25. BoJack Horseman
Who knew that a show about anthropomorphic animals could unflinchingly examine such existential human problems? BoJack Horseman explores the life of a 50-something alcoholic horse and his Hollywood friends. The story is equal parts industry satire and pitch black character study. The eponymous lead is never given the easy way out even as he makes increasingly worse life choices. We and BoJack must deal with the consequences of his actions — and there are episodes that are genuinely difficult to watch. Few shows go to darker places.
Thankfully, it’s also quite funny — particularly for fans of word play and sign gags.
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24. Community
Creator Dan Harmon’s Community gave audiences six seasons of a beautiful balancing act. On one hand, Community is a dissection of the medium — a meta celebration of television that revels in the tropes and clichés of various genres. But Community is also a classic sitcom about a group of misfits who become each other’s surrogate family. Its characters are well drawn and the story beats pack an emotional punch. That Harmon and his writing staff could maintain that balance and only occasionally let their high concept machinations get in the way of character is a testament to their skill.
We’re still waiting for the movie, though.
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23. Ted Lasso
Warm. Hopeful. Wholesome. Comforting. Ted Lasso is the television equivalent of a warm bath.
Jason Sudeikis and his team have taken a fairly one-note commercial for the Premier League and developed it into Apple TV+’s first smash hit. It’s a charming sports show that isn’t at all about sports. Ted Lasso (the show and the character) is unrelenting in its kindness, and its lack of cynicism is genuinely refreshing. There are still lessons to be learned and challenges to overcome, but even when things get low everything still carries an inherent niceness that is quite appealing.
(If you’re looking for a show with a similar tone give Joe Pera Talks With You a try).
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22. Fleabag
For some, humor is an enormously helpful tool when dealing with trauma. Fleabag is basically a two series British television show exploring that concept. Based on her one-woman show, Phoebe Waller-Bridge wrote and stars in this dark but deeply moving tragicomedy about a young woman navigating her life. Waller-Bridge beautifully portrays this deeply flawed character who is doing her best despite herself. The show cleverly breaks the fourth wall at times to allow her to directly address the audience, further drawing us into her inner world. Her Emmy was well-earned.
There is also a solid supporting cast, with Sian Clifford and Brett Gelman as standouts (playing Fleabag’s sister and husband, respectively). Olivia Coleman, to the shock of absolutely no one, is also excellent as Fleabag’s antagonistic godmother. You will laugh, you will cry, you will have wisely spent your time.
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21. The Dick Van Dyke Show
Created by Carl Reiner and informed by his experiences working as a writer and performer on sketch shows in the ’50’s, The Dick Van Dyke Show was one of the earliest television shows about making a television show (or at least, that was part of it). We follow Rob Petrie (played by Dick Van Dyke) as he juggles his life as a father in the suburbs of New York, and also his job as the head writer of The Alan Brady Show. While it may come off as antiquated to modern audiences, it was ahead of its time when it premiered in 1961. The Dick Van Dyke Show’s characters for example were all well drawn. From the leads to the supporting players, there was a richness and depth of character that helped the show stand out from its contemporaries.
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20. Curb Your Enthusiasm
Larry David is probably the only man on planet Earth who can say that he writes and stars in a television show as a hobby. He certainly doesn’t need the money — Larry probably takes in high eight figures each year from Seinfeld alone. Fortunately for us, he doesn’t let having a Scrooge McDuck-ian vault of cash get in the way of creating new seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm every once in a while.
Despite being heavily improvised, each episode is wonderfully structured — with story threads and details typically dovetailing into a satisfying if not awkward resolution. The seasons follow a similar format, giving the entire series a feeling of controlled chaos with the stubborn Larry David caught in the middle. It isn’t as consistently good as his other show, but Curb’s biggest laughs rival any found in Seinfeld.
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19. South Park
It is hard to talk about South Park — with its over 300 episodes — as a single continuous series. Like The Simpsons, it has been going so long we can now see the distinct eras in the show. The difference, though, is that instead of these eras being defined by various showrunners, South Park’s are based entirely on the wandering interests of creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
South Park started during the late ’90’s “Shock TV” era, and most of the jokes simply evolved out of the comedy of 8-year olds talking and acting vulgar. From there, Stone and Parker had periods where they were focused on political commentary, genre deconstruction, current events, and most recently serialized story-telling and stand-alone feature length movies. What’s amazing is that at 25-plus years and running, the quality has rarely dipped. The Simpsons certainly can’t make the same claim.
