Line #6 YMMV/LittleBritain


1	* CondemnedByHistory: The series was a hit at the TurnOfTheMillennium for its satire of contemporary British life, [[CharacterCatchphrase catchphrase]]-driven characters, and lowbrow humour relying on shock value. It was popular enough to create a live tour combining re-enacted sketches and new pieces and merchandise. By Series 3, however, the established characters and running gags had become [[{{Flanderization}} Flanderized]] and overdone, with new characters only being introduced for the sole purpose of shock value, and the show had become so overexposed and overmarketed that audiences were sick of it. The combination of critical backlash against the traditional BritCom format and the failure of Series 4 (''Little Britain USA'', co-produced with Creator/{{HBO}}) was enough to kill off the show. In addition, its content didn't age well; its constant pokes at minority groups were controversial enough even at the time, and are now seen as [[ValuesDissonance outright cringeworthy]]. If you ask any Brit who was a teenager in the mid-2000s who didn't watch the show, chances are they don't know about it, and if you ask someone who ''did'' grow up with it, chances are they regret it. While its leads/creators Creator/DavidWalliams and Matt Lucas have gone on to other successes (the former as a children's author, the latter as an actor in a variety of productions), ''Little Britain'' is just a relic of its time. Notably Lucas eventually [[https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/matt-lucas-little-britain-big-issue-interview-regrets_uk_59d602dce4b0380b6c9a673b outright apologized for the content and admitted it was rather insensitive]]. Following the international UsefulNotes/BlackLivesMatter protests spurred by the killing of George Floyd in the US in 2020, the Creator/{{BBC}} eventually stopped broadcasting reruns of the show and removed streaming copies due to the show's numerous sketches involving blackface, completing its fall from grace (albeit they did eventually restore the show in a heavily-edited form the following year).
2	* CriticalDissonance: The show often served as a punching bag for critics for its lowbrow humour, but that didn't stop it from being popular with viewers. The fact that the show won a total of ''28'' awards throughout its run, and how it spawned a lot of merchandise doesn't help either.
3	* DiagnosedByTheAudience: Andy Pipkin seems to have some type of developmental disability... or does he?
4	* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: This show is quite popular in Germany.
5	* HarsherInHindsight:
6	** Bernard Chumley trying to seduce an aspiring actor. In the 2010s (particularly 2017), numerous men in the film industry were outed as coercing young actors into sex in exchange for getting their careers off the ground.
7	** Carol Beer coughing in people's faces hasn't exactly aged well since the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020.
8	** Either this or HilariousInHindsight, but one Ian Foot sketch has him rattle off a list of people he believes "threaten the security" of the UK ([[{{Profiling}} all of whom are British Indian]]), beginning with comedian Hardeep Singh Kohli. In August 2023, Kohli was arrested and charged with sexual offences.
9	* HoYay:
10	** Sebastian, the prime minister's right-hand man. Come on, guys!
11	** Bernard Chumley puts the moves on an actor.
12	** Norman Fry "accidentally slipped and fell inside another young man".
13	** Des Kaye in ''Little Britain Live'', albeit with pederastic undertones.
14	** Everyone around Daffyd Thomas, though he'll deny it.
15	* LesYay:
16	** Anne has a fixation on one of the therapists and has an ambiguous gender.
17	** In ''Little Britain Abroad'', Maggie tries to seduce Judith, only to throw up when it's pointed out that this makes her a lesbian.
18	* MemeticMutation: Virtually every single catchphrase in the show was this for a while between 2003 to 2008. Nowadays, considering the show's massive loss in popularity, they (with the possible exception of "Computer says no") all fall under DiscreditedMeme.
19	* MoralEventHorizon: Kenny Craig crossed it when he was revealed to have hypnotised a woman into sleeping with him.
20	* OffendingTheCreatorsOwn: The series was widely criticized for, among other things, its large number of gay and fat jokes, even though actor and co-creator Matt Lucas is both gay and heavyset.
21	* OneSceneWonder: Boris the Russian babysitter, from episode eight of the first season.
22	* PeripheryDemographic: Despite the show being aired after the watershed, a lot of children were fans of the show when it was originally airing. This made people concerned about children imitating some inappropiate acts seen in the show.
