The best TV comedies on Netflix

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend—Rachel Bloom’s exploration of one woman’s obsessive, semi-disturbed psyche through song and dance—is a feat of unbridled creativity that is almost as miraculously incisive as it is hilarious. The songwriting team ingeniously finds the right musical style to slyly comment on the action: a about “tapping that ass,” a , and a bizarrely dystopian riff on the that references Hocus Pocus multiple times. With these interludes, the show constantly examines how people respond to popular culture and mold their lives to fit its ideals. Heroine Rebecca Bunch is the ultimate offender when it comes to buying into the narratives media sells. After all, she picks up and moves to West Covina to follow her “one true love” in the pilot. But Bloom and co-creator Aline Brosh McKenna never belittle Rebecca for her overly romantic brain. They craft each character delicately, layering them with depth, all the while hooking viewers with the same clichés they aim to lampoon. (Because ?) Even as it moved into its second season, Crazy Ex-Girlfrienddidn’t lose steam. Now we just need to —maybe viewership will be mandatory in Friendtopia (just like Hocus Pocus). []

Few film-to-TV adaptations end up working out, in part because few feature-length premises can bear being fleshed out for a 10-episode (let alone the old 22) order. If you got bored watching everyone get Taken from Liam Neeson after a while, imagine trying to maintain interest in an ongoing prequel about the covert agent. But Justin Simien’s  is an outlier here—the movie was just begging to be fleshed out so it could become something more than a civics lesson for said white people. There’s no hand-holding in this 10-part Netflix series, which devotes every half hour—each more biting than the last—to a different student’s perspective. But Simien maintains an overarching storyline, offering an emotional catharsis as well as a payoff for the more serialized aspect of the comedy, while still leaving room for season two. []

Channel 4’s Derry Girls is a treasure trove of unforgettable coming-of-age moments centered around four teenage girls from Northern Ireland. As the regional conflict of the late 20th century rages in the background, the everyday woes of Erin, Orla, Michelle, and Clare fuel one of the funniest shows currently on air. The sixth episode of season one capped an already stellar arc with a courageous moment from Clare, the group’s studious, most high-strung member. After anonymously writing an essay about her experience as a closeted lesbian for her Catholic school’s newspaper, Clare claims ownership of the story (and her sexuality) to her best friend, Erin. Though Erin’s initial response is to urge Clare to remain in the closet, Clare stands firmly by her decision to be openly gay and forces Erin to reevaluate her own ignorance. It’s an incredibly vulnerable moment that reintroduces Clare as a leader. It also emphasizes just how much of a roller coaster coming to terms with your own sexuality can be. []

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Documentary Now! might be the best tribute to nonfiction filmmaking ever conceived. A band of veterans—Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen, John Mulaney, Rhys Thomas, Alex Buono—somehow convinced a TV network to let them write and perform half-hour homages to documentaries. It’s fun just to watch recreations of films like Grey Gardens, Jiro Dreams Of Sushi, and Swimming To Cambodia, but the best episodes of Documentary Now! inject an offbeat personal touch that expands and rewrites the original source material. It’s touching to witness the amount of passion and work put into such a niche project. Who creates a Sondheim musical parody if not for the sheer love of the game? []

Based on Charles S. Forsman’s graphic novel of the same name, it’s a criminal road-trip movie with a couple of twists: Not only are James and Alyssa teenagers, he’s a budding psychopath who constantly fantasizes about murder and she’s a nihilistic rebel who just wants to fuck shit up. They’re matches and gasoline, and they’re only intermittently cute: Instead, they’re confused, damaged, and potentially dangerous, and the world that they encounter together is mostly unforgiving. It’s funny and sweet at moments, sure, like when Alyssa—played by Jessica Barden—takes out her frustrations on the owner of a gas station. But James—Alex Lawther of the unforgettable —is filled with bloody, violent thoughts that flash gruesomely on screen, especially in the early going. There’s always a sense that The End Of The Fucking World could go even darker. Without revealing too much, it does. []

