My favorite period of Western pop culture so far has got to be that brief glimmer of innovation between 1999 and 2001. For two and a half to three years, a lot of new, progressive entertainment found its way into the mainstream. It was a time when the Internet was on the verge of achieving ubiquity, but it hadn't quite reached the square world yet. For obvious reasons, American culture underwent a hard shift away from optimism and unfortunately innovation by 2002, but things didn't slow down near as much on the other side of the Atlantic. Shows like the original UK version of Coupling and of course The Office served as powerful inspiration to TV comedy around the world, the US included.

One of the great precursors to these British comic innovations was a sketch comedy show called Smack The Pony. It was fairly successful in the UK and it had limited release Stateside. For us Americans, catching an episode usually meant staying up late to see if Comedy Central would air it at an odd, post-midnight hour, or waiting for the rare weekend showing. To this day, no complete video or DVD collection exists. A "Best Of" disc was released in 2003, but not in Region I.

Smack The Pony was created by a trio of tremendously talented comediennes. Fiona Allen, Doon Mackichan and Sally Phillips wrote and starred in a series of extremely short, delightfully weird sketches that are deserving of the Monty Python mantle. The sketches were recorded instead of performed live, allowing for camera-based gags and on-location sets. This also allowed the show to flow seamlessly into bits that were dependent on pre-recording, like the popular dating video segments.

For fans of the original Coupling, you should have recognized a fresh-faced Sarah Alexander in that last clip. Smack The Pony was one of her first regular TV gigs, appearing in many, but not all, of the episodes. The show was also an early opportunity for puddle-jumping actor Darren Boyd, the only regular male performer in the series.

One of the many unique things about Smack The Pony was it's regular episode-closing music video. Allen, Mackichen and Phillips would put together an original genre parody song and an accompanying music video to round out each episode, never repeating a style in the show's four-year run. As with all comedy, some of them worked better than others. A failed attempt at lampooning American country music comes to mind, but that's the culture barrier for you. In that same vein, their send-up of British Indie Rock was much more successful.

Popular sketch comedy shows like The Mighty Boosh and to a certain extent the Lonely Island/SNL Digital Shorts owe a lot to the pioneering efforts of the ladies from Smack The Pony. For those who can find more than a few odd clips on youtube, the full series is a real delight. Aside from being reliably funny, it's a great time capsule for that millennial period full of progress and inspiration.