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18. All In The Family
Norman Lear’s sitcom is spectacularly written and uproariously funny, tackling controversial issues that are (unfortunately) as relevant today as they were in the ’70’s. The lead character, Archie Bunker, is the famously bigoted patriarch of his family, a satirical portrayal of an aging and raging conservative. The show unflinchingly explores the tension between Archie and those around him who don’t share his prejudices.
The question for the unbigoted viewer, though, is does the show glorify Archie’s bigotry and give it a voice — or does it hold a mirror up to it? Archie is typically made the fool by the end, but he’s also given a platform to spout his nonsense in the meantime. That’s the trouble with satire…those being satirized might not get the joke. If you can reconcile that, All in the Family is an incredible sitcom which still holds up today.
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17. Roseanne
Roseanne wasn’t the first show to depict the day-to-day life of a working class family, but it is certainly one of the most honest. The Conner’s were relatable — a dysfunctional but loving clan who were as likely to show their affection for each other with a sharp insult than they were a warm hug. The Conner household actually looked lived in, with dishes floundering in the sink and laundry scandalously overflowing from the basket. The realities of living paycheck to paycheck while raising kids was presented to an audience looking to see themselves on their television screens. It is the kind of show that we still need more of today.
Warning to those who want to revisit this classic, do what the reboot did and pretend that season nine never happened. It takes the show so far away from its original premise that it is almost insulting to the audience the show cultivated.
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16. The Golden Girls
There aren’t enough shows like The Golden Girls. Created by the prolific Susan Harris and starring three sitcom veterans plus one veteran stage actress, this was a series that centered the issues and day to day lives of older single women in a time when they were typically marginalized to the fringes of film and television. It showed audiences that there’s life after 50, that there’s life after marriage, that life can still be fun and interesting and worth exploring even when you’ve left the target demo.
The chemistry between the four leads is off the charts, and the writing is still whip smart. The Golden Girls probably holds up better today than any other show from its era.
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15. Friends
The biggest criticism you can apply to Friends, even during its peak seasons, is that it is probably the least “New York” of any of the big New York sitcoms. The sanitized and lifeless place that our six friends live is comically divorced from reality. Despite that minor detail, this is still one of the best sitcoms of all-time. The chemistry of the leads is incredible, and once the writers started writing for the actors they cast and not the characters they had imagined on the page, the show took off like a rocket. There are so many iconic moments, many coming from leaned into mistakes or improvisations from the cast. David Schwimmer in particular deserves additional flowers as he is an all-time underrated physical comedian.
By the end, the show gets a bit schmaltzy and starts to buckle under the weight of the babies and the will-they-won’t-they of it all. However, there’s way way way more good than bad here.
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14. Veep
Creator Armando Iannucci took the formula he developed in the UK with his groundbreaking series In The Thick of It and refined it further — sprinkling in some uniquely American political insanity to bring us Veep. It’s a relentlessly sharp and hilarious satire of D.C. politics. This thing is absolutely bursting at the seams with amazing comedic performances as the cast crawls over one another in their attempts to portray the worst person in Washington. Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Selina Meyer, a shameless politician desperate to transcend her position as Veep and take her place as the first female American President, is arguably her greatest performance in a career where she’s already played two classic sitcom characters.
Anyone who is a fan of insults or lanyards should do themselves a favor and check out this show.
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13. The Office
The US version of The Office may not be as smart or as biting as the UK original. It leans away from realism into pure silliness a bit too often, but it is still the superior show. The relationships are richer, the characters more well drawn, and there are moments in the US version that pack a serious emotional punch. I guess that’s what happens when you produce 201 episodes vs 14.
Surprisingly, The Office is as popular now as it was when it went off the air in 2012. One wonders if its popularity today among younger audiences is some version of a social relationship mixed with a bit of nostalgia? There are many young people loving The Office who have entered the workforce only to find such jobs offering that brand of stable employment and work/life balance simply don’t exist. It will be interesting to see how fandom for this classic mockumentary on the American workplace will change over time.
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12. Taxi
The Brilliance of Taxi (and really the tragedy) is that nearly everyone who works for the Sunshine Cab Company dreams of doing something else. A boxer, an actor, an artist…the episodes often tease a chance at leaving the garage for greener pastures — only for our characters to end up back where they started. It’s the perpetual treadmill existing inside of a sitcom. It’s only the family they’ve formed, among a group of cabbies in a Manhattan garage, that keeps them sane enough to carry on.
Funny, touching and filled with an all-star cast of people who would go on to have massive careers, Taxi is an all-time classic.
