The 21 Best TV Comedies of the 21st Century (So Far)
What is funny? “Funny” can describe straight-up ha-ha pleasure: watching Lucy Ricardo get drunk on Vitameatavegamin or Homer Simpson fall into Springfield Gorge, twice. But it can also mean something odd (I have a funny feeling about this) or disconcerting (My stomach feels funny) or suspicious (Are you up to something funny?).
In today’s bumper crop of TV comedy, what funny is not is simple or monolithic. So picking our 21 favorite American comedies of the 21st century — the tango partner to our list of the 20 best American dramas since “The Sopranos” — involved hard choices and tricky questions. What even counts as a comedy, in an age of dramedy and comic drama and depressed cartoon horses? How do you account for changing times and mores, jokes that aged badly, stars’ less-than-amusing offscreen offenses? Is there more to a great comedy than how many times it makes you laugh?
We have no absolute answers, only the arguments that resulted in this list, arranged in chronological order, which we hope prompt you to have the same arguments and more. Let the funny business begin. — James Poniewozik, chief TV critic
