TV's Best Musical Episodes, Ever!

With Glee now a world-wide hit, musicals are experiencing a surge in popularity. However, Glee was most certainly not the first major TV show to feature the cast singing and dancing, in fact many very famous shows have musical episodes of their own.

Of course, musical episodes are exceptionally hit-or-miss (the recent Grey's Anatomy musical is a prime example of a big fat miss). Not all actors can sing or dance and explaining why the entire cast of a long-running show are suddenly performing intricately choreographed dance routines can be a struggle. It's fair to say that bad musical episodes are truly cringeworthy but good ones are something special indeed. Let's look at five of the best:

Buffy The Vampire Slayer - Once More With Feeling

A show where the lead character spends most of her time killing monsters and saving her friends from villainous kidnappers doesn't seem like the likeliest candidate for a musical episode, but Buffy's is the best one.

In it, a snappily-dressed demon is accidentally summoned and under his influence all of Sunnydale begins dancing and revealing their innermost thoughts through song. The episode was series creator Joss Whedon's first attempt at writing a musical and he took six months to write the script and score.

Alyson Hannigan (Willow) was so nervous about singing in the episode that a voice double was almost hired to sing her part. In the end, she found her confidence and sang, but vowed never to do it again.

Best bit: Anya singing about the evil of bunny rabbits.