There’s an episode of Hancock’s Half Hour, the classic BBC radio-cum-television sitcom from the 1950s, that my dad would reference more than most. Originally broadcast in 1958, “Sunday Afternoon At Home” played with the idea that, way back when, everything was shut and not a lot happened on the day of rest. In it, Mr Tony Hancock and his side kick, Mr Sid James, turned mindless boredom into an art form.

By their nature, situation comedies take a group of familiar characters, stick them in a limited space and watch the sparks fly. And from Hancock’s Half Hour to the painful observations of The Office and I’m Alan Partridge to Seinfeld’s “show about nothing”, the best sitcoms often work because they focus on the regular, ordinary and humdrum. They tackle the mechanics of how we interact with each other in everyday settings, and while usually exaggerated, when done well, the characters are entirely relatable. We see ourselves in them. But perhaps sitcoms resonate more acutely at this very moment. We, too, are stuck indoors, at a time when, to paraphrase Morrissey – something to be done with caution of late – every day is like Sunday.

In times of trouble, a dip into the comedy of your formative years can provide comfort. For my dad, that was Hancock’s Half Hour and The Goon Show; for me, it’s the comedies of the 1990s (the 1992 Red Dwarf episode “Quarantine” feels especially relevant right now). But rather than nostalgia, these shows can actually provide tips for getting on with others in the enclosed space that is your home.

Here’s five things I learnt about living with others from watching too much television in my youth (and just maybe proof that I wasn’t wasting my time). 

Even before social media turned keeping in touch into a competitive sport, friendship was often a game of one-upmanship. “The Contest”, from the fourth season of Seinfeld, is often considered one of the show’s best episodes – itself a competitive field. In it, the four central characters agree to a wager: who can resist their “urges” the longest and remain the “master of their domain”. (As a sideline to the plot itself, the writing team set themselves their own challenge in terms of how many euphemisms they could get past the network’s censors.)

“No hugging, no learning” might have been the mantra in the Seinfeld writer’s room, but there’s still plenty here for viewers to glean. Gamifying tasks or goals is a simple way to motivate yourself to do something; add a friendly competitive edge and you and your housemates will likely get more done between you. Obviously, this philosophy is better applied to household chores than, er, whatever the Seinfeld team had in mind (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

With the aid of YouTube tutorials, there are many new skills you can pick up during this lockdown. But, whether through being cut off from your supply of a certain vice, or just with the aid of the support your household provides, this is also the perfect time to give something – smoking, drinking, roller-skating – up.

In “Cigarettes And Alcohol And Rollerblading”, the 1996 episode of Channel 4 series Father Ted, the three priests of Craggy Island are forced to give up their respective bad habits for Lent. This is no small task, especially for Father Jack, who, sober for the first time in 12 years, is horrified to discover that he is “still on that feckin’ island”.

By sharing your progress with peers, you make yourself accountable for your actions; a 2013 study published in the journal Translational Behavioral Medicine showed that participants who published their weight-loss achievements on Twitter lost more weight than those who kept it to themselves. Within a community setting, whether on social media or in your home, you should also employ positive reinforcement to encourage others with their own projects or achievements. Probably less effective is the threat of a “daily punishment”, as inflicted on the three priests by a visiting nun, Sister Assumpta (cold baths, Chinese burns and being chained to the back of a tractor).

Holed up in a confined space, living (and potentially working) on top of one another, it’s likely that you and your housemates are going to wind each other up. But rather than quarrel, find a positive way to channel your frustrations.

“Gone”, the fifth episode from the second series of Spaced, provides a means of engaging in mindless violence without actually hurting anyone. Billed as “masculine telepathy” akin to menstrual synchrony, this natural urge for slow-mo mime warfare is seemingly hardwired into the psychological makeup of the human male (although it is clearly a trait that exists regardless of gender given that housemate Daisy later joins in).

So, if your housemate does something that makes you want to fire a Type 87, 35 mm automatic grenade launcher in their direction, do so safe in the knowledge that you’ll both feel better for blowing each other up.

“I’m not bored,” says Dr Frasier Crane in “Breaking The Ice”, the 1995 episode of Cheers spin-off Frasier, “I’m simply wondering how long we’ve been sitting here enjoying ourselves.”

Having spent the previous two seasons cooped up with his blue-collar dad, the radio psychologist and his equally haughty brother, Niles, agree to decamp from Frasier’s spacious Seattle apartment to a more rustic setting, ice fishing in a cabin on Lake Nomahegan in upstate Washington. Despite the suggestion that he “gets a runny nose when watching ice skating on TV”, Niles takes to the task with great enthusiasm, providing outdoor style inspiration for when we are eventually allowed into the wild again (although Frasier notes that he looks like “a skinny Elmer Fudd”). As it turns out, both brothers only come along on the weekend fishing trip in an attempt to get closer to their emotionally closed-off father.

Frasier reveals at the start of the episode that his father has never once told him that he loves him (which his colleague Roz suggests explains a lot). By the end of the episode, and after a bottle of Jim Beam, their dad finally acknowledges his feelings for his sons.

You probably don’t need a psychologist to tell you that expressing your emotions with clear and open communication is a good idea for a healthy and long-lasting relationship – 11 seasons and 37 Emmys in the case of Frasier.

Perversely, one thing that you rarely see the protagonists of sitcoms doing is sitting down to watch TV. In fact, the lack of a television becomes a plot device itself in the hands of comedians Messrs Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson, in the debauched, lawless Beckettian farce that is Bottom. In 1992’s “Culture” episode, the comics’ alter egos Richie and Eddie try to find alternative forms of entertainment when their television set gets confiscated by rental electronics firm Rumbelows.

The pair try their hand at the crossword, chess and a game called "see how much custard you can fit in your underpants” before settling on what they do best together – cartoon slapstick violence while breaking the fourth wall (both physically and metaphorically).