Original Cast: Michael Bentine, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers

When we think of Peter Sellers, we usually think about pink panthers and bumbling French inspectors. Long before that, Sellers and fellow Goon Spike Milligan were taking comedy on British radio to a new extreme in England during the late 50's. Abandoning the need to recreate elements of real life within the radio studio, the Goons merged cartoon sound effects with stock narratives and embraced the absurd with the possibilities of what their players were capable of.

When the time came for radio talent to migrate to television, the Goons appeared on programs such as "The Idiot Weekly", "The TeleGoons" and "Q5", programs whose execution of antics served as the inspiration for the Beatles' antics in "A Hard Days Night" and the comedic blueprint for what would become Monty Pythons Flying Circus.

Original Cast: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin

The Pythons drew from a variety of BBC programs out of a mutual desire to work together. There was no shortage of low-brow shows like "Benny Hill" or smart sketch comedy like "The Frost Report" available to viewers at the time. The Pythons developed a unique way of blending their university educations with their own boyish perversions to create a style of sketch that would become the comedic equivalent of mankind landing on the Moon.

The show was smart and silly, cutting edge and obscene. Sketches, while separate, would flow together in a stream-of-conscious narrative. Monty Python's Flying Circus was the first sketch program to transition to major motion pictures, a world tour and a style that would influence generations to come. The Pythons may not have been the first troupe in Sketch Comedy history, but are arguably the first to become legends.

Original Cast: Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, Gilda Radner, George Coe and Michael O'Donoghue

When Johnny Carson pressured NBC to pull "The Best of Carson" off Saturday nights to limit reruns, the network gave Canadian comedian and television producer Lorne Michaels the opportunity to create a new sketch/music/variety show. Recruited from Chicago's Second City improv troupe and the radio and theater wings of "The National Lampoon" magazine, the "Not Ready For Prime Time Players" broke new ground in late night television on a show that had everything from short films by Albert Brooks to guest appearances by Andy Kaufman and the Muppets.

Almost 35 years, with a growing alumnus of comedy superstars, a handful of feature films and even a couple of cartoons, SNL is the entertainment mainstay for broadcast sketch comedy.

Original Cast: John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O'Hara, Harold Ramis and Dave Thomas

There's the theory that if something works once, you might as well try it again. This principle was put to good use when CBC in Canada recruited members of the Toronto Second City Troupe to develop their sketch show.

The conceit on "SCTV" was that you were watching the programming as well as the behind the scenes action of an independent television station. This opened the door for the cast to spoof popular television shows, movies of the week, face a "Doctor Strangelove"-esque takeover from the Soviet Union and re-dub a classic episode of "The Cisco Kid."

Original Cast: Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson

The Kids in the Hall had been broken up their troupe for a couple years when Lorne Michaels convinced the troupe to get back together instead of hiring them as writers for SNL.

The Kids in The Hall were different than their predecessors in many ways. Large portions of their program were filmed on location. Sketches took equal shots at corporate and counter-culture. Everything about their own experiences was fair game, from the cast members' sexual orientations to the abuse they suffered during childhood. Unlike SNL, there would be no future generations of Kids. When it was time for the troupe to go their separate ways, they concluded their broadcast run by filming a sketch where the cast is fired and then buried alive.

Original Cast: Keenan Ivory Wayans, Jim Carrey (as James Carrey), Kelly Coffield, Kim Coles, Tommy Davidson, David Alan Grier, T'Keyah Keymah, Damon Wayans, Kim Wayans and Shawn Wayans

Before "In Living Color," the black-to-white ratio in most sketch comedy casts was abysmal. This watershed series from the Wayans brothers with a predominantly African-American cast tackled all sorts of comedic areas that predominantly Caucasian ensembles couldn't. And if "Saturday Night Live" brought a rock and roll ethos to comedy, "In Living Color" brought it hip-hop. There was only one white guy on the show, a little know actor named James Carrey who had appeared in the vampire comedy "Once Bitten" and lost out to Charles Rocket for a slot on SNL.

