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Your Top 5 Favorite Sitcoms


drawkcabi

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Okay, it's crunch time, no substituting other genres and no ties, honorable mentions are fine by extending the list past 5, but that is the demarcation line, only the first 5 are the sitcoms or half hour comedy shows you would choose if you could take to watch while stuck on a desert island for the rest of your life.

My List:

  1. The Office (U.S.)
  2. Community
  3. MASH
  4. Frasier
  5. Arrested Development

Honorable Mentions:

6. Taxi

7. Newsradio

8. Parks and Recreation

9. South Park

10.The Simpsons

11. King of the Hill

12. Barney Miller

13. All in the Family

14. Night Court Titus

15. Cheers Louie

16. Cheers Night Court

17. Scrubs

18. Everybody Loves Raymond Cheers

19. Everybody Loves Raymond

20. The Critic

 

Side Note - Original Broadcast Networks

NBC: 9 (Shares Taxi and Scrubs with ABC, shares Community with Yahoo)

FOX: 5 (Shares Arrested Development with Netflix, and The Critic with ABC)

CBS: 3

ABC: 4 (None in my top 5)

Comedy Central: 1 (None in my top 5)

FX: 1 (None in my top 5)

Netflix: 1

Yahoo: 1

 

All networks have their prestige and critically acclaimed shows but in my eyes NBC clearly outshines them all. Pity it is now a last place network when it sure has a grand history of bringing some great shows to air.

 

 

 

 

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1. The Simpsons (through season 10 or so...and I'm being generous there)

2. Arrested Development

3. Parks & Rec

4. Community

5. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

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Bojack Horesman

Curb Your Enthusiasm

South Park

Archer

Yes Minister

Married with Children

Eastbound and Down

Rick and Morty

31 minutes ago, matt b said:

1. The Simpsons (through season 10 or so...and I'm being generous there

I guess I agree with this. I might extend it a little further but not by too much.

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Hmm., quite a brit heavy view here..

 

1) Blackadder 
2) Eastbound and Down
3) Alan Partridge
4) Simpsons
5) Father Ted

Honourable mentions:

Spaced, Curbed, Red Dwarf, The office UK, Rick and Morty ( does it count?) Community, Everyone loves Raymond ( curveball) , Flight of the Concords, Louie, Seinfeld, Venture Bros, Bobs Burgers, Arrested Development

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10 minutes ago, williamjm said:

Spaced

Blackadder (particularly 2-4)

Father Ted

Red Dwarf (seasons 1-6)

The I.T. Crowd

 

Very cool! I was hoping I'd get some non-U.S. centric lists in this thread. I have to be honest in my list for what I'd want, but I like to see variety.

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1 minute ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Hmm., quite a brit heavy view here..

 

1) Blackadder 
2) Eastbound and Down
3) Alan Partridge
4) Simpsons
5) Father Ted

Honourable mentions:

Spaced, Curbed, Red Dwarf, The office UK, Rick and Morty ( does it count?) Community, Everyone loves Raymond ( curveball) , Flight of the Concords, Louie, Seinfeld, Venture Bros, Bobs Burgers, Arrested Development

Again, glad to see variety.

I was thinking of Everybody Loves Raymond, that'd probably be somewhere between 16 and 20 if my list went further. Scrubs too. I forgot about Louie, that may have to go where Cheers is.

I thought of Seinfeld too, but honestly, I don't find the rewatchability of that series too high. I can watch an episode then not be interested in seeing it again for another 5 - 10 years.

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3 minutes ago, drawkcabi said:

Again, glad to see variety.

I was thinking of Everybody Loves Raymond, that'd probably be somewhere between 16 and 20 if my list went further. Scrubs too. I forgot about Louie, that may have to go where Cheers is.

I thought of Seinfeld too, but honestly, I don't find the rewatchability of that series too high. I can watch an episode then not be interested in seeing it again for another 5 - 10 years.

If I was going to add to the British list ( because I think there was a point in time where we were just doing the best comedy anywhere, not now though sadly)

I'd add:

The League of Gentlemen, phoenix nights, Black Books, Inbetweeners, Royle Family, The Thick of It, Peep Show, Extras, IT Crowd, The Mighty Boosh, Garth Marenghis Dark Place...

I just realised how many great ones there are. And thats not even including the classics from the 70's and 80's.

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I'll do the top 10:

Frasier

The Simpsons (the first 8 or so seasons)

Only Fools and Horses

The Good Place (favorite new comedy)

Blackadder

Arrested Development 

The Office (UK)

BoJack Horseman

Archer

South Park

And if we're not just sticking to what could strictly speaking be called a sitcom, since they are sketch comedies - Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Fast Show.

