The first TV comedy I fell in love with was Arrested Development. The original three seasons, back when the density of the jokes meant you could rewatch an episode five times and still catch something new in the background, were pure gold. I watched Friends, How I Met Your Mother, and The Office like everyone else, and they’re all good shows. However, they’re also comfortable, familiar, and designed for family weeknight viewing. Arrested Development was the first show that felt like it was written specifically for people like me. It taught me what comedy television was capable of, and it set a bar I’ve been holding other shows to ever since.
The last decade gave me more shows to argue about than any stretch before it. Streaming dominance meant writers weren’t cutting jokes to hit a network runtime and prestige TV knocked down the war between comedy and drama. Somewhere in the fallout, a series of shows arrived that were doing refreshing things with the form. Fleabag broke the fourth wall, Barry made a hitman the funniest and most uncomfortable thing on TV, and Derry Girls set a teen comedy against the backdrop of the Troubles. Here are 10 of the funniest TV shows of the last 10 years.
Why You Should Trust Me: I have spent six years writing about movies and television, with the last three and a half covering entertainment as my primary beat at MovieWeb. Comedy is where I started. It’s the genre I’m pickiest about and the one I’ve watched most obsessively. I have covered everything from Abbott Elementary’s Emmy sweep to the cultural phenomenon Fleabag became, and I’ve rewatched every show on this list at least twice, which is the only honest way to know if something is actually funny.
Honorable Mentions
- Only Murders in the Building (2021 – Present): Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez solving murders in a Manhattan apartment building? It’s a recipe for greatness. The comedy is warmer and less edgy than the shows on the main list, but the chemistry between the leads is epic.
- What We Do in the Shadows (2019 – 2024): Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s vampire mockumentary got an American spin-off that was just as good as the original movie. And Colin Robinson, an energy vampire who drains people through boredom, is among the funniest original characters ever.
- Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015 – 2019): Tina Fey wrote a show about a woman emerging from a doomsday cult and navigating New York City, and it’s just as hilarious as it sounds. However, it peaked in its first two seasons and faded a little afterward.
- Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013 – 2021): This is easily the best network procedural comedy since Parks and Recreation and proof that Andy Samberg has always been more than people gave him credit for. Jake Peralta and Raymond Holt are my favorite comedic pair. While it ran slightly too long, Seasons 2 through 5 are impeccable.
‘The Righteous Gemstones’ (2019 – 2025)
Danny McBride’s Televangelist Circus Is the Funniest Thing HBO Has Ever Made
Watch This If: The Righteous Gemstones is loud, vulgar, absurdist, and somehow also a sharp takedown of American megachurch capitalism. And if you’re on that frequency, it will ruin you for lesser comedies. Danny McBride plays Jesse Gemstone, the oldest son of televangelist patriarch Eli (John Goodman). Jesse is one of the great comedic creations of the decade. The way I see it, he’s a man-child with the moral compass of a golden retriever and the self-awareness of a golden retriever’s squeaky toy. His siblings, Judy and Kelvin, are equally unhinged. However, the show makes this family of narcissists so inexplicably lovable that you root for them anyway.
Skip This If: McBride has been doing this kind of comedic universe-building since Eastbound & Down, but The Righteous Gemstones is where it all clicks into something transcendent. If his brand of shameless, loud, deeply Southern comedy has never worked for you, this won’t convert you. It’s everything he does, amplified by HBO’s budget and John Goodman.
‘Barry’ (2018 – 2023)
Bill Hader Made a Show About a Hitman Who Wants to Act
Watch This If: Barry is the tonal tightrope act of the past decade. Bill Hader plays a hitman who stumbles into a Los Angeles acting class and decides he wants a different life. While it’s a dark drama setup, it’s also consistently hilarious in a way that makes you question your own reactions. My favorite part of the show is NoHo Hank, the Chechen mob boss played by Anthony Carrigan. He is buoyant, enthusiastic, completely without menace, and wholeheartedly devoted to Barry’s well-being in a way that makes you… happy. The show’s comedy and violence never bleed into each other, which means every laugh arrives clean, and each brutal moment lands without the cushion of irony.