When Ruth Wilder shows up at an audition for a women’s wrestling show, she brings all the know-it-all ambition of an aspiring Hollywood actor, smugly dreaming up a complex backstory for a character who just needs to know how to take a back drop. Played by Alison Brie with true vulnerability, Wilder joins the fictionalized Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling, a real-life pro-wrestling promotion from the late ’80s. Netflix’s “inspired by” version of GLOW’s origins can be lighthearted and fun, but it’s also filled with women who are in need—of love, attention, jobs, money, support. Trying to find those things among a dozen misfit women, led by a pitch-perfect Marc Maron as their down-on-his-luck director, leads to predictably funny scenes, but also a lot of suffering, both in and out of the ring.The personal feud between Ruth and her former best friend, Debbie Eagan (Betty Gilpin), makes for some of the show’s more heartrending moments, but it also indirectly leads to a wonderfully straightforward abortion scene, the likes of which are rarely seen in pop culture. GLOW is explicit but matter-of-fact about the lives of these women from only a generation prior and all the forces working against them. There’s a woman whose father and brothers were all professional wrestlers, but they won’t let her participate; there’s women of color who are forced to play to hyper-exaggerated stereotypes; and even a cash-strapped medical student. In spite of or because of that, it’s also a warmly funny show with plenty of laughs. GLOW’s spandex-clad friendships and neon-lit heartaches are practically perfect entertainment. []

So much television—so much art—grapples with what it means to be good, but The Good Place makes that philosophical conundrum its entire crux. Michael Schur has, yet again, created a world full of flawed yet genuinely lovable characters trying their best to help one another. The Good Place uses a high-concept premise to burrow into complex ideas about morality and humanity, and it does so while still being outrageously funny, aided of course by a stack cast of greats like Ted Danson and Kristen Bell but also formidable newcomers like D’Arcy Carden, Manny Jacinto, William Jackson Harper, Jameela Jamil, and Kirby Howell-Baptiste. Together, they’ve helped craft a TV family of weirdos worth rooting for. []

The embarrassment of riches in this show really is embarrassing: Grace and Frankie (real-life best friends Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin) discover that their husbands of 40 years (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston, respectively) are leaving them to marry each other. Straight-laced Grace and much-looser Frankie are now stuck with each other, and where do they go from here as seventysomethings? This brimming premise is aided by showrunner and Friends vet Marta Kaufman, who brings her quick and dry multi-cam humor to this more elegant single-cam sitcom, which got even sharper in season two. The supporting cast is highlighted by gems like Ernie Hudson (a prospective new suitor for Frankie) and June Diane Raphael (Grace’s daughter Brianna, who’s just as tough as she is). Laugh-out-loud moments abound right along tear-inducing ones as these two women figure out how to move on, thanks to their surprising fledgling friendship. []

Merely hearing the word Girlfriends still conjures up Angie Stone’s soulful voice and the image of four Black best friends living life in Los Angeles. Joan (Tracee Ellis Ross), the uptight attorney who dreamed of wearing a white dress. Maya (Golden Brooks), the working-class wife and mother turned “authoress.” Lynn (Persia White), the sexually-free freeloader. And Toni (Jill Marie Jones), the bourgeoisie real estate broker from Fresno. These four characters made up the friendship core of the legendary sitcom for several seasons.Series creator Mara Brock Akil, who’d gotten her start writing on shows like South Central, Moesha, and The Jamie Foxx Show, was disheartened by the in shows like and . , another iconic show created by, for, and about Black women, had ended in 1998, leaving a void in television representation just waiting to be filled. Insert Brock Akil, who teamed up with actor and producer Kelsey Grammer to do just that. The goal of the half-hour comedy, which debuted 20 years ago next month, was simple: to give Black women a seat at the table.Along with its iconic theme song, Girlfriends is continuously celebrated for its accurate and relatable portrayal of Black women. This distinction is thanks to Brock Akil and her writer’s room that consisted mostly of Black women approaching Girlfriends almost like “a documentary of our experiences,” tackling everything from colorism and AIDS to domestic violence and cultural appropriation. Despite the humor and at times absurdity rampant throughout the series, Girlfriends avoided trivializing any of these issues. At the core of everything was friendship—just four Black women from different socio-economic backgrounds facing life’s triumphs and challenges together. Well, four Black women and their honorary “girlfriend,” the corny, yet lovable lawyer William (Reggie Hayes). []

