CALL OF THE WEIRD

The Top Cult Films and TV Shows

Success is a strange, unpredictable thing. Instant smash-hits can often be forgotten just as quickly, while spectacular flops can sometimes redeem themselves, eventually being seen as all-round triumphs. In the realm of Cult Films and TV, it's best not to make assumptions, and the only qualifications any entrants need is a willingness to push the envelope, to attempt something different, and challenge audiences to try and keep up. They may lack the thumbs-up of universal approval, but none of the Cult Films or TV listed here are any the lesser for it. Join us, as we guide you through the fifty best examples of this most extraordinary world... 

CULT MOVIES:

25:  Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962)

Tagline: Crawford vs Davis- the ultimate confrontation

Putting two legendary adversaries together onscreen for the first time, this merciless black-and-white drama casts Joan Crawford and Bette Davis as bitter sisters trapped in a self-destructive, hate-filled relationship. Davis is the ex-child star forgotten by the public, while Crawford is the sibling who eclipsed her only to end up helpless in a wheelchair, and now they both live in virtual isolation in a decaying Hollywood mansion. Blurring the lines between fiction and reality to stunning effect, it's a dazzling exploration of the dark side of stardom, and a final triumph for two screen legends.

24: Assault On Precinct 13 (1974)

Tagline: Siege Mentality

The 2005 remake might have slicker production values, but the punky original- itself a reworking of John Ford's Rio Bravo- is as brilliantly inventive, witty and tense as they come. As a soon-to-be-abandoned police precinct comes under brutal siege from massed gangs of wordless, zombie-like punks, director John Carpenter cranks up the suspense, layering his minimalist synth soundtrack over everything in range while adding all-important black humour into the mix. A well-crafted B-movie of the best kind, it also features a full-on cult icon in the form of Darwin Joston as the laconic, cigarette-seeking convicted killer Napoleon Wilson.

23: Shogun Assassin (1980)

Tagline: Childcare turns bloodthirsty...

Required viewing for David Carrdine's five year old daughter in Kill Bill Vol 2, samurai movies don't come darker than Shogun Assassin, a ketchup-heavy epic of revenge and damnation. One of the few Asian movies where the English dubbing actually works, it follows vengeful samurai Tomisaburu Wakayama as he slowly loses his humanity, battling the ninja warriors of an evil Shogun while protecting his toddler son. Narrated by the toddler, the story mixes poetic innocence with Spaghetti Western-style amorality, creating a fearsome cocktail only to be approached by those with nerves of steel.

22: Cheech and Chong: Up In Smoke (1978)

Tagline: Getting high on their own supply...

They ruled the late Sixties and Seventies with their counterculture humour- so it was no surprise when comedy duo Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong made the leap to the big screen in their usual pot-headed style. Up In Smoke showcased the semi-improvised sketch comedy they'd perfected on their hugely successful albums, and casts them as spaced-out musicians who encounter surreal adventures on their way to a gig. Whether they're unknowingly driving a van made entirely out of Marijuana or battling their hilariously OTT arch-nemesis Sgt. Stedenko (Stacy Keach), this is gleeful stoner comedy at its very best.

21: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension (1984)

Tagline: The Banzai Institute wants you!

Brain surgeon, scientist, and fully fledged rock star, Buckaroo Banzai (Robocop's Peter Weller) is the quirky, bow-tied hero of director W.D. Richter's awesome New Romantic sci-fi extravaganza. With a plot that involves dimension jumps, Rastafarian aliens and Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast, it's celluloid insanity at its finest, generating its own bonkers mythology while finding room for a truly fantastic cast that includes Ellen Barkin, John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum and Christopher Lloyd. By the time the end credits arrive, you'll be genuinely sorry the promised sequel "Buckaroo Banzai Vs The World Crime League" never materialized.

20: Office Space (1999)

Tagline: Payback time for that malfunctioning fax machine...

Work is a prison, and your boss is your jailer- but director Mike Judge (creator of Beavis and Butt-head) is here to take a blowtorch to the world of the corporate cubicle worker, and the results are both hilarious and horribly familiar for anyone who's spent eight hours a day hating their job. There's a genuine sense of glee as wage slave Ron Livingstone starts rebelling against the system that's slowly driving him mad, and with characters as memorable as Gary Cole's effortlessly slimy boss, it's like a sharper, free-form cousin to Ricky Gervais' magnum opus The Office.