Skip This If: Barry gets very dark, very fast, and by Season 3, it is doing upsetting things. If you need your comedies to stay light and comfortable, this one will eventually ask more of you than you’re willing to give. The finale is also strange and divisive.
‘The Good Place’ (2016 – 2020)
Michael Schur Carved an Afterlife and Spent Four Seasons Being Right About Everything
Watch This If: The Good Place has the most impressive sustained structure in recent sitcom history. The show completely reinvents its premise every season, and each reinvention is funnier and sharper than the one before. The initial premise is like that of a gentle NBC comedy, and Season 1 plays it that way, right up until the finale twist that reframes everything you just watched. From that point, The Good Place becomes a running philosophical debate about what makes a person good. The show also has the best series finale of the decade, and I will not be taking any questions.
Skip This If: The early episodes of Season 1 lay the groundwork and play broad by the show’s eventual standards. Anyone who watches Episode 1 bounces will miss something truly special, which is frustrating because the show earns that slow, patient world-building.
‘Ted Lasso’ (2020 – Present)
Watch This If: I put off watching Ted Lasso for an embarrassingly long time because the premise sounded exhausting. It’s about a relentlessly cheerful American who takes over a struggling English football club. I was wrong, and I’ve been wrong before, but never this comprehensively. Ted Lasso works because Jason Sudeikis understands that the funniest thing about Ted is not his obliviousness, but his absolute refusal to let other people’s cynicism diminish his light and his positivity. The show is warm and fuzzy without being overly sweet, funny without being toothless, and the supporting cast turns into a community you will miss once it’s over.
Skip This If: Season 3 is a mess, and the show’s consistent optimism does occasionally tip into the kind of feel-good television that leaves no aftertaste. If you want edgy comedy or some darkness, Ted Lasso has very little of either, by design. The series is also not really about football, which is fine for non-fans but occasionally annoying for anyone who actually cares about how a team gets promoted.
‘Fleabag’ (2016 – 2019)
Phoebe Waller-Bridge Made 12 Episodes and Left Everyone Collectively Ruined
Watch This If: Fleabag started as a one-woman Edinburgh Fringe monologue in 2013 (it was a 10-minute piece Waller-Bridge wrote on a dare), and it ended up as 12 of the most magnificent half-hours of television. It follows a woman, whose name we never learn, as she navigates grief, terrible decisions, casual sex, and a family that is dysfunctional in very specific, very relatable ways. It’s very funny. It’s also, without warning, devastating. Waller-Bridge’s use of the fourth wall – the glance at the camera, the conspiratorial aside, the subtle remarks – is so precise that when she uses it in Season 2 to show you something being withheld, it becomes heartbreaking and soul-crushing.
Skip This If: Season 1 is more uncomfortable than Season 2, and some viewers jumped off after the first few episodes, never giving it time to find its rhythm. Also, the humor is dry, fast, and British. It’s not impenetrable, but it assumes you’re keeping up. If you found Killing Eve too arch, you might think the same of this one.
‘Schitt’s Creek’ (2015 – 2020)
The Roses Lost Everything and Found the Funniest Small Town
Watch This If: Schitt’s Creek becomes funnier every season, which is something I didn’t think comedy TV could do anymore, especially after It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia set the bar so high. The show’s premise is a playground for fish-out-of-water condescension, and the first season keeps things simple. Then something shifts. The Roses start loving Schitt’s Creek, and the show starts loving the Roses. From David’s fastidious self-invention to Moira’s weaponized drama and Alexis figuring out she’s a person, the show’s humor feels especially natural by Season 4. The Dan Levy and Eugene Levy father-son dynamic is also quite wholesome, which is fun since they are actually father and son.
Skip This If: You need comedies to hit the ground running. The first season’s adjustment period will test your patience. The humor is character-dependent, and it really needs you to stick with them and invest your time before it pays dividends. The tone of the earlier episodes jumps around a lot.