Now that most broadcast shows would kill for the type of ratings that kept  on the verge of cancellation for most of its run, NBC seems to be back in the business of cultivating quality comedies, regardless of their Nielsen potential. (And if they happen to be owned by the network’s parent company, that’s all the better.) It’s good news for Great News, the zippy sitcom created by 30 Rock alum Tracey Wigfield, executive-produced by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, and set behind the scenes at a cable news show. From the emotionally stunted TV professional in the lead role (Briga Heelan as Katie Wendelson, finally stealing scenes in a show of her own) to the sprightly instrumental score by Jeff Richmond, it’s all very reminiscent of the last show Wigfield, Fey, and Carlock all worked on together. Great News fills a 30 Rock-shaped void in the network schedule while building its own, whacked-out world of deluded and/or oblivious onscreen talent (John Michael Higgins and Nicole Richie as the surprise comedic double act of the year) and fast-flying punchlines. But the high-concept twist doubles as its secret weapon: Andrea Martin as Katie’s mom, Carol, who takes an internship at her daughter’s show, setting in motion parallel arcs about the second act of Carol’s life and the first act of Katie’s, both of which draw tremendous comedic power from the fact that neither mother nor daughter can leave the other alone. Throw in the season-long background gag that blossoms into the driving force of the final episodes, and you’ve got a workplace sitcom that lives up to the example of its beloved predecessor while displaying a level of ambition that exceeds its unjustly meager ratings. [Erik Adams]

: Happy Endings is one of those shows whose cancellation still inspires gnashing of teeth and rending of garments from its audience—while people who never saw the sitcom during its three-season run on ABC look on perplexed. On the surface, the show just looks like any of a number of urban ensemble “hangout comedies,” like , , , even . But the show—following six Chicago friends who try to keep the gang together after flighty Alex (Elisha Cuthbert) leaves wannabe “cool guy” Dave (Zachary Knighton) at the altar—deserves a closer look. It shares an unbridled group chemistry with the shows mentioned above, but its bizzaro dialogue and deep reserve of pop-culture references—all delivered at light speed—were unlike that of any other series. What other hangout sitcom would drop jokes about flowy pants from Angela Bassett’s fictional fashion line (“Bassett By Angela For Angela Bassett”), a homemade trashcan stove (a.k.a. “trove”), or a food truck called Steak Me Home Tonight?

There are plenty of talented writers and performers who never quite clicked on  but then went on to success elsewhere, but Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave is a uniquely defiant sort of triumph. A sketch showcase all built around the ingeniously off-putting, singularly strange sensibilities of the former SNL featured performer, this Netflix series offers up nothing but unfiltered Robinson, holding down the sort of 10-to-one sketch premises his former TV home traditionally—even understandably—shaves off of its more viewer-friendly design. Picking up from his gleefully weird episode of Netflix’s , Robinson’s collection of sketches swerve inexorably into its characters’ frantic need to not be the butt of the joke, all while Robinson’s pop-eyed gaze becomes ever more glassy with the dawning certainty that there’s no steering out of the skid. Gathering others similarly and constitutionally prone to pushing comic ideas deep into the red of viewers’ comfort meters (Will Forte, Tim Heidecker, Vanessa Bayer, Fred Willard, Kate Berlant, Robinson’s  partner Sam Richardson), Robinson’s playlets of exquisite humiliation, sweaty denial about humiliation, and scatological obsession take cringe comedy into undiscovered realms of discomfort, while still, in Robinson’s Mad Magazine-pliable countenance, finding the human comedy in universal embarrassment. Only more so. []