 19: Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)

Tagline: Mafioso problems- Samurai solutions...

On the surface, indie director Jim Jarmusch's oddball thriller seems a typical tale of a loner hitman, but behind the cool humour, it's an utterly strange portrait of miscommunication and culture clashes. Forest Whitaker is Ghost Dog, an eccentric killer who only communicates with his Mafia bosses via carrier pigeon and lives his life according to the ancient code of the Samurai, but a botched hit sees his life suddenly in danger. There are moments of gripping action, yet it's the little details in Jarmusch's hip-hop influenced tale that makes this bizarre crime story truly unique.

18: Bad Taste (1987)

Tagline: Guts, gore, and exploding sheep...

He may have scooped an armful of Oscars, but Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson's career began as a weekend hobby making gob-smackingly gruesome splatter films. In his carnage-strewn debut, a quiet New Zealand town has been invaded by aliens with a hungering for human flesh, which sets off a non-stop assault of limb-lopping, head-exploding action so awesomely disgusting it almost defies description. There's plenty of amateur energy and stunning creativity on display, and while it isn't subtle and it definitely isn't for the weak-stomached, horror really doesn't get more outrageously shocking than this.

17:  Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)

Tagline: Bad movies have never been so good...

Being voted 'Worst Movie of All Time' isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it transformed this cinematic calamity from a sci-fi relic into an evergreen cult favourite. The masterwork of legendary talentless filmmaker Ed Wood (immortalized in Tim Burton's 1994 biopic), the plot of Plan 9 is desperately constructed around footage Wood had filmed of horror icon Bela Lugosi before he died. Into this seemingly random mish-mash are thrown horror-host Vampira as a zombie, arrogant aliens, shaky scenery, and dreadful dialogue in an ever-increasing crescendo of unintentional hilarity that's so bad, you genuinely won't believe your eyes.

16: Pink Flamingos (1972)

Tagline: Divine Encounters of the Worrying Kind

There's bad taste- and then there's bad taste as presented by John Waters in his groundbreaking Trash classic. A warped and deliberately repellant mix of comedy and freak show, the story pitches trailer-dwelling drag queen Divine and his chicken-loving family against a pair of swinging drug pushers for the coveted title of "Filthiest People Alive". Putting traditional American values through a mincing machine, this hilariously obscene comic landmine is still shocking after all this time, and saves its most notorious moment- Divine chowing down on real-life dog excrement- for its truly stomach-churning finale.

15: The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen (1989)

Tagline: The Baron rides again...

The film that almost flattened Terry Gilliam's directorial career has an unfair reputation as an over-expensive disaster, when it's actually a staggering slice of cinematic fantasy where virtually every frame is a work of art. A massive epic from the pre-CGI world, the film adapts the tales of legendary liar Baron Munchausen into a sumptuous, dream-like adventure with volcanoes, a trip to the moon, giant sea monsters, detachable heads and gigantic battle sequences. The screenplay may be a little weak, but it's a hugely entertaining and strangely moving tribute to Gilliam's determination to put the impossible onscreen.

14: Harold and Maude (1971)

Tagline: Romance gets in a 'May to December' mood...

It's your typical boy meets girl story- except that he's twenty, and she's seventy nine. Hal Ashby's morbid and quirky comedy drama looks at the world from a refreshingly askew angle, following youthful Bud Cort as he enthusiastically derails his mother's attempts at matchmaking while staging lurid mock suicides, and then ends up falling for the septugenarian Ruth Gordon when they both meet at a funeral. The sweet, utterly bizarre nature of their romantic relationship keeps this kooky tale on the boil, and the end result is a stylistic one-off with an enjoyable anti-establishment streak.

13: Schizopolis (1996)

Tagline: Movie madness- the Soderbergh way...

Possibly the weirdest movie to ever come from a major Hollywood director, this micro-budgeted comedy mind-bender sees Steven Soderbergh write, direct and star in the near-indescribable tale of Fletcher Munsen, a corporate drone for a Scientology-esque lifestyle cult who then abruptly 'body-jumps' into his exact duplicate, a supercilious dentist who's having an affair with Munsen's wife. Mixing corporate satire, stream-of-consciousness humour and left-field, Sixties-style experimentation, it's a brash, fearless piece of moviemaking that tears up the cinematic rulebook for the sheer hell of it, and generates some howlingly funny moments along the way.

12: Delicatessen (1991)

Tagline: Meat means murder...

