20. “Louie” (2010-2015)
Having had a tricky experience with his first showcase, HBO’s short-lived “Lucky Louie,” the hugely popular stand-up Louis C.K. was determined not to sacrifice creative freedom his second time around, and ended up striking an unusual deal with FX: if he could bring the show, “Louie,” way under budget (mostly by producing the show himself), he could have full creative freedom without notes. The result was something of a miracle, loosely using the template of a show like this — a loosely autobiographical look at the life of a comic — and springing off into all kinds of directions, with each episode only loosely related to the one before, and a melancholy indie vibe unlike little else that was on TV before. It’s directly influenced shows like “Master Of None” and “Atlanta,” and indirectly many more besides, and while there were some misses among the hits, had an ambition and level of achievement unlike anything else.
19. “The Honeymooners” (1955-1956)
It’s sort of remarkable the impact that “The Honeymooners” had, given that it lasted, in full sitcom form, only a single season (of 39 episodes, though: different times) — virtually every family comedy since owes it a debt. Created by Jackie Gleason, based on a popular sketch he’d performed on “The Jackie Gleason Show” and “Cavalcade Of Stars,” it focuses on Ralph Kramden (Gleason), his wife Alice (Audrey Meadows), and their pals Ed and Trixie Norton (Art Carney and Joyce Randolph). Almost theatrical in its construction (you can see glimpses of Arthur Miller or Eugene O’Neill in there in some ways), it’s rare in being an American sitcom about failure, rather than success, and still holds up remarkably well as a result.
18. “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (1970-1977)
The passing of Mary Tyler Moore earlier this year was a great sadness, but she’ll be immortal forever — while she gave other great turns in films like “Ordinary People” and “Flirting With Disaster,” it’s the series that bore her name that ensures that she’ll never be forgotten. Created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, the show was a comedy about Mary (Moore), a single woman who moves to Minneapolis to work at a TV station, and while it owed a debt both to “The Dick Van Dyke Show” where Moore had made its name, it felt entirely its own thing, focused on and capturing the modern woman in a way that few sitcoms before had, and putting character above jokes in a way that felt revolutionary at the time, and pioneering now.
17. “The Thick Of It” (2005-2012)/“Veep” (2012-2017)
Because of the absurd times that we live in, Armando Iannucci’s “The Thick Of It” and its U.S-set quasi-spin-off “Veep” didn’t just predict some of the political absurdity that we find ourselves among, they almost defined the terms — the word, “omnishambles,” for instance, only this week being banded about by U.S. political journalists. Political comedies that take as their premise the idea that politicians are craven, incompetent and utterly foul-mouthed (the best insults in the history of television came here), they’re gloriously, quotably written, but really work in large part because of the perfect casting, whether Peter Capaldi’s demonic spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in the original, or Timothy Simons’s lumbering failing-upwards dipshit Jonah in “Veep.”
16. “Soap” (1977-1981)
It wasn’t the first show, or even the first show on this list, to poke fun at daytime soap operas, but “Soap,” created by Susan Harris, did it with a gleeful, demented absurdity that ensured its place in comedy history. Its plotlines — which including button-pushing depiction of homosexuality, incest, rape and much else — saw it attract criticism on both sides of the political aisle, but long since that’s died down, the unique weirdness of its pop-culture mash-up, the energy of its performers (including a breaking-out Billy Crystal), and the sheer speed of its jokes have ensured its place in comedy lore.
15. “All In The Family” (1971-1979)
So legendary is “All In the Family,” probably the best known of all Norman Lear’s shows, that even people who’ve never seen a frame know who Archie Bunker is (if you don’t, he’s the bigoted blue-collar lead of the show, played by Carroll O’Connor). A remake of British hit “Till Death Us Do Part,” it pitted Bunker against modern society, his hippie-ish daughter and son-in-law, and various other irritations, using his prejudices as a vehicle in which to pick them apart (on the Watergate tapes, Nixon would attack the show for “glorifying homosexuality”). It was hugely important, but more than that, it was just plain funny across most of its 200-odd episodes.
14. “South Park” (1997-present)
Even when you take the omnipresence of “The Simpsons” on the airwaves as a constant, it’s sort of terrifying to realize that “South Park” has now been on the air for 20 years. It’s older than Elle Fanning. And it’s been funny for pretty much all of that time. Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s animation about four precocious kids in a Colorado mountain town has pushed buttons and caused controversy since the beginning, but it’s usually put comedy first and foremost in focus, and for all its juvenile gags, is remarkably smart, and often topical (episodes are usually written in the week before broadcast) in the way it executes them.
13. “Curb Your Enthusiasm” (2000-present)
Some comedy shows are easy binges (we’ve watched four “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” episodes in the process of putting this article together without even trying to). But “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is almost unique in needing to be savored one at a time, if only because the levels of cringe comedy it pulls off are so high that you need to recover after every half-hour. Starring Larry David as a fictional version of himself, and the various scrapes, moral quandries and social fuck-ups he gets himself into, usually with himself to blame, its inside-showbiz, cameo-heavy vibe has been copied plenty of times ever since it began, but never with the level of excruciating brilliance pulled off here. Bring on this year’s Season 9 (six years after the show was last on the air).
12. “Frasier” (1993-2004)
The spin-off is a much derided idea, and rightly so: there are a lot more shows like “Joey” then there are a “Jeffersons” or “Good Times.” But “Frasier” is more or less the gold standard, still. Taking the pretentious psychiatrist character Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) from “Cheers” and returning him to his Seattle home where he has his own radio show, living with his retired cop father (John Mahoney), whose carer Daphne (Jane Leeves) becomes an object of affection for his brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce). A very different show from “Cheers,” it had ups and downs, particularly towards the end, but at its best, and its best was very often, it was a genetically engineered joke machine with oddly lovable characters and a feeling for farce that few other shows could pull off.
11. “Arrested Development” (2003-present)
For a show that had pretty bad ratings at the time, and was cancelled after just three seasons, “Arrested Development” had a giant impact. Mitch Hurwitz’s saga of the Bluth family, and their father’s incarceration for some ‘light treason,’ was more sophisticated in its plotting, shooting and writing than almost anything that had ever been shown on network TV, a series that clearly cared so little whether it caught on with a wide audience that it actually double-downed on its intricate madness over time. Its embrace of the weird niche was ahead of its time, but it would eventually get there: it was the perfect show for the streaming era, became a Netflix hit, and was revived by them. Shame that the fourth season was a dip in quality, but fingers crossed that next year’s fifth returns it to greatness.