The BEST BBC Three shows of all time
Every BBC Three show, ranked
We've compiled the average episode rating for every BBC Three show to compile this list of best shows!
#1 - Japanorama
A BBC documentary programme where presenter Jonathan Ross travels to Japan to explore Japan's current popular culture, and how it came to be that way. Based on Jonathan Ross's love for all things Japanese, Japanorama takes the viewer through post-war Japan, showing its amazing rise from the ashes of war in movies, TV-shows, anime, manga and more.
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#2 - The Real Hustle
The Real Hustle is a BBC television series made by Objective Productions and written by Alexis Conran and Paul Wilson. The show demonstrates confidence and magic tricks, distraction scams and proposition bets performed on members of the public by Conran and Wilson with "sexy swindler" Jessica-Jane Clement. From series 10, entitled "New Recruits", Jazz Lintott and Polly Parsons joined the hustlers.
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#3 - Ideal
Moz is a small-time (hash only) drug dealer. He rarely sets foot outside the confines of his squalid Manchester flat he shares with his long-suffering girlfriend Nicki. He's a lazy slob basically - as Nicki comments, "Jesus, Moz. I've seen coma victims with more 'get-up-and-go'". The series provides a window onto his life, and the bizarre sequence of people who come round to score from him. His dealer is a dodgy copper, his girlfriend is fed up with him, and he has visits from a silent man who wears a cartoon mask.
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#4 - Fleabag
Meet Fleabag. She’s not talking to all of us; she’s talking to YOU. So why don’t you pop your top off and come right in? Fleabag is a hilarious and poignant window into the mind of a dry-witted, sexual, angry, porn-watching, grief-riddled woman trying to make sense of the world.
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#5 - The Smoking Room
Writer Brian Dooley has created a rich pageant of life in the tiny Petri dish of the Smoking Room. Big on witty dialogue, short on plot, the Smoking Room ran for two series and a Christmas special. It was understated and gentle, but not in a mumsy billowy way – the show definitely had edges. And then sometimes it went beyond them.
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#6 - Stacey Dooley Investigates
Stacey Dooley investigates the new frontlines of the global war on drugs, heading to remote and hostile regions to meet producers, traffickers, the authorities, law enforcement agencies, and addicts and locals caught in the crossfire
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#7 - How Not To Live Your Life
Don is a single twentysomething who constantly fails to guide his way through life. His overactive mind doesn't help things as it plays out scenes of what he shouldn't say or do. When he moves into his recently deceased grandmother's house, he meets Eddie: his Gran's carer who doesn't want to leave. To help pay his rent, he decides to get a roommate in the shape of his teenage sweetheart...
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#8 - 15 Storeys High
One of the BBC's cult TV comedies, this sharp and quirky series is written by and stars British Comedy Award winner Sean Lock. He's locked in a high-rise flatshare with another bloke on a South London council estate. But he's the landlord and his lodger Errol is making his life a misery. What's more there are other oddball occupants in the block to contend with, from the wife-swappers and bible-bashers to the guy with a lodger of his own: a horse.
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#9 - The Young Offenders
Coming-of-age drama about lovable rogues Conor and Jock as they navigate their awkward teenage years, hatching plans and adventures to help distract from their tough home lives and their inability to stay out of trouble at school.
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#10 - Some Girls
BBC comedy about the lives, loves and hates of a group of 16-year-old girls who live on a South London housing estate. Viva Bennett (Adelayo Adedayo) lives with her dad Rob (Colin Salmon), a fire fighter, and her stepmother Anna (Dolly Wells), who is also the P.E. teacher at her school. In between playing on the same school football team, Viva, and friends Holli (Natasha Jonas), Saz (Mandeep Dhillon) and Amber (Alice Felgate), navigate a not-too-tentative path through the perils of adolescence, exploring along the way the ups and downs of school life, boys, homework and sex.
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#11 - Doctor Who Confidential
Specially filmed for BBC Three as a companion piece to Doctor Who, Doctor Who Confidential aims to give a taste of the excitement and the energy that surrounds the show. The programme includes behind-the-scenes filming and interviews with the cast, writers and production team as they bring our favourite Time Lord back to our screens. An abbreviated 15-minute version, concentrating on the production of the new series and without reference to the original show, is also broadcast on BBC Three as Doctor Who Confidential Cutdown.