As romantic comedies struggled to find their place on the big screen this decade, some of the best ones emerged on the small screen instead. One of the crown jewels in the TV rom-com canon is Jane The Virgin, Jennie Snyder Urman’s effervescent update of a Venezuelan telenovela. Hilarious, heartfelt, and impeccably narrated, Jane The Virgin used the story of a 23-year-old virgin who’s accidentally artificially inseminated as a jumping-off point to tell humanistic stories about family, faith, love, and the immigrant experience. In a decade full of gritty, hypermasculine dramas, Jane The Virgin carved out a space for bright, colorful, funny, women-centric TV comedies that rejected the label “guilty pleasure” and instead proudly owned their place among some of the best TV out there. []

Many comedians have attempted the autobiographical sitcom, but with Lady Dynamite, Maria Bamford to fit her own life and mind: The delirious, hyper-meta series both reflects and recounts her experience with bipolar disorder and severe anxiety, juggling three timelines, talking pugs, and a continuous stream of hilarious, smart surprises. It’s a lot to take in, but then, so is the BAMF’s comedic versatility, which was on full display for two brief, explosive seasons. []

Judd Apatow, Lesley Arfin, and Paul Rust set such a deliberate pace for this romantic comedy, the two leads don’t even meet cute until the final scene of the 40-minute premiere. To put that in perspective: Cue up Love at the same time someone else is starting Roman Holiday, and Gus (Rust) will be bailing Mickey (Gillian Jacobs) out of a convenience-store bind while Joe Bradley is already promising his editor an exclusive interview with Princess Ann. In a more contemporary version of this exercise, it only takes three minutes of  for the heroine to reconnect with Mark Darcy and mentally object to his reindeer jumper. At the same point in Love, there are multiple zip codes (and at least two other people) separating Gus and Mickey. It’s all part of the plan: The creators set out to capture an honest picture of courtship, dating, and sex, and nowhere is that more apparent than in how Love progresses. The first episode doesn’t rush to get Rust and Jacobs together in the same room; the rest of the series takes its time in getting the characters together, period. Eventually, there are breakups and hook-ups and make-ups here, bad dates chronicled practically in real time (to maximum comedic effect), and sex (mostly bad, some good) depicted in frank, unaffected fashion. But the show is just as interested in the moments that get cut out of the typical rom-com montage, scenes spent with the individual Love-birds and their respective gaggles of L.A.-area associates. It’s a perfect vessel for one of big-screen comedy’s most creative meanderers. []

It’s hard to do comedy and action at the same time, especially if you’re expected to take either aspect seriously at all. But Netflix’s Medical Police—a semi-explicit follow-up to Adult Swim’s Childrens Hospital—tries to sidestep that issue by choosing not to take either aspect seriously, embracing the very silly humor of the original series while adding an explicitly goofy and absurd action plot on top of it. Reprising their characters from , Medical Police stars Rob Huebel and Erinn Hayes as a pair of doctors at a children’s hospital that is definitely in Brazil who stumble onto a medical mystery and quickly—like, in a matter of minutes—join the CDC’s secret black-ops division in a battle against international bio-terrorists. []

And now for something completely essential: The groundbreaking sketch show that spent several years bouncing around the streamosphere (RIP Seeso) landed on Netflix in 2018, accompanied by Life Of Brian, various live recordings, a smattering of documentaries, curated compilations, and the Pythons’ brief attempt to translate their quintessentially British silliness into German. But it all started with this—well, technically it started with the stuff glimpsed in Monty Python: Before The Flying Circus ()—four series of stream-of-consciousness absurdities linked by surreal animations, prone to self-aware interruptions, and rightly praised for turning the square realm of midcentury television inside out. Sure, you can get the highlights compressed into the also-streaming anthology Parrot Sketch Not Included, but with the complete Flying Circus, you get “The Spanish Inquisition” (though you’d never expect it), “Argument Clinic,” and “The Ministry Of Silly Walks” in their original context. Plus, this way, you get to see that dead (passed on! Ceased to be! ex-) parrot. [Erik Adams]

