Schitt’s Creek
A rich family loses everything except a small town they bought as a joke, and six seasons later you will cry at a wedding. The setup is a fish out of water sitcom; the show it becomes is one of…
Genre Comedy
The Good Place
Eleanor Shellstrop dies and ends up in the wrong afterlife, and the show that follows is the smartest high concept comedy ever aired. Every season reinvents itself (the season 1 finale is one of the great TV twists), and underneath…
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
The precinct sitcom with the best ensemble on broadcast TV. Andy Samberg’s Jake Peralta is a manchild detective who is actually great at his job, and around him the show builds one of the deepest comedy benches ever: Holt’s deadpan…
Modern Family
The family sitcom of its decade, done with a mockumentary sheen and a cast with chemistry most shows would kill for. Three branches of one big family: the traditional Dunphys, the older man with the younger wife, and the gay…
Beavis and Butt-Head
Two idiots laugh at music videos. That was the whole pitch in 1993, and somehow Mike Judge built one of the most influential animated shows ever out of it, then handed the culture the template for idiot comedy that everything…
King of the Hill
The quiet masterpiece of adult animation. Where its loud cousins went for shock, King of the Hill built a sitcom about a Texas propane salesman and his family that plays like a live action show that happens to be drawn.…
South Park
Still the sharpest satire on television after 25 plus years, which is almost impossible. South Park’s superpower is speed: a six day production cycle that lets an episode about Tuesday’s news air that same week, and a willingness to attack…
Bob’s Burgers
The Belcher family runs a burger restaurant that never quite succeeds, and the show around them is the warmest thing in adult animation. Where its peers went for edge, Bob’s Burgers went for heart: a family that genuinely likes each…
The Simpsons
The most important animated show ever made, and it is not particularly close. Thirty plus seasons in, The Simpsons invented the modern animated sitcom twice over: once as a phenomenon that dominated the 90s, and again as the foundation every…
Bad Monkey
A severed arm washed up in the Keys pulls a suspended detective into a Florida noir, and Vince Vaughn finally gets the role his motormouth was built for. Carl Hiaasen’s brand of environmental crime comedy survives the adaptation fully intact,…