23	* TheProblemWithLicensedGames: ''Little Britain: The Video Game''. A game so bad that it gained a score of ''16%'' on [=GameRankings=], making it the ''second lowest-rated game'' on the site, only to be beaten by ''VideoGame/BigRigsOverTheRoadRacing''. With its uninspired gameplay, glitches and sluggish controls, it's no surprise that it's often considered to among be worst games ever made. It was also published by Blast! Entertainment, a company notorious for producing extremely poor quality licensed video games.
24	* RetroactiveRecognition: Andy's new caretaker Mrs Mead is Creator/ImeldaStaunton, a couple years before she'd reach international stardom for her role in the [[Film/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix fifth Harry Potter film]].
25	** ''WebVideo/{{Jimquisition}}'' in a rather unusual example as Jim mentioned on several podcasts that they were in the studio audience for Series 1.
26	* TheScrappy: Nearly any character introduced after Series 1 has had a pretty frigid reception compared to the characters introduced from the aforementioned series, and they notably have an increasing dependence on shock-humour. Carol Beers was the major exception, with "computer says no" and variants thereof achieving MemeticMutation status for a while, and Sir Norman Fry was considered somewhat amusing by the standards of series 3, albeit the "sleazy Tory" stereotype that he embodied was getting old even in 2005.
27	* SeasonalRot: By the time it got to Series 2, the show got a lot of flak for introducing [[TheScrappy unlikable characters]] and for its cheap gags just for the sake of shocking the audience. Series 3 is often considered to be just as bad as, if not ''worse'' than Series 2, while ''Little Britain USA'' is seen as just flat-out terrible.
28	* SpecialEffectsFailure: Many of the effects in the sketches with the tiny Dennis Waterman are obviously fake, for example a mouse (enormous to Dennis) is a man in a mouse costume, walking on two legs. In another sketch, Jeremy has a baby in his arms, which is clearly a doll. He gives it to Dennis to hold, which then appears as an old man in a baby costume.
29	* SubbingVersusDubbing: In Austria, ''Little Britain'' is shown with subtitles. In Germany, it's dubbed by comedians Oliver Welke and Oliver Kalkofe, who used to have a similar radio show.
30	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: Sir Norman Fry was probably the only new character in Series 3 who got a generally positive reception, and even then, all the sketches he appeared in followed the same basic formula of him giving increasingly implausible excuses for how he got caught having sex with other men, rather than mocking any number of other common types of political scandal. Admittedly, it didn't help that the Conservative Party weren't in power at the time, meaning that outside of scandals involving the personal lives of their [=MPs=], Lucas and Walliams didn't have much to work with[[note]](The scandals that did involve the then-ruling Labour Party were usually lampooned via Anthony Head's PM character, due to Head bearing something of a resemblance to UsefulNotes/TonyBlair)[[/note]]; indeed, after UsefulNotes/BorisJohnson's government was hit by a series of scandals starting in late 2021 (ultimately leading to his downfall the following July), several memes with Sir Norman explaining how these scandals were perfectly innocent misunderstandings started popping up on the internet.
31	* TooBleakStoppedCaring: Both intentional and PlayedForLaughs on the creators' part. Just about every character is either repugnant or weak. The Prime Minister seemed to be the exception, until it was revealed that [[spoiler: he cheated on his wife, illegally sold weapons to Iran (and tried to have the evidence destroyed), and was eventually {{flander\|ization}}ised into sleeping with everyone except Sebastian]]. With nobody to cheer for, audiences understandably got tired of watching horrible people get what they want while honest people suffer.
32	* ValuesDissonance: The show makes heavy use of racial and sexual stereotypes and has several sketches revolving around the use of blackface, which can make for an uncomfortable viewing experience in the wake of events like the Black Lives Matter and #[=MeToo=] movements.
33	* TheWoobie:
34	** Lou. He's little more than a slave to Andy and has at one point had to risk his life for the ungrateful lout. [[http://www.starstore.com/acatalog/to-do-l-little-britain.jpg Here's his to-do list.]] Check out the last line.
35	** The fatfighters take a lot of abuse. They stand up to Majorie and leave in the series 2 finale, but are back in series 3 because they can't lose weight on their own.

Context YMMV / LittleBritain