In a bleak, post-apocalyptic France, an enterprising butcher turned landlord is slaughtering his guests and selling the meat to the other inhabitants of his grimy tenement block. Unfortunately, he hasn't reckoned on his daughter falling for his latest target, a sad-eyed ex-clown, and enlisting the 'Vegetarian Underground' to help fight back. Events soon build to insane proportions, and this cinematic debut from Amelie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (here co-directing with Marc Caro) ends up like a Terry Gilliam film crossed with a Looney Tunes cartoon- wild, inventive, and like nothing you've ever seen before.

11: Flash Gordon (1980)

Tagline: He'll save every one of us...

More fun than should be legally allowed, Get Carter director Mike Hodges' take on the pulp sci-fi hero is one of the silliest, most colourful and deliciously kinky family films ever made. As square-jawed quarterback Flash (Sam J. Jones) improbably finds himself battling the evil Ming the Merciless (Max Von Sydow), there's delirious production design, a ballistic hard-rock score from Queen, and the unforgettably shouty prescence of Brian Blessed as Vultan, King of the Hawkmen. It may have flopped spectacularly at the box office, but for lovers of relentless and breathtakingly camp adventure, Gordon is most definitely alive...

10: Heathers (1989)

Tagline: High school turns evil...

After the reign of the Brat Pack, Eighties teen cinema desperately needed some added venom- but nobody anticipated the pitch-black nature of this searing high school satire. Winona Ryder is the wannabe popular kid who's tired of hanging out with three ferociously bitchy and air-headed girls all named Heather- but thanks to rebel Christian Slater, her plan for revenge starts creating a serious bodycount. Examining the glamour of teen suicide and the true emotional brutality of teenage life, it's a bleak and massively influential film that makes most of its teen movie copycats look anemic by comparison.

9: Suspiria (1977)

Tagline: Mayhem and murder in glorious Technicolor...

He's helmed plenty of lurid horror movies, but few of Dario Argento's chillers have reached the demented heights he achieved here. The thin plot follows dancer Jessica Harper as she attends a ballet school and discovers a coven of witches, but it's really just an excuse for a series of devastatingly executed suspense sequences, including a jaw-droppingly violent double-murder, and the horrifying moment where a student falls into a room full of barbed wire. With eye-searing colours, transgressive shocks and a pounding prog-rock score, Suspiria is one of the few horror movies to truly deserve the name.

8: Freaks (1932)

Tagline: One of us! One of us!

A brilliantly twisted tale set in a traveling circus and populated by genuine carnival freaks, this horror classic was disowned by the studio that financed it and banned in Britain until the 1960s. Generating a genuinely shocking mix of tenderness and near-exploitative weirdness, it's the fable-like story of a beautiful trapeze artist who manipulates a midget in order to steal his fortune, but encounters horrific vengeance at the hands of the freaks she has wronged. The rain-soaked climax is still disturbing even today, and the whole film gives a mesmerizing glimpse of a world long vanished.

7: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)

Tagline: The Breast is yet to come...

Some filmmakers aim to thrill, some want to provoke debate- but for Russ Meyer, making movies was about putting as many big-breasted females onscreen as was humanly possible. This brazenly nutty 'ode to the violence in women' is the finest moment in his career of lurid exploitation movies, telling the tale of three psychotic Amazonian Go-Go dancers as they raise hell in the Californian desert. Astoundingly daft and blissfully camp, this is lurid cult fun stuffed full of surreal dialogue, violence, and some of the most fabulously gratuitous cleavage shots in cinema history.

6: The Wicker Man (1973)

Tagline: Pagan pursuits...

A very English horror movie, this lyrical and unsettling classic sets virginal Policeman Edward Woodward searching for a missing girl on a remote Scottish island. Problem is, the islanders claim the girl doesn't even exist, but Woodward is soon uncovering evidence of pagan worship, and leaping to major (and fatally incorrect) conclusions about a potential human sacrifice. Quietly building to a devastating climax, the film's grotesque view of country life was a serious influence on The League of Gentlemen, while Christopher Lee gets to briefly sport a Cher wig and deliver his finest performance as Lord Summerisle.

5: Dark Star (1974)

Tagline: Spaced out in outer space...

