The Young Ones is a British sitcom, first broadcast in 1982, which ran for two series on BBC2. Its anarchic, offbeat humour helped bring alternative comedy to television in the 1980s and made household names of its writers and performers. Soon afterwards, it was shown on MTV, one of the first non-music television shows on the fledgling channel. The main characters were four undergraduate students sharing a house: violent punk Vyvyan , pompous would-be anarchist Rick , long-suffering hippie Neil , and the suave and diminutive Mike . It also featured Alexei Sayle, who played various members of... the Balowski family—most often Jerzei Balowski, the quartet's landlord—and occasional independent characters, such as the train driver in "Bambi". The show combined traditional sitcom style with violent slapstick, non sequitur plot turns, and surrealism. These older styles were mixed with the working and lower-middle class attitudes of the growing 1980s alternative comedy boom, in which all the principal performers except Ryan had been involved.
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