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#12 - Mongrels
Adult multi-species puppet comedy about five urban animals who hang out together in the back yard of an inner city pub. Starring Nelson, a metrosexual fox; Destiny, a pretentious pedigree It-bitch; Marion, a freshly-neutered wannabe tomcat; Kali, a deeply cynical pigeon; and Vince, the neighbourhood sociopath. Created by Adam Miller, developed by Jon Brown, Adam Miller and Daniel Peak, written by Jon Brown and Daniel Peak, and featuring the voices of Rufus Jones, Lucy Montgomery, Dan Tetsell, Katy Brand, Paul Kaye and Ruth Bratt. Puppets created by Talk to the Hand.
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#13 - Him & Her
Him and Her follows the lives of Steve and Becky who only want to drink, eat, have sex and not do any work. They exist together in Steve's bedsit living off state benefits.
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#14 - Snuff Box
Snuff Box sketch show starring and written by Matt Berry and Rich Fulcher. Both actors use their real names for their main characters. Berry plays a hangman ("High Executioner to the King of England") and Fulcher, his assistant. The majority of the programme is set in a "gentlemen's club for hangmen" although the show is also interspersed with sequences of sketches, often featuring different characters.
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#15 - Normal People
Adapted from Sally Rooney's best-selling novel, the series follows Marianne and Connell, from different backgrounds but the same small town in Ireland, as they weave in and out of each other's romantic lives, exploring just how complicated intimacy and young love can be.
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#16 - Top Gear: Extra Gear
BBC Three and BBC Worldwide have co-commissioned Extra Gear, a new Top Gear show presented by Top Gear host Rory Reid. Filmed at the famous Top Gear studio, each week Extra Gear will bring fans exclusive new footage, interviews, specially-recorded films and behind-the-scenes access to Top Gear. Fans will be able to get closer to the action than ever before with Extra Gear, which will be available to view on BBC Three’s live page and BBC Three on iPlayer straight after Top Gear finishes on BBC Two.
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#17 - Gavin & Stacey
Gavin is an ordinary boy from Billericay, and Stacey an ordinary girl from Barry. After speaking on the phone to each other every day at work - they finally meet and fall in love. I won't lie to you, life is never quite that simple. For a start there are Gavin's parents, Stacey's mum and Uncle Bryn and best mates Nessa and Smithy to consider, as well as the small matter of living in different countries separated by a long bridge and a toll gate.
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#18 - Monkey Dust
A cutting edge comedy animation painting a fabulously warped satirical view of Britain ... Welcome to your very own urban nightmare - a nocturnal world populated by the sad, the lonely and the emotionally crippled on the wrong side of sunlight. Its' satirical targets range across the whole spectrum of Cruel Britannia from dysfunctional families to heartless government departments.
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#19 - In the Flesh
Four years after the Rising, the government starts to rehabilitate the Undead for reentry into society, including teenager Kieren Walker, who returns to his small Lancashire village to face a hostile reception, as well as his own demons.
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#20 - The Mighty Boosh
Come with us now on a journey through time and space... to the world of The Mighty Boosh... Written by and starring Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt, The Mighty Boosh is an off-the-wall adventure based on their Perrier Award-winning comedy show. The Mighty Boosh is a show about two zoo keepers, Howard Moon and Vince Noir, who work at "The Zoo-niverse", a dilapidated but magical zoo. It is run by Bob Fossil, a demented American with a military disposition. Vince is a regular 'Mowgli in flares', due to his affinity with animals and adoration for all things Seventies. Howard likes to think he is more the brains of their zoo-keeping outfit, destined for better things. Each week they get involved in a different adventure. Whether they end up in the Arctic tundra or monkey hell they somehow always manage to get back to the zoo intact...
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#21 - Being Human
The central premise of Being Human is that various types of supernatural beings exist alongside human beings, with varying degrees of menace; that three of these supernatural beings are opting to live amongst human beings rather than apart from them; and that these three characters are attempting (as much as is possible) to live ordinary human lives despite the pressures and dangers of their situations. They are constantly threatened with exposure or persecution, with pressure from other supernatural creatures, and with problems caused by their attempts to deal with their own natures.
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#22 - Uncle
Uncle stars stand-up comedian and singer/songwriter Nick Helm as Andy, a dissolute out-of work musician who forges an unlikely alliance with his 12-year-old nephew Errol after being morally blackmailed into looking after him by his chaotic sister Sam – all on the day Andy was planning to kill himself.