‘Veep’ (2012 – 2019)
Julia Louis-Dreyfus Plays the Most Comprehensively Terrible Person in Washington
Watch This If: Veep is the sharpest political comedy TV show there is. The main character, Selina Meyer (the Vice President, then President, then candidate again), has no redeemable qualities, and yet she’s absolutely captivating in every scene. Armando Iannucci, who created the show, brought the same sensibility he used on The Thick of It (the British predecessor that is an essential watch). He created a world in which every character is terrible, every political institution is hollow, and the insults are so direct and so mean that the writers kept a spreadsheet of them to avoid repetition.
Skip This If: Veep has essentially zero warmth. There’s nobody to root for, no redemption arc coming, and the comedy is so cruel that some viewers find it exhausting rather than exhilarating. If you watched The Office for the wholesomeness underneath the cringe, Veep offers no such safety net. Also, its political nihilism is less funny and more accurate post-2016.
‘Abbott Elementary’ (2021 – 2026)
Quinta Brunson Reinvented the Workplace Mockumentary In a Philadelphia Public School
Watch This If: Abbott Elementary arrived in 2021 feeling both fresh and familiar. Quinta Brunson created it, stars in it, and wrote the pilot in three days. Those details are important because the show has that effortless charm that usually takes years to find. The mockumentary format had been effectively retired after The Office and Parks and Rec finished, and Abbott Elementary proved there was still more we could do with it. Abbott Elementary is about a real institution (underfunded urban public schools), with real stakes (these teachers are broke and overworked), and the comedy emerges from that reality rather than a made-up situation.
Skip This If: Abbott Elementary is breezy and broadly accessible, which is a good thing. But it can disappoint viewers looking for the satire of Veep or the darkness of Barry. It’s not a soft show, but its default register is affectionate. You will find the mockumentary format is either comfortable or played out, depending on your history with it.
‘Hacks’ (2021 – 2026)
Jean Smart Makes Everyone Else on Television Look Like They Aren’t Trying Hard Enough
Watch This If: I love Hacks. It’s a show crafted around a brilliant comedic premise: a legendary Vegas stand-up comic in her sixties and a broke millennial comedy writer are forced to collaborate. Then, it refuses to let the premise do all the work. Jean Smart’s Deborah Vance is one of the best characters of the last 10 years. She is ferociously talented, spectacularly difficult to be around, and lonely in ways the show reveals slowly and without sentiment. The generational tension between her and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) generates most of the comedy. However, Hacks is also a show about what it costs women to have careers in comedy, and it takes that subject very seriously. I usually enjoy rewatching Smart’s scenes to catch what I missed, and it’s a form of entertainment on its own.
Skip This If: Hacks rewards patience and attention. That makes it slightly less rewatchable than, say, Schitt’s Creek or Abbott Elementary. The humor is not broad, and the show’s emotional weight and social message can occasionally tip the balance away from comedy entirely. But once you fall for the characters, none of that matters.
‘Derry Girls’ (2018 – 2022)
A Coming-of-Age Comedy in 1990s Northern Ireland
Channel 4
Watch This If: Derry Girls is set during the Troubles – the tail end of them, from 1994 to 1998 – and it’s the funniest coming-of-age comedy since The Inbetweeners, which is not something I ever expected to say. Lisa McGee grew up in Derry and wrote the show from the inside out, which means the backdrop of checkpoints and bomb scares is treated with the casual normalcy of teenagers who have known nothing else. The comedy emerges from that juxtaposition. There is enormous historical drama happening in the background, while Erin, Clare, Michelle, Orla, and the hapless James argue about inconsequential things in the foreground. Three seasons, 18 episodes, and a finale that pulls off something so emotionally jarring that it changes you.
Skip This If: The Derry accents are thick, the pace is fast, and the first episode does ask you to keep up. Non-UK viewers occasionally might need to rewatch once their ears are adjusted, which is a real warning but also an argument for paying attention. Since the show only has three seasons, it’s the lowest-commitment entry on the list and the easiest one to just start tonight.
Do you agree with our picks, or would you add another hilarious show? Let us know in the comments!
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