The first cinematic stepping stone for director John Carpenter, this off-beat student film turned full-length feature looks at the mundane realities of intergalactic travel. The crew of the Dark Star are a universe away from previous screen astronauts, spending their time destroying uninhabited planets, staring at the stars, or listening to rock music, but their tedium is disturbed by a beachball-shaped alien pet, and a malfunctioning intelligent bomb with a stubborn streak. Spiced up with stoner humour, it's a haphazard but entertaining movie whose "blue-collar workers in space" outlook has had a gigantic effect on screen sci-fi.

4: Donnie Darko (2002)

Tagline: Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit...

Featuring one of the greatest "What the hell just happened?" endings in movies, this Eighties-set blend of adolescent angst and apocalyptic horror feels like an unexpected meeting between Teen movie master John Hughes and mindwarping sci-fi author Phillip K. Dick. Is disturbed teenager Donnie Darko (Jake Gylenhaal) just suffering from hallucinations- or is there really a ghostly figure in a rabbit costume telling him the world will end in twenty eight days time?  Offering many questions and few answers, it's a multi-layered Chinese puzzle box of a movie, but one that's devious fun to try and solve.

3: Eraserhead (1977)

Tagline: In heaven, everything is fine...

Tagline: The Lynch mob begins...

In 1977, a filmmaker and sometime art student finally completed the feature he'd been shooting for four years. The filmmaker was David Lynch, the movie was Eraserhead, and the end result was 90 minutes of bleak, dream-like horror. A disturbing look at the terrors of parenthood, it's the story of big-haired Henry (Jack Nance), who finds himself stuck in a dingy apartment looking after his mutated, monstrous baby. Switching from sequences of lengthy, head-scratching boredom to sudden explosions of all-out weirdness, it's an abstract cinematic wonder that only gets more and more fascinating with time.

2: Clerks (1994)

Tagline: They'll serve you- but they don't like you...

"I'm not even supposed to be here today!" Forever complaining about his lot, shop clerk Dante Hicks (Brian O'Halloran) faces his own personal hell of stroppy customers, a porn-obsessed co-worker and serious girlfriend issues during one day behind the desk at the Quickstop mini-market. Accidental necrophilia, Star Wars debates and the debut of cult heroes Jay and Silent Bob are among the many highlights, but it's writer/director Kevin Smith's ear for jaw-droppingly profane dialogue that turned Clerks from a self-financed, one-way ticket to bankruptcy into one of the most important independent films of the Nineties.

1:Withnail and I  (1986)

Tagline: Booze, drugs, and other English pastimes...

In 1969 Camden, two out-of-work actors get tired of their squalid, rat-infested flat, go for a semi-nightmarish break in the country... and come back again. As far as plot goes, that's as much as Withnail and I offers, but what's turned this low-budget British drama into a full-blown cult classic is writer-director Bruce Robinson's magnificent, endlessly quotable script. Following the bookish, wannabe author "I" (Paul McGann) as he and his elegantly wasted flatmate Withnail (Richard E. Grant) find themselves "on holiday by mistake", the rambling story offers a cavalcade of rich humour that's painfully recognizable to everybody who's ever drunk too much, gotten too stoned, or thought washing up was something that happens to other people. 

With characters ingesting Olympian levels of booze and discovering the gargantuan spliff known as the Camberwell Carrott, the film has become a firm favourite of students across the land- and yet, what makes it more than just a rollicking substance-abuse saga is the wistful, bittersweet sadness that lies at its heart. Robinson's inspiration for Withnail's character was his ex-flatmate Vivian MacKerell, a talented bohemian actor who drank himself to death, and the whole film is suffused with melancholy at the fading of the idealism of the Sixties, and the cynical times that were to come.

Nothing in the film shows this better than Grant's amazing performance (all the more incredible considering he was a teetotaler who'd never been properly drunk before making the film), and what could easily have been a blustery caricature instead is a captivating portrait of anger, bitterness and desperate envy that's both hilarious and heartbreaking. Neither he, McGann or Robinson have ever equaled their work in Withnail, and the film that flopped on its original release now seems more relevant, engaging and tragically funny than ever. 

CULT TELEVISION:

25: The Day Today (1994)

Tagline: Those are the headlines. Happy now?

"Headmaster suspended for using big-faced child as satellite dish!" The Big Bang from which a whole universe of Nineties comedy was spawned, The Day Today is a stunningly realized television news spoof that makes it almost impossible to watch the genuine article without laughing. Featuring the first televisual appearance from Steve Coogan as comic legend Alan Partridge, it's also the TV debut of Brass Eye mastermind Christopher Morris, and the resulting mayhem creates a weirdly convincing otherworld where horses infest the London Underground, Kurt Cobain advertises panty-liners, and the Bank of England manages to lose the Pound.