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#23 - Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps
The sex-fuelled lives of five late-teens/early twenty-somethings in the northern town of Runcorn. Janet is going out with Jonny, his best friend Gaz has started to date Janet's best friend Donna, and student Louise just wants a job to keep her in cigarettes. There's also Donna's sarcastic mother, Flo, constantly nagging her daughter to take up a 'proper' relationship with a worthy young man. Storylines followed the on-again/off-again relationships of the young protagonists who have lots of sex and meet in pubs.
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#24 - White Van Man (2011)
Comedy series centred around Ollie, a man with a van. Giving up dreams of running his own restaurant, Ollie has taken over the handyman business from his ailing dad, Tony.
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#25 - Bluestone 42
Bluestone 42 is a comedy drama about a British bomb disposal detachment in Afghanistan. It is a series about a bunch of soldiers who love being soldiers, and the camaraderie, bonds and banter they share, even though they are risking their lives defusing hidden bombs.
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#26 - Our World War
Drawing on real stories of World War One soldiers it uses the visual techniques and imagery familiar from modern warfare – POV helmet camera footage, surveillance images and night vision – to immerse the BBC Three audience in life on the Western Front.
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#27 - The Fades
Paul is a young man who is haunted by apocalyptic dreams that neither his therapist or best friend, Mac, can provide answers for. Worse still, Paul is starting to see the Fades – the spirits of the dead – all around him. They're everywhere but they can't be seen, smelt, heard or touched by living beings. But now an embittered and vengeful Fade has found a way to break the barrier between the dead and the living and Paul, Mac and their friends and family are all right in the eye of the storm.
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#28 - Nighty Night
Julia Davis heads an impressive cast in Nighty Night, a dark comedy/drama series which she also wrote. The series could be described as a West Country version of Fatal Attraction. It centres on Jill, a woman with an obsession, who is the co-owner of a suburban beauty salon. She has other things on her mind, though, namely the handsome doctor who lives in the house opposite with his wife, a wheelchair user. Jill claims her hospitalised husband is dying of a terminal illness and so descends on the life of the unfortunate couple and refuses to leave. The series won a Banff Award and Davis won a Royal Television Society Award for her performance and got a highly positive reception from TV critics.
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#29 - In My Skin
Coming-of-age story that follows 16 year old Bethan as she deals with the anxieties and insecurities of teenage life, along with the stark reality of a home life that is far removed from what she projects to her friends.
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#30 - This Country
This Country is a sitcom series which takes the mockumentary format. It explores the lives of young people in modern rural Britain, focusing on cousins Kerry and Lee ‘Kurtan’ Mucklowe and their life experiences in a typical Cotswold village.
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#31 - Little Britain
Comedy show duo Matt Lucas and David Walliams take you on a hilarious journey around Britain and the lives of the "normal", everyday people that inhabit that sceptered isle.
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#32 - Pulling
In the first episode, we meet Donna (played by Sharon Horgan), a young woman about to settle down and marry her dependable - if rather boring - fiancé Karl (Cavan Clerkin). Then, on her hen night, the true horror of settling down and settling for second best hits Donna. Although she doesn't want to hurt Karl, she tells him that the wedding is off and moves into a shared house in Penge, South London, with her best friends, sex-mad Karen (Tanya Franks) and lovable dreamer Louise (Rebekah Staton).
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#33 - Asian Provocateur
Comedian Romesh Ranganathan considers himself British through and through. He grew up in Horsham, doesn't speak a word of Tamil, doesn't know any of his relatives, has no idea about his cultural heritage and has almost zero desire to go to Sri Lanka. Like thousands of other British children of immigrants, he knows very little about the land where his parents came from. As his mother Shanti says - he's a coconut. Sri Lankan on the outside but British on the inside. Now Shanti wants her son to connect to his roots - so she has decided to change all that by sending Romesh on an odyssey around the motherland. Not that he's that happy about it.
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#34 - Lip Service
Sex, lies and true love in modern Scotland. Following the lives and loves of a group of twenty-something lesbians living in Glasgow.
