Top 5 Favourite Comedies

I need cheering up at the moment as school and life in general is so overwhelming. These programmes are a wonderful escape for me, so it's about time I wrote a little something about them!

1) Jeeves & Wooster
Naturally this is my favourite programme, because a) it takes place in the jazz age (those clothes, people!) b) Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie are brilliant, and c) it makes me laugh so much!
Bertie Wooster is perhaps my all-time favourite nincompoop - and that is said in the most loving way possible - and Jeeves is almost too good to be true. I love this comedy, and somewhat I just wish I could magically transform into Wooster and live the life of the idle rich.

2) Black Adder
Most of the time I can't breathe watching this programme, it's that funny! Again, the actors are fantastic and the characters are hilarious, particularly Baldrick, Blackadder's dogsbody. It is another period sitcom, taking place in Medieval times, the Elizabethan period, the Georgian period (or what I like to call the Rococo, even though it's set in England), and the First World War. My favourite is the Georgian series, or Blackadder III, because Hugh Laurie as the dotty Prince of Wales is brilliantly humorous.

3) Allo Allo
This is a quite recent discovery from last summer, and since that day I haven't stopped watching it! Allo Allo takes place in German-occupied France during World War Two, and while that sounds frightening rather than funny, all the near scrapes between lovable cafe-owner Rene, the mostly-friendly Nazis and the crazy French Resistance, never fails for an entertaining story. Plus, Gorden Kaye (the actor of Rene) is so sweet; I'll be reading his autobiography soon, "Rene and Me"!

4) Miranda
I think every British person knows who Miranda Hart is, and I should think that everyone adores her personality; prudish, clumsy, childish and all! I have watched all the series (even the finale that was a bit of a disappointment to me - she should have married Mike in my opinion, as I just can't stand Garry, the man she's in love with) and seen her 'What I call Live show' in Liverpool last year! She is amazingly funny and so easy to relate to.

5) Spaced
This comedy from the 90s is also one of my favourites, as it is so surreal at times! The characters are all so crazy and zany that you can't help but love them, especially the army-obsessed Mike and the insane artist, Brian.

Challengers by Hinako Takanaga

Challengers by Hinako Takanaga has to be one of my favourite mangas ever. Along with Black Butler and Loveless of course. :)

Some people complain that the artwork isn't as good as the author's latest works, but I would kill to be able to draw like the art-style of Challengers! It looks kind of retro in a sense, but goes through a bit of a revolution of art style... In short I love it.

The story follows a Freshman student called Tomoe Tatsumi, who studies robotics in a really good universtity. Despite being really intelligent in his studies, he seems a little bit half-witted at times (but cute as holy hell). As Isogai put it to Kurokawa-san, he's a 'laim-brained sweetheart' XD
Tomoe meets Mitsugu Kurokawa, a salary-man living in Tokyo, when Kurokawa's friend, Isogai, throws up on Tomoe (they're drunk by the way XD).
The freshman doesn't have a place to stay, so Kurokawa offers him a rent of his apartment, much to Tomoe-kun's brother's displeasure. Who, by the way, becomes quite an important character later on in a sequel called Koisuru Boukun. Kurokawa-san act's as Tomoe's Landlord despite having romantic feelings for the boy.
He tries to make Tomoe understand those feelings by kissing him goodbye, but due to Tomoe's umm 'laim-brainedness', he misunderstands the kiss as an American custom, and so, Kurokawa has to jump through even more hoops to get through to him!

I can honestly say that I loved all the characters, except for maybe the lady at Kurokawa's work, who found out he was homosexual and took it upon herself to try and 'rehabilitate' him. Creepy!

Challengers is cute, funny at times and lighthearted. I would defiantly recommend this manga to any lover of shounen-ai!