24: The Kingdom (1994-1997)

Tagline: Ghosts, ghouls and Hospital Politics...

A TV series from Danish cinematic renegade Lars Von Trier was unlikely to be normal, but this blend of Twin Peaks and E.R. breaks new ground in mind-boggling strangeness. Filmed in a gritty, documentary style, it's a gleefully sinister clash between technology and superstition, as a modern hospital is disturbed by the spirit of a young girl, and an ageing psychic decides to investigate. Leaping from bleak supernatural horror to absurd comedy, it's a wildly unpredictable ride, and Stephen King's lackluster US TV remake Kingdom Hospital couldn't get close to capturing this demented delight's unique flavour.

23: Six Feet Under (2001-2005)

Tagline: The final resting place...

Most people don't like thinking about death, but the family who run the Fisher and Sons Funeral Home can't avoid it. Tackling an eye-opening number of taboos, this incredible drama from American Beauty writer/director Alan Ball is dark, bleak, frequently disturbing and yet never depressing thanks to the rich dialogue, twisted humour, and some of the best performances on television. It's also wildly imaginative, visualizing the characters' inner lives as fantasy sequences, and through five seasons offers a challenging, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful look at the end we all eventually have to face.

22: Quatermass (1953-1958)

Tagline: Not for people of a nervous disposition...

Realistic, downbeat and hugely ambitious, writer Nigel Kneale's three seminal Fifties sci-fi masterpieces still exert a remarkably powerful grip today, each following British rocket expert Dr Bernard Quatermass as he investigates terrifying threats from space. Soon, he's facing off against unpredictable horrors, and whether it's an astronaut slowly transforming into a gigantic plant, humans being controlled by an alien intelligence, or an ancient crashed spacecraft that holds the answers to ancient superstition, Quatermass tackles its dangers in a straight-faced fashion, and was one of the first genuinely frightening shows to imprint itself on the viewing public.

21: Spaced (1999-2001)

Tagline: It's a sitcom- but not as we know it...

Average twentysomethings Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson pretend to be a couple to obtain a decent flat- but will they be able to live with each other? Their misadventures could easily have been traditional sitcom fodder, but instead this offbeat wonderland remixes the situation comedy from within, borrowing visual tricks from Sam Raimi films and layering a massive number of movie in-jokes into the fabric of the show. Referencing everything from The Shining to obscure 70s safety adverts, it's a genre-busting masterpiece where even supporting characters like tortured artist Mark Heap are beautifully drawn creations.

20: Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-1974)

Tagline: The humour revolution begins here...

Quantum leaps in comedy have a habit of sneaking up on us unawares, and nobody could have predicted that this free-form late Sixties sketch show would change the face of television. Classics like the Dead Parrot and the Lumberjack Song are rightly comedy legends, but what makes Python endlessly watchable is the stream-of-consciousness style, building further on the anarchic TV work of Spike Milligan. With help from Terry Gilliam's deviously witty cut-out animations, Python became a dream-like glimpse of a deeply peculiar, very English alternate universe- and it's one that's still well worth a visit.

19:  Carnivale (2003-2005)

Tagline: Freaks and geeks...

Not a show for those who like their questions answered, this slow-burning, beautifully bizarre and hard-hitting epic builds up a near-unforgettable atmosphere of quiet, ceaseless dread. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, a young man (T3's Nick Stahl) with secret healing powers joins a traveling carnival, but sinister forces and the carnival's enigmatic 'Management' are propelling him towards an eventual confrontation with a terrifying preacher (Clancy Brown). Playing like a collaboration between Grapes of Wrath writer John Steinbeck and horror mastermind Stephen King, this is a must for all fans of challenging dark fantasy.

18: The Young Ones (1982-1984).

Tagline: Comedy Chaos from Mayall and co...

The explosion that truly set off the 'alternative comedy' new wave in 1982, this lunatic post-punk sitcom chronicled the lives of four students- crazed head-banger Adrian Edmondson, wannabe revolutionary Rik Mayall, dazed hippie Nigel Planer, and self-proclaimed "cool guy" Christopher Ryan- as they spend their days fighting over washing up duties, encountering surreal occurrences and blowing things up. With strange cutaways to bizarre puppets and a genuine subtext of anger at early Eighties politics, it's a riotous ride that crams in as many explosions, slapstick gags and Cliff Richard references as the brain can handle.

