40. “Flight Of The Conchords” (2007-2009)
Musical comedy can be a horrifying prospect in the best of times, and perhaps doubly so on TV, as anyone who sat through any of “Cop Rock” would attest to. But HBO show “Flight Of The Conchords,” an adaptation of the stage act by Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, proved to be an unmitigated joy. The comic songs (“The Most Beautiful Girl (In The Room),” “Hiphopapotamus vs. Rhymenoceros,” “Too Many Dicks On The Dancefloor”) are wonderful, hummable pastiche, but it’s the dynamic between the two (plus Rhys Darby as their incompetent manager) that made it great, albeit sadly short-lived at just two seasons.
39. “The Bernie Mac Show” (2001-2006)
Never a ratings monster, and underrated to this day, this Fox family comedy, created by future “Daily Show”-er Larry Wilmore, saw the titular “Ocean’s Eleven” star and his wife (Kellita Smith) take in his sister’s children when she goes into rehab (a premise drawn from Mac’s real-life experiences). It obviously was playing with a Cosby-ish template, and studio interference meant it petered out a bit, but it had a rawness, an honesty and an edge that few family comedies of the time could compete with, and it finally served as the vehicle that Mac had always deserved.
38. “Friends” (1994-2004)
A vast pop-culture-dominating phenomenon in a way that no comedy, not even “The Big Bang Theory,” could compete with today (does Starbucks become a worldwide titan without Central Perk?), “Friends” was in many ways a conventional, entirely predictable, unadventurous show. But as has been shown by the many dozens of shows that attempted to copy it and failed, pulling off something like this is no easy task, and the alchemy of the show’s perfect casting, and the quality of its writing, means it was consistently funny across a 10-year stretch, not something that many other shows can claim.
37. “Community” (2009-2015)
A little show that could, “Community” weathered low ratings for its time, and an unusual amount of behind-the-scenes turmoil (which saw creator Dan Harmon leave, return and the entire show eventually shift to Yahoo’s short-lived original-content experiment) to make it to the fabled six seasons (though not, as yet, a movie). Following a cast of misfits in a community college (and the extent to which the likes of Donald Glover, Alison Brie and Gillian Jacobs have blown up since is a testament to the strength of its casting), it was uneven even in its best seasons, but its best episodes, and there are a lot of best episodes, showcased both a joyful willingness to experiment, and a rock-solid knowledge of sitcom basics.
36. “Enlightened” (2011-2013)
It’s likely that “Enlightened” was just a few years ahead of its time. Now, it would probably be on Amazon, run for five years and win a bunch of Emmys, but Mike White and Laura Dern’s sad-com, about Amy Jellicoe’s (Dern) attempts to turn her life around after rehab, was unappreciated in its time and cancelled after two seasons by HBO. It remains a near-perfect gem, though: a darkly funny, often curiously moving character study brought to life by a tremendous cast (Dern’s still never been better), and a formidable line-up of directors (White, Nicole Holofcener, the late great Jonathan Demme, David Michôd, even Todd Haynes).
35. “The Bob Newhart Show” (1972-1978)/“Newhart” (1982-1990)
For even the greatest comedians, to have one great comedy series takes an enormous amount of good luck. To have two suggests better luck, and some tremendous skill, too, and Bob Newhart’s two classics certainly contain that. The first sees the legendary comic as a psychologist in Chicago, the second (which turned out, in one of TV’s most famous final episodes, to be a dream sequence within the original show) as an inn owner in a quirky Vermont town. They’re different shows, but both capture Newhart’s comic voice perfectly, and have aged remarkably well, particularly the ’70s incarnation.
34. “Police Squad!” (1982)
Possibly the most beloved one-season wonder in TV history (at least until “Freaks And Geeks” and “Serenity” came along), David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker’s cop-show parody went on to have a successful second life on the big screen as “The Naked Gun,” but the best incarnation of Frank Drebin’s deadpan detective and the silliness that surrounds him remains the original. Utterly stacked with jokes, with three that work for every one that didn’t, it was famously cancelled by ABC after six episodes because “the viewer had to watch it in order to appreciate it,” but remains a perfect, if brief, thing.
33. “Maude” (1972-1978)
Spun off from “All In The Family,” and later spawning its own spin-off (which you’ll see elsewhere on this list), Norman Lear’s “Maude” starred Bea Arthur as a four-times married liberal woman in New York, and even by the standards of Lear’s other shows, it grappled with some serious issues (including, most famously, when Maude got an abortion two months before Roe v. Wade) but, as always, with the lightest of touches, and Arthur’s titanic comic performance at its center.
32. “Sanford And Son” (1972-1977)
Derived from British comedy show “Stepford And Son,” Norman Lear turned his NBC remake into the story of father-son junk dealers (Redd Foxx and Demond Wilson) in Watts, Los Angeles, and more or less invented the African-American sitcom in the process. Dated and creaky in some respects, and certainly problematic, it’s nevertheless beautifully constructed and outstandingly performed (Foxx was, of course, a stone-cold legend), and endlessly influential.
31. “The Phil Silvers Show” (1955-1959)
One always forgets that what we think of as “Sgt. Bilko” was never actually officially called “Sgt. Bilko,” though the character — Silvers’ lazy, scheming motor-pool army man — was always at the center here. The germ of basically every workplace comedy that followed, the show (created by Nat Hiken) gets a touch formulaic if you attempt to binge it, but you’ll forgive it for the ingenuity of the plotting and the sheer force of Silvers’ comic performance, one of the greatest in TV history.
