers, Frazier, EBR and The Big Bang Theory were very sharply written. But the writers of each and every one of them  ran out of ideas to the extent that the final episodes of those wot has ended were pretentious cop outs! I am certain this will clarify the situation.

The big bang theory was fkin awful.  From start to finish.  By anyone's standards.

^ i suppose it's funny if you like laughing at autistic people

Of course one would of had to have studied science and mixed with nerds for many years like wot I did to fully appreciate the humour of BBT fully. However it got stoopid after the first few series and after they paired Leonard and Raj's sister together it was a turn off, which is in fact wot I did. The final episodes of Cheers and Frazier were affronts to the word "humour" but not to the word "syrup"!

@Slicer -- Cheers, Frazier, EBR and The Big Bang Theory were very sharply written

Frazier was odd in that it seemed to be written for different audiences either side of the commercial break (obviously in America there'd have been more of these so as an explanation, it is deeply flawed ... now I've forgotten where I was going with this ... ah yes) in that each episode would start as satire then descend into farce.

Everybody Loves Raymond - another lie.