17: Blake's 7 (1978-1981)

Tagline: All aboard the Liberator

There were never actually seven of them, and main character Blake vanished halfway through the series- but this tale of intergalactic rebellion still grabbed the attention thanks to distinctive characters, edgy storylines, and a (presumably unintentional) streak of pure camp. It started as the saga of Blake (Gareth Thomas) and his gang of renegades as they rebelled against the evil Federation- but as the show progressed, the plots got weirder, the costumes got kinkier, and the show's real stars turned out to be the deliciously hammy Paul Darrow as Avon, and Jacqueline Pearce as crop-haired super-villainess Servalan.

16: The Twilight Zone (1959-1964)

Tagline: A journey beyond sight and sound

The classic that every anthology show wants to be when it grows up, Rod Serling's stunning collection of televisiual short stories managed to be even more memorable than its discordant, incessantly catchy theme tune. Each week, the laconic Serling would introduce another self-contained tale of an ordinary person 'crossing over' into the realm of the strange and uncanny, whether it was a man visiting his own past, a ghostly phone call, or the classic episode involving a 'gremlin' lurking on an aeroplane wing. Intelligent, wise, and always with a devil of a sting in its tail.

15: Family Guy (1999- present)

Tagline: Animated anarchy for the warped-minded

A dysfunctional family in a cartoon sitcom? Accusations of ripping-off The Simpsons were certainly thrown in Family Guy's direction, but Seth MacFarlane's story of the distinctly non-average Griffin clan has forged its own unique, politically incorrect path.  Aimed at adult audiences, there's raunchy humour and some deliriously weird pop-culture references as dumbfounded father Peter Griffin tries (and usually fails) to control his family, but the show is comprehensively stolen by the eccentrically accented Stewie Griffin, who never lets the fact that he's one year old get in the way of his meglomaniacal plans for world domination.

14: Firefly (2002)

Tagline: Starbound adventures for Whedon's gang

Famously getting axed after only fifteen episodes despite having built up a major following, this hugely engaging space adventure from Buffy mastermind Joss Whedon has had the last laugh, gaining a big-screen reboot in 2005's Serenity. A fantastic blend of hard science fiction and classic Westerns, it's the gritty story of Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and his hard-bitten crew as they try to scrape a living by any means necessary in the darkened depths of space. Performances are fantastic, the space sequences are groundbreaking, and Whedon's usual razor-sharp dialogue and vivid characterization  is in full effect.

13: Knight Rider (1982-1986)

Tagline: One blow-dried hairstyle can make a difference...

The Eighties was the era of the super-vehicle, but none were as desirable, slinky or  talkative as the Knight Industries Two Thousand, or K.I.T.T. for short. Created by TV mastermind Glen A. Larson, Knight Rider followed wandering adventurer Michael Knight (the spectacularly coiffured David Hasselhof) as he protected the innocent and got to regularly show-off K.I.T.T.'s exciting special features, from flame-throwers to the 300mph Turbo boost. The pinnacle of the "Boys with Toys" genre, even the terrible attempts at rebooting the series (like the abominable Team Knight Rider) can't dent the charm of this vehicular romp.

12: The Avengers (1961-1969)

Tagline: Only a bowler hat and a karate chop away...

"Mrs Peel, we're needed!" It started as a lightweight action thriller about a Doctor trying to avenge crimes, but when supporting character John Steed (Patrick Macnee) started taking over, The Avengers slowly metamorphosed into a crazy pop-art blend of tongue-in-cheek spy story and fairy tale. Pitching the bowler-hatted Steed against all manner of nutty masterminds with unfathomable plans for world domination, the show was always stolen by the witty chemistry between Steed and his female sidekick- no more so than when Diana Rigg donned the leather catsuit of the sardonic and unforgettably foxy Mrs Emma Peel.

11: Seinfeld (1990-1998)

Tagline: Not that there's anything wrong with it...

Proof that the Atlantic is more than just a physical divide, this subversive sitcom was one of America's biggest TV shows, and yet hardly made a dent in the UK. A vehicle for stand-up comedian Jerry Seinfeld (with major input from Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David), it's the tale of Jerry and his three friends- the waspish Elaine, the insecure George and the whacked-out lunatic Kramer. Most vitally, it's a sitcom that's deliberately "about nothing", with no morals of the week, and the result is one of the wittiest and most adventurous TV comedies ever made.