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11. Parks & Recreation
The Office’s kinder, sillier, more hopeful little brother. Parks & Recreation stood out among its peers in the 2010’s in the way it shied away from cynicism and adopted lead character Leslie Knope’s full-throated belief in creating the change you want to see in the world through gumption and kindness.
Parks & Recreation’s strength was that the writers were never afraid to change things up as the show progressed. A tonal shift from season one to two, adding major characters to the cast every few seasons, escalating Leslie’s ambition over time — Parks was never afraid to march away from the status quo (something co-creator Greg Schur would expand upon with The Good Place). Like Ted Lasso, Parks & Recreation is filled with mostly nice people, or at least people who mean well, and it makes Pawnee a delightful place to visit 22 minutes at a time.
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10. 30 Rock
30 Rock is about as close as anyone has got to creating a live action show that captures the energy and ambition of peak-era Simpsons. The jokes come at a dizzying pace, almost as if they’re providing cover for the patently absurd plotlines. The world is fully realized and chock-full of side characters complete with catchphrases and gimmicks armed and ready to steal any scene they wander into. Unlike a Cheers or Frasier, the jokes and non-sequiturs are rarely reacted to as such within the reality of the show — instead taken at face value by the other characters who plow through them with some other insane remark of their own. The series deploys cutaway gags almost as often as Family Guy.
30 Rock IS a cartoon, minus all of the laborious animation. It’s also an incredibly well crafted, hilarious single camera sitcom with some of the most quotable lines of any show on this list.
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9. The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The first thing said about The Mary Tyler Moore Show typically is that it’s a groundbreaking series. A show about a single, independent woman focused on her career in the 1970’s was like a unicorn. It focused on problems that women faced in the workplace, and didn’t allow itself to give cheap answers to complex issues. It was an explicitly feminist show with something to say about a woman’s place in the world.
That is all absolutely true. But let us not forget to also mention that The Mary Tyler Moore show is also uproariously funny. If you have not seen the season 6 episode “Chuckles Bites the Dust” at least once, you are doing yourself a disservice. Moore is an excellent straight woman to the goofy but still grounded supporting cast.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show changed television. And did so while being one of the funniest shows of all time.
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8. Frasier
When Frasier Crane first appeared on Cheers, the character’s comedy typically stemmed from the juxtaposition of this overeducated and uptight psychiatrist with the rest of the blue collar regulars at the iconic Boston watering hole. Years later, when Frasier was spun off into his own show, the writers made the brilliant decision to double down on that.
The original premise stayed the same, with his father Martin, Martin’s live-in caregiver Daphne, and his on-air producer Roz all acting as that blue collar chorus to counterbalance Frasier’s pretensions. It was Frasier’s brother Niles, though, that was the master stroke. Now we had the one person who could out “Frasier” Frasier. Our lead could still be the butt of some jokes while also having someone to trade insults with without appearing to punch down. It makes the whole thing work.
Each episode is a small comedy of manners or a high brow farce. The writing is superb. It is an intellectually engaging but easily digestible sitcom that still holds up.
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7. Arrested Development
Arrested Development is the rare show that comes to us fully baked from the very first episode. Creator Mitch Hurwitz sets the table for his short lived yet groundbreaking comedy series with one of the best pilots ever put to paper. It’s so good, in fact, that that pilot was awarded the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series.
The first thing new viewers of Arrested will notice is the speed. Joke upon joke upon reference upon joke. One of the series’ strengths is always said to be that it rewards re-watches, which is true, but that’s not just to notice how many payoffs come episodes or even seasons after a subtle setup. Rather, the show is just in such a hurry to get to the next great idea that you probably missed something. The Netflix seasons that came almost a decade after its first cancellation are good — but not at the same level as the first three seasons. They’re more concerned with playing with structure and teasing out a larger mystery than putting together lean, satisfying episodes. Even still, Arrested Development stands as one of the greatest single camera sitcoms ever produced.
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6. NewsRadio
One of the most underrated sitcoms of all time, NewsRadio has a lot in common with Arrested Development. The show was fast-paced and too smart for its own good. The stories were occasionally insane. The ensemble cast had that perfect balance of love and hate that explained why everyone kept showing up to work without doing anything silly like learning lessons or hugging. The pilot, like Arrested, is nearly perfect.
There’s a weirdness and irreverence to every episode of NewsRadio that feels perfect for a show about people supposed to be doing something so serious and sacrosanct as “delivering the news.” You’d be forgiven if you caught a random episode and assumed they all worked at National Lampoon and not WNYX all-news radio.