While the program enjoyed strong ratings and launched several of its players to mainstream success, increasing censorship eventually drove the Wayans to disown the program. The writing staff would go on to create the long running Fox sketch program, "Mad TV."

Original Cast: Kevin Allison, Michael Ian Black, Robert Ben Garant, Todd Holoubek, Michael Patrick Jann, Kerri Kenney, Thomas Lennon, Joe Lo Truglio, Ken Marino, Michael Showalter and David Wain

In one of its many reincarnations, MTV decided it wanted to do sketch comedy and "The State" was born. The State embraced the Python-esque stream of conscious narrative style and used its high concept comedy to entertain a generation of burgeoning hipsters. Though it lasted for just three seasons, different factions of the cast would go on to make other popular shows like "Viva Variety," "Stella," "Reno 911," and "Michael and Michael Have Issues." After canceling "The State", MTV went on to make culturally significant programs such as "Singled Out" and "The Hills."

Original Cast: Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, John Ennis, Tom Kenny, Jill Talley and Jay Johnston

In the aftermath of the cancellation of the "Ben Stiller Show," writer/performers Bob Odenkirk and David Cross joined with other alumni from the Los Angeles improv group The Groundlings to star in pay cable's first sketch show. Angry, irreverent and decidedly left-brain, "Mr. Show" gave America an early taste of what sketch comedy would be like when it didn't have to go through network censorship.

The sketches on Mr. Show were carefully linked, each leading to the next, sometimes connected in theme and somehow, no matter how far off the map things had gone, Bob and David always managed to be back in front of the show's studio audience for the climax. The fiery end to Mr. Show is something to behold, from the cast recording promos to explain why HBO had scheduled the show to be unwatchable during human hours to the fight over the feature film that had the director banning the writers from the editing room and the cast disowning the entire movie. Still, it's a great place to see young Jack Black and Sarah Silverman.

Original Cast: Matt Besser, Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts and Matt Walsh

The members of the Upright Citizens Brigade were pupils of Del Close, the co-founder of the Improv Olympic and guru to Second City and the cast of "Saturday Night Live". The structure of a UCB program worked off of Close's invention "The Harold" in which three unrelated sketches came together in the final act, which served as the narrative structure for the run of the program.

That UCB weren't just about entertaining their audience; they were also about engaging and challenging the viewer. From guerilla style pranks where they tried to sell poo-on-a-stick to unsuspecting passer-bys as a method of self defense, to an announcement that they has placed 12,012,000 pennies up a cast member's rectum and re-introduced them to traded currency. So even if you were a regular viewer, watching safe at home, you couldn't help but be suspect of the change in your pocket.

Original Cast: Julian Barratt, Noel Fielding, Dave Brown, Michael Fielding and Rich Fulcher

If you parallel the appearances of the monolith in the film "2001" with the history of British sketch comedy, the Goons would be the Dawn of Man, the Pythons would be the Space Age and The Mighty Boosh are side by side with the mysterious Star Child that even Stanley Kubrick couldn't/wouldn't explain, but is considered to be all around genius.

The Mighty Boosh is a high concept sketch show, equal parts musical journey and inverse sitcom. While the troupe has a set of central roles that they play in every episode, the free flowing narrative allows them to transition from their set characters to forlorn celestial bodies and spectral ne're-do-wells. It gets so surreal you don't even notice the talking gorilla after a while.

Original Cast: Sam Brown, Zach Cregger, Trevor Moore, Darren Trumeter and Timmy Williams

Sketch began on the stage (and never really left), migrated to the radio, evolved in to broadcast television programming and even went on to becoming the basis for major motion pictures. It's not really much of a surprise that it eventually found its way on to computers.

The Internet has brought the most drastic changes in the history of the art form of sketch comedy. Talent young performers no longer had to count on being seen in clubs or given the chance to perform on television to get their material seen by a wide spread audience. With a savvy for short form entertainment and several viral video hits under their belt, the Whitest Kids are representative of the next generation of sketch comedy pioneers (completely unbiased, we swear). In fact, you can watch some sketches right here and judge for yourself.