10: Battlestar Galactica (2003- present)

Tagline: Violence. Grit. And no sign of Muffit...

As remakes go, the idea of updating a cheesy late Seventies Star Wars rip-off seemed seriously unwise- and yet, what we've ended up with is the sharpest, most challenging SF show in years. The premise is identical, with a rag-tag fleet of humans trying to evade the evil robotic Cylons while searching for the mythical planet Earth, but this is a grimy, hard-edged space saga that's strictly for grown-ups. Unafraid to ask risky questions about freedom and religion, it's an explosive thriller with the ability to pin you to your seat episode by episode.

9: Red Dwarf (1988-1999)

Tagline: The boys from the Dwarf are here...

Starting as "Steptoe and Son in space" and morphing into a more adventure-based show once the BBC started actually spending money on it, this sci-fi sitcom was the story of Lister (Craig Charles), the last human being alive, and his unwilling companions-  reincarnated hologram Rimmer (Chris Barrie), a highly evolved Cat (Danny John-Jules), and neurotic cleaning droid Kryten (Robert Llewellyn). The show dealt in some truly outlandish concepts (time loops, alternate universes, monstrous curries), but was always best when concentrating on the hilarious personality clash between the slobbish Lister and the egotistically neurotic Rimmer.

8: The League of Gentlemen (1999-2002)

Tagline: A local series for local people...

Visit the town of Royston Vassey, and you may never leave- at least, not if the semi-crazed inhabitants have anything to do with it. Creating a shocking world of grotesque characters and pitch-black comedy where the most important question is "Are you local?", this truly demented cross between Monty Python and The Wicker Man casts Mark Gatiss, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton as virtually every onscreen character. The humour veers from surreal to spectacularly gross, but it's the League's love of old British Horror movies that gives this gothic treat an extra edge of nightmarish fun.

  7: The Hitch Hiker's Guide To the Galaxy (1981)

Tagline: The end of the world is just the beginning...

Giving important advice on how to see the universe on less than thirty Altarian dollars a day, the BBC's adaptation of Douglas Adams' sci-fi comedy classic may not have the effects budget of the 2005 blockbuster movie, but effortlessly outclasses it in every other respect. With many stars of the original radio series reprising their roles, it's a charmingly offbeat adventure as unwitting earthman Arthur Dent (Simon Ford) journeys the galaxy and discovers that the meaning of life is "42", while the standout animated entries from the titular Guide still stand up today as gag-filled delights.

6: The X-Files (1993-2002)

Tagline: X marks the spot...

The title sequence declared that "The Truth Is Out There", and for nine years of shadowy investigations FBI agents David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson tried to unearth it, while battling the sinister government conspiracy determined to keep mankind in the dark. A smooth blend of Watergate-era paranoia and factually based sci-fi, the show tapped into the pre-millennial zeitgeist while ramping the sexual tension between the two leads up to eleven. Diminishing returns may have set in during later seasons, but at its finest, the X-Files was a landmark sci-fi horror show to be reckoned with.

5: Twin Peaks (1990)

Tagline: A damn fine murder mystery...

Television suddenly became a much stranger place in 1990, when ex-Hill Street Blues writer Mark Frost and avant-garde cinematic genius David Lynch teamed up to create an unforgettably deranged whodunnit. Set in a North American logging town where beloved teenager Laura Palmer has just been brutally slain, this dazzling mix of unforgettably kooky characters and noir mystery sets eccentric FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle Machlaclan) on the case. Frequently self-indulgent but always entertainingly provocative, it's a world where backwards-talking dream dwarves, characters with pet logs, and body-hopping murderous spirits are all just part of the fun.

4: Star Trek (1966-1969)

Tagline: Boldly splitting infinitives no man has split before...

When Trek creator Gene Rodenberry looked at the future in the 1960s, he saw a spacecraft seeking out new life-forms and new civilizations, a multi-cultural crew working in harmony, and a captain who spent his time snogging alien princesses and tearing his shirt. The show that began the great Trek, the "Classic Series" is still streets ahead of its spin-off competitors, offering three seasons of optimistic space adventure with only a handful of clangers among them, while the interplay between William Shatner's Kirk and Leonard Nimoy's Spock is endlessly entertaining- and only a little camp.

3: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)

Tagline: Vampires. Zombies. Demons. Whatever...