The show becomes extra special following the murder of Phil Hartman. His career cut short, every minute of his time spent entertaining us needs to be celebrated and revisited. He was a comedic genius, and his performance here as anchor Bill McNeal is arguably his best work.
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5. Cheers
Cheers is actually two very different shows during its eleven season run. The first five seasons of Cheers, with some exceptions of course, revolved mostly around Sam Malone and Diane Chambers’ classic “will they won’t they” relationship. From moment one of the pilot episode their sexual tension is the elephant in the ro- , er, bar — and the show feels like a collection of funny and supremely well-written televised plays.
From season six until the end of the series, once Diane was written out of the show and replaced with Rebeccah Howe, the show broadened and leaned heavily on its ensemble. It was still Cheers but somehow it felt lighter, sillier, less burdened with the weight of Sam & Diane’s star-crossed romance. Less of a comedy with drama and more a straight sitcom.
Incredibly, both “versions” of Cheers would be top 10 shows on their own. Together, as one cohesive series run, they are among the greatest sitcoms of all time.
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4. I Love Lucy
Despite the fact the gender politics of the show have not aged particularly well (it did air about seven decades ago), I Love Lucy is still one of the great sitcoms. It’s not only because of its indelible leading lady, but also because Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were trailblazers in the genre from a technical perspective. Among other innovations, I Love Lucy was the first multi-camera show filmed in front of a live studio audience, preserving the energy and connection with the crowd that had made Lucy’s prior radio productions so successful. They were also pioneers in the concept of the re-run, as they had recorded their multi-cam series on film.
Of course, none of it works without Lucille Ball’s magnetic screen presence. She is one of the great physical comedians of her or any era, and she was also gifted with an incredibly expressive face that worked perfectly for television. So many of the show’s most memorable moments are accompanied by some kind of tumble or pratfall, and an exaggerated frown.
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3. The Larry Sanders Show
Hey now!
After years of guest hosting for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, Larry Sanders took that experience and instead of waiting for a late night chair to open up, went and made one of the most entertaining comedies about show business of all time: The Larry Sanders Show. The production was a hybrid, with the on-camera portion of Larry’s fake talk show recorded on tape and the off-camera parts of Larry’s life captured on film. The celebrity cameos are of course incredible, especially with so many major stars willing to come on and lampoon their public persona.
What makes the show work, though, is its core trio of characters. Larry, of course, playing a heightened version of himself, the narcissistic yet deeply insecure host; Rip Torn as his mercurial Producer Artie who may or may not be a functional alcoholic; and of course Jeffrey Tambor as Larry’s lovably pathetic sidekick Hank Kingsley, perhaps the greatest sitcom character ever put on screen.
The show revels in the fakeness and insincerity of Hollywood, though unlike shows like Curb or Entourage, Larry Sanders doesn’t lose sight of the humanity of its characters. Here you’ll find deep belly laughs and some incredibly touching moments.
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2. Seinfeld
Re-watching Seinfeld again, I was struck by how the show not-so-subtly intimates that this fictional version of Jerry Seinfeld is doing quite well for himself despite his modest apartment. Of course, his mother always worries that he’s broke, but that doesn’t stop Jerry from feeding his neighbor, picking up most checks at the diner, buying his father a Cadillac and then having to buy it again, never bothering to cash checks from both his Grandmother and his royalties from the Japanese show Super Terrific Happy Hour… on and on it goes.
That’s neither here nor there, but then again so is most of what happens on Seinfeld. There’s not much new to say to tell you why Seinfeld is one of if not the greatest sitcom of all-time. Fantastic writing with dovetailing stories, excellent comedic acting from all four leads, memorable guest stars. For a show about nothing, there’s a whole lot to love.
Here’s a fun game for any Seinfeld super fan to play with friends: Put on the closing stand-up bit from Jerry as the credits start to flash on screen, and see if you can guess which episode it’s from. Some are harder than others.
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1. The Simpsons
There’s no reason to argue any more about if and when The Simpsons became “not good.” There are perfectly cromulent episodes in every season, from 1 to 33. The show has been on the air so long that at this point your preference for different seasons or eras likely comes down to your date of birth rather than your taste or sense of humor.
The Simpsons has transcended just being a comedy series, and has become a piece of Americana. The jokes, one-liners and memes have completely permeated our culture. Merriam-Webster added “embiggen” to the dictionary in 2018. It is infinitely quotable and has made so many references and gags to have predicted all possible future events.
There will never be another show like it. It’s the best comedy series of all time.
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