Though Zooey Deschanel’s “adorkable” Jessica Day was the ostensible star of New Girl—she was the “new girl”—the secret to what made it great was Jess’ three (sometimes four) lovably wacky male roommates: Depressive sad-sack/aspiring novelist Nick (Jake Johnson), directionless former basketball player/cat owner player Winston (Lamorne Morris), and Schmidt (Max Greenfield), whose self-involvement masks deep insecurities and sympathies. It took some time for the show to find where each of them fit in the dynamic, but once it did New Girl became a brilliant ensemble piece. Over seven seasons, the characters bonded, planned some classic mess-arounds, suffered the indignity of receiving too many wedding invites, and played countless rounds of an impenetrably complex drinking game called True American. []

People love to complain about “too many remakes,” but One Day At A Time makes a strong case for reinventing existing stories, taking all of the themes and humor of the original Norman Lear sitcom, and applying them to a less white, not-so-straight world. Gloria Calderón Kellett and Mike Royce’s Netflix series is poignant and timely, folding racial, queer, and mental-health themes into its sitcom setups about a Cuban American family. Isabella Gomez’s Elena is a breakthrough for young lesbian representation, and Justina Machado is the powerhouse that fuels the show’s light family comedy as well as its dark family drama. And the show proves it’s possible to take risks even within the seemingly restrictive formula of a multi-cam. []

Russian Doll takes on universal themes like regret, loneliness, and the wounds of childhood, but it’s at its best when it remains defiantly particular. The series sets up a primary setting—a never-ending, Lower East Side birthday party for Natasha Lyonne’s hedonistic, world-weary Nadia Vulvokov—adds the Groundhog Day twist that Nadia keeps dying and winding up right back at the party, and then spools outward from there. Though Nadia investigates lots of very different, seedy parts of a very specific, seedy version of New York, she never really finds any firm answers about what is happening to her. Instead, Lyonne and co-creator, director, and writer Leslye Headland wisely allow the series to serve as a chaotic meditation on a variety of ideas, all contained by the same sensibility. All of the heavily memed parts of Russian Doll work, partly because they’re funny, but also because they feel like part of the same world, even if no one is willing to explain just what the boundaries of that world are. Lots of shows can plot an intricate line, but Russian Doll manages to take on the same shape as its protagonist’s life: a mesmerizing, unsettling spiral. []

Eugene and Dan Levy’s fish-out-of-water sitcom deserves mention among the decade’s defining programs if only for where, when, why, and how it found an audience. A decorated hit in its native Canada, Schitt’s Creek was an object of cultish devotion in the States—until it hit Netflix, at which point anyone with an internet connection was saying, “Ew, David!” But it’s also in this conversation because it’s aged like a fine “Herb Erflinger” (Burt Herngeif? Irv Herb-blinger?) fruit wine, as the story of a wealthy family who lost everything (and the one town that had no choice but to keep them all together) expanded to encompass ever more idiosyncratic Catherine O’Hara enunciations, uproariously circular Rose family arguments, and more heart than any show with this title ought to have. []

“ is famously a “show about nothing,” but there are plenty of episodes that are, in fact, about something. Even as they hewed to the production’s “no hugging, no learning” rule, the writers incorporated weighty social issues into their scripts to see how four narcissists would contend with them.” [] . For more reading, here’s on playing the sitcom’s iconic villain, and .