Rising from the ashes of the less-than-inspiring 1992 movie, Joss Whedon's saga of a perky teenager vs. bloodsucking monsters stunned everyone by becoming one of the finest US TV dramas ever made. Magnifying the traumas of growing up into life-or-death proportions, it's a mixture of sly metaphor and sharp dialogue which pushed its format and experimented in truly unique ways. From a silent episode to a dream sequence episode and the legendary Buffy musical, this was a show where anything could happen- and which proved conclusively you should always be nice to blonde girls with sharp stakes.

2: Doctor Who (1963-1989)

Tagline: The Blue Box has landed...

Forget Christopher Eccleston- to really understand the hugely successful 2005 Doctor Who re-launch, you have to look back at the long-running cult show without which it wouldn't have existed. Running from 1963 to 1989 and going through seven different Doctors, it might be notorious for its 'wobbly sets'- but the colossal scope and imagination behind Who never let the miniscule production values stand in the way of a good story. From Daleks to Cybermen, from Sontarans to Zygons, from William Hartnell's frown to Tom Baker's mad-as-a-hatter grin, it's twenty six years worth of witty and wild pulp adventure.

1:The Prisoner (1967-1968)

Tagline: He is not a number...

A man is packing for a trip abroad, when suddenly anesthetic gas billows through the keyhole of the nearest door. When he awakens, he finds himself in a bizarre, almost Mediterranean-style resort known as "The Village". The man is the unnamed ex-spy referred to as Number 6 (Patrick McGoohan), he's arrived in a strange mix of holiday camp and maximum security prison, and if he doesn't tell the sinister Village authorities why he resigned his job, he's never going to leave.

For seventeen weeks from 1967 to 1968, British TV audiences watched this enigmatic, action-packed spy story in perplexed mystery as McGoohan tried to escape his surreal captivity, and slowly wrestled many unanswered questions. Who was running the village? What was the menacing balloon creature that kept turning up and suffocating people? And who exactly was the unseen figure called Number 1?

Of course, answers were the last thing The Prisoner was offering, as proved by the gloriously crazed final episode, an explosion of lunacy that caused such a stir McGoohan (who also wrote and directed the finale) eventually had to flee the country. Originally aimed as an offbeat action show, The Prisoner had transformed into a hallucinatory, allegorical dreamworld which owed less to Ian Fleming than it did to Franz Kafka and Lewis Carroll.

Chief architect in this transformation was McGoohan himself, using his creative control over the show to explore his ideas about society and how it ostracises and ultimately destroys the individual- but the true beauty of The Prisoner is that any final interpretation is always left to the viewer. It's this determination to challenge its audience that's kept the show alive for so long, and it'll take something downright impressive to knock The Prisoner from its position as the Everest of Cult television.

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Top 10 Kids Cult TV

 1: The Magic Roundabout

Dougal, Brian, Florence and Zebedee leapt into the nation's consciousness thanks to Eric Thompson's quirky narration and the glorious acid-trip animation.

 2: Ulysses 31

Soaring through all the galaxies, the Bary Gibb-a-like hero of this sci-fi remix of Greek Myths battles the Gods of Olympus in truly mind-boggling style.

 3: Dungeons & Dragons

It's classic Sword and Sorcery time, as six kids stranded in a magic realm try to return home with the help of the venerable Dungeonmaster.

 4: Thundercats

A feline sci-fi cartoon epic, whose enduring popularity has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the shapely female physique of Cheetara. Honest.

 5: Dogtanian & The Three Muskehounds

Alexandre Dumas' classic swashbuckler gets the animal-themed rewrite it didn't know it needed, and a theme tune guaranteed to lurk in your head for years on end.

 6: Round The Twist

Aussie TV weirdness goes wild, as the Twist family move to a lighthouse and are soon encountering full-scale supernatural shenanigans.

 7: Jamie And His Magic Torch

With faithful dog Wordsworth by his side, Jamie voyages to Cuckoo Land with the aid of the Magic Torch in a whimsical Seventies gem.

 8: Mr Benn

The time traveling businessman who never seems to pay for his fancy dress costumes, Mr Benn is a definitive cartoon legend.

 9: Roobarb (and Custard)

Richard Briers' voice brings the squiggly characters of yellow dog Roobarb and sarcastic cat Custard to animated life in this catchily-themed classic.

10: Bagpuss

He was a saggy old cloth cat, but Emily loved him- and so did millions of viewers thanks to this charming, low-tech animation.

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