The Monkees (Seasons 1–2)

The Monkees (1966) — watch the classic NBC comedy series online on iFILM. Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork play four struggling musicians sharing a house in mid-60s Los Angeles.

Each episode drops them into some new comic disaster — con artists, clueless managers, the general chaos of trying to land a gig. The show's trick was breaking the fourth wall: the four of them knew they were inside a weekly television series, talked to the camera, dropped in-joke credits mid-scene. For network television in 1966, that kind of meta-humor was genuinely unusual and felt closer to the French New Wave than anything else on American primetime.

The music career that ran alongside the show completely overshadowed it. "I'm a Believer" and "Last Train to Clarksville" hit number one on the Billboard charts, and the group briefly outsold the Beatles in the same year. Watch all episodes of The Monkees on iFILM.