The setup for Special would sound implausible if it was’t being pulled directly from creator and star Ryan O’Connell’s life: O’Connell rose to prominence in the 2010s a star blogger at Thought Catalog, writing with zippy frankness beneath headlines like “How To Fall In Love With A Boy For The First Time,” “5 Signs You Definitely Don’t Have Your Shit Together,” and “Coming Out Of The Disabled Closet.” The subject of that last post is the point around which Special’s first season spins: Like the actual O’Connell, the TV Ryan covers up his cerebral palsy when he gets his first big break, hired as an intern for Eggwoke, a fictional website that’s pivoting from “brilliant, millennial, LOLz-y satire” to aggressive trolling. There’s more to Special than its on-point send-up of contemporary digital media; within the span of its 15-minute episodes, the first season finds enough room to tell the story of a late-bloomer experiencing true independence for the first time (and affording his mother, played by Jessica Hecht, some of the same), in the quippy, hyper-referential style of O’Connell’s prose. The candor remains, too, as evidenced by the scene in which Ryan loses his virginity, which mixes in some light slapstick before getting real about the mechanics of anal sex. []

Following short-lived cult favorites like and and , it’s great to see Matt Berry at the front of a show that ran longer than six episodes, inhabiting a character tailored to his knack for playing louche buffoons with infinite reserves of self-regard. It’s by far his most conventional TV work to date—hence the multiple series and the BAFTA Award—but “conventional” here still means colorful character names (obvious favorite: recording engineer Clem Fandango), a lived-in showbiz universe populated by loonies in tacky clothing, and a sharp ear for catchy tunes and sound-effect gags. []

Created by Lisa Hanawalt, who’s behind the striking, whimsical design of BoJack Horseman, Tuca & Bertie is raucous, heartfelt, surreal, and distinctly female. Bird Town, the fictional city where Tuca (the irrepressible Tiffany Haddish) and Bertie (the always incisive Ali Wong) live isn’t quite an island paradise like Themyscira—there are a few regular male characters, including Steven Yeun as Bertie’s delightfully average but well-meaning boyfriend Speckle. But the city design, a playful blend of Marcey Hawk and M.C. Escher with its boob-emblazoned mid-rises and twisting roads, is all Hanawalt, whose wall-to-wall gags on BoJack prompt rubbernecking from even the most focused binge watchers. So are : a boisterous id and self-flagellating superego, which often drown out the moderating influence of the ego. []

Those mourning the loss of 30 Rock would quickly be cheered by Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Tina Fey and Robert Carlock’s absurdist tale of an Indiana woman (Ellie Kemper) released after spending her formative years in captivity, ready to reinvent herself in New York City. Kimmy’s indefatigable optimism helped defeat the crap hand she was dealt in life, aided by theatrical roommate Titus (Tituss Burgess), advantageous socialite Jacqueline (Jane Krakowski), and street-savvy landlord Lillian (Carol Kane). You had to watch episodes multiples times to catch all of the fast-and-furious in-jokes, and some, like Titus going “Lemonading,” were straight-up unparalleled. The series even wrapped up beautifully, with our heroine figuring out how to use her own trauma to help other people with theirs, in the most Kimmy way imaginable. []

The title : This is a new series, tonally consistent with but separate from Bob Odenkirk and David Cross’ previous sketch series, . Comparisons between the two are inevitable—not that With Bob And David suffers from them in any way. In the space of four half-hour(ish) episodes, Odenkirk and Cross’ Netflix effort meets (and sometimes exceeds) the expectations set by their previous cult classic, rediscovering and revitalizing its tone and wit, but not its overarching fussiness. These episodes don’t hurry themselves along: A riff on The Most Dangerous Game gets all the beats it needs to level the playing field between adventurer Cross and accountant Odenkirk; an interrogation scene begins like a tweaked good cop/bad cop scenario, before the suspect gets sucked into a game of passive-aggressive telephone between investigators. Everyone’s a little more willing to bend the reality of a sketch, too: , Cross nonchalantly ends the transaction with, “Here, this is fake—you can keep all of it.” The less time spent representing an authentic food-delivery experience, the more time he and his castmates get to rib Paul F. Tompkins about a purportedly ludicrous New Year’s resolution. All four episodes are enlivened by little bits of embroidery like this, and if they happen to link two sketches together, that’s just gravy. With Bob And David never strains to fit its puzzle pieces in place. []