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#35 - Bodies
When Rob Lake (Max Beesley) begins work in a maternity unit, he soon comes to suspect that his new boss, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist Roger Hurley, may be incompetent. He tries to turn a blind eye, but one of Hurley's blunders leads to a young mother being left brain-damaged and her baby stillborn. Rob watches a fellow doctor being hounded for attempting to bring the incompetence to light, seeing the ranks of the establishment join together to protect one of their own. He realizes he must risk his career to put a stop to Hurley's negligence. Meanwhile, his passionate affair with colleague Donna leaves him alternately confused and hungry for more. This riveting medical drama series, starring Max Beesley, Keith Allen and Patrick Baladi developed a cult following with its gritty storylines and gruesome theatre scenes, during its two series on BBC.
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#36 - Casanova
Giacomo Casanova, an elderly librarian in a castle in Bohemia, has a lot of memories, which he shares with Edith , a young servant. This takes us into the world of the young Casanova, a dashing Venetian chancer and outlaw who tumbles the ladies of Europe in an astonishing career. But for most of his wandering life, Casanova carries a torch for Henriette, who was snatched from him long ago by his rival Grimani... and for fifty years, Henriette does her best to look after Casanova, even though in all that time they never meet again.
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#37 - Doctor Who Greatest Moments
Series taking viewers on a journey through time and space to relive all the action from the sci-fi show, featuring exclusive interviews with key actors offering unique insights on the classic moments.
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#38 - My Life in Film
Kris Marshall plays Art, a low-budget film-maker whose overactive imagination turns everyday life into a cinematic adventures. Art and his friend Jones (Andrew Scott) think they're the English Coen brothers, appart from that they're not brothers and they haven't been able to make any films. Against this backdrop of playful homage, My Life In Film explores the triangle of love, friendship and obsession between Art, Jones and Beth (Alice Lowe).
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#39 - Siblings
Hannah and Dan are the worst brother and sister in the world. Through their own selfishness and idiocy, they spectacularly wreck the lives of those around them – old friends, love interests, family members, and the unlucky individuals who just happen to cross their paths.
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#40 - Man Like Mobeen
Mobeen is a 28 year old Brummie Muslim single handedly raising his 15 year old sister. This show documents the struggles of his criminal past, the friendships he has and the controversies he faces as a Pakistani Muslim.
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#41 - Bad Education
Comedy series about a teacher who is a bigger kid than the kids he teaches. They talk too much, don’t pay attention and have a poor attitude. Must try harder, especially as they're the teachers.
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#42 - Catterick
Chris and Carl are two brothers who have not seen each other for 15 years. Catterick tells the story of the first three hours following their reunion. The brothers go on a desperate mission in search of Carl's estranged son but things do not go exactly to plan¦ On the way they are pursued by a murderer, are mistakenly wanted by the police and become involved with a hotel proprietor who is searching for a vital part of his anatomy.
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#43 - Josh
Sitcom about flatmates Josh, Kate and Owen, and their annoying landlord Geoff.
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#44 - Lunch Monkeys
The administration department of personal injury law firm of Fox Cranford is a gathering place for school-leavers, no-hopers and general misfits – and if they monkey around till lunch, its guerrilla warfare in the office till dinner. Straight out of school, and into a job they don’t want, Darrel, Kenny, Asif, Shelley and Tania are going nowhere fast. Looked down on by the solicitors they work for, they face constant criticism by their power hungry supervisor Gloria Stevens. Bored senseless for eight hours a day, the post room gang fill their time fighting, flirting, winding each other up and generally causing mayhem whilst dodging disciplinary action and the occasional irate client. Not to mention the office sleepover, mistaken identity, ghosts, tramps and a serious case of fatal attraction!
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#45 - Back to Life
When Miri Matteson returns home after eighteen years, can she integrate back into her old life? With a terrible event from her past hanging over her, it won’t be easy.
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#46 - Cuckoo
BBC Three comedy starring Greg Davies as the over-protective father of a girl who's impulsively married an American hippie on her gap year
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#47 - Torchwood Declassified
BBC THREE goes behind the scenes of the Doctor Who spin-off.
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#48 - Starstruck
Jessie, a millennial living in East London, must juggle two dead end jobs and navigating an awkward morning-after-the-night-before when she discovers the complications of accidentally sleeping with famous film star Tom.
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#49 - RuPaul's Drag Race UK
UK version of RuPaul's hit reality competition show where RuPaul searches for the country's next drag superstar.
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#50 - Such Brave Girls
A family sitcom about three damaged narcissists with nothing but a warped view of the world and a desperation for love.
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