Honorable mentions: 3rd Rock from the Sun, The Royle Family, King of the Hill

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2 hours ago, drawkcabi said:

 

My List:

  1. The Office (U.S.)
  2. Community
  3. MASH
  4. Frasier
  5. Arrested Development

 

 

 

 

 That's crazily close to my own list. I rewatch Community, A.D, and the Office at least once a year. I do however skip Season 4 of Community, and everything after Season 5 of The Office.

 

 1. Arrested Development

2. Community

3. The Office US

4. The IT Crowd

5. Parks/Rec

 

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I was thinking of Everybody Loves Raymond, that'd probably be somewhere between 16 and 20 if my list went further.

If there were only 20 sitcoms ever made, Everybody Loves Raymond would still rank somewhere around 700th. It is an actively awful show. Not just bad, but painfully terrible in a way that damages the entire form. The sole gag is that the main character is a pathetic loathsome man-child. That's it. There are no other jokes. And that one joke is done really badly, just hammered home with no subtlety or wit: there's nothing more to it than the bare fact that this guy is a completely unlikable self-pitying dick, which for some reason is supposed to be hilarious.

I'm not a fan.

As for the best five: The Young Ones has to be on the list. Nobody's mentioned it but come on. It's dated slightly, but the sheer amount of clever gags and experimental ideas packed into each episode is amazing, and it was an unparalleled success. With the possible exception of Blackadder, with which it shares a number of actors, none of the other British/Irish sitcoms mentioned here would exist without The Young Ones. They'd never have been made.

Black Books goes on the list because it actually does make a selfish loathsome man-child lead character both hilarious and appealing. It's treading some similar ground to The Young Ones: squalor, surrealism, and the aimlessness of life, but has its own clear identity.

Community, in the first four seasons anyway. Season five didn't work for me and I haven't seen six. But unlike the British sitcoms, that pack a lot into short seasons, Community had to sustain excellence and did so for a long time without getting stale.

Father Ted hit a likely unrepeatable confluence of excellent writing and great performances.

Spaced had a bit of that too, and was so loaded with stuff that appealed exactly to my interests at the time that I will likely never be able to be objective about its merits.

Probably Blackadder has to take the last slot, as I laugh more at it. I appreciate the wit of stuff like Frasier, Yes Minister, and M*A*S*H more, but that's not the same as getting a good belly laugh.

ETA - can't count. That's six. Let's say the last two are fifth equal.

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4 minutes ago, mormont said:

If there were only 20 sitcoms ever made, Everybody Loves Raymond would still rank somewhere around 700th. It is an actively awful show. Not just bad, but painfully terrible in a way that damages the entire form. The sole gag is that the main character is a pathetic loathsome man-child. That's it. There are no other jokes. And that one joke is done really badly, just hammered home with no subtlety or wit: there's nothing more to it than the bare fact that this guy is a completely unlikable self-pitying dick, which for some reason is supposed to be hilarious.

Nah, Raymond is one of the most subversive sitcoms I've ever seen. I really mean it. I say that because its an incredibly dark, depressing look at modern family life, marriage and relationships, mascarading as the most harmless, brainless afternoon tripe. At first glance its easy to dismiss it in the way you describe, and I too felt the same. But after watching about a million seasons of it you see just how cutting it is.

This is a family who are seemingly living in a waking hell, the hell is each other. Raymond isn't the only character with flaws, they all have enormous flaws and they inflict them on each other every single day. None of them are in any way likeable, and they don't attempt to make them likebale either. 

Here is someone else who shares my view. Funnily enough I dismissed Seinfeld in the same way for a very long time as just some stupid american show that summed up everything I hated about American Network Humour. But then I saw a few episodes which made me realise that it was an incredibly clever look at the mundanity of real life, often with dark themes.

 

http://splitsider.com/2013/04/everybody-hates-raymond-theyre-wrong/

 

 

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You may be right about the show's dark themes and subversiveness. Doesn't change the fact that there aren't any laughs in it, which is really quite important for being considered a top sitcom.

I just realised I omitted Third Rock From The Sun, which I love, for the performances more than anything. Another couple of somewhat more obscure American sitcoms I remember fondly: Due South and Dream On. They might not stand up to rewatch but I never missed them when they were on.

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Just now, mormont said:

You may be right about the show's dark themes and subversiveness. Doesn't change the fact that there aren't any laughs in it, which is really quite important for being considered a top sitcom.

I just realised I omitted Third Rock From The Sun, which I love, for the performances more than anything. Another couple of somewhat more obscure American sitcoms I remember fondly: Due South and Dream On. They might not stand up to rewatch but I never missed them when they were on.

Have to disagree on that too, its genuinely funny, and contains some genuine comedic stars like Doris Roberts and Peter Boyle. I can put it on and find plenty of laughs from the sheer hatefulness. 

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