I have had this on largely as background lately. As with many people my age I have seen every episode the early series of The Simpsons enough times that I can half-listen and reconstruct all the bits that are happening when I’m not paying attention from memory. It’s comfort food.

It is also interesting to see the show taking shape in its early episodes, though. Many episodes lean more towards classic a sitcom formula of the family having some sort of down to earth internal struggle and coming together as a family, with characterisation quite different to what one would expect from these characters, but other episodes would slot right into a later season unchanged.

It’s also interesting seeing how many parts of the show that ended up enduring existed for a particular purpose or gag and then stuck around forever and what gets left by the wayside. Both of the family pets only exist here for the Christmas episode and their names are forever defined by it, Snowball Ⅱ only for a little gag about the cat’s name and Santa’s Little Helper as an artefact of one particular plotline.

re-form the Ireland Simpsons Fans Party