Jennie Richardson is a TV Features and Lists Writer for Collider, and a graduate student pursuing an MFA in Fiction Writing. In other words, she really loves stories.
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The last 15 years have been a real treat for TV fans, from those who love a suspenseful drama that will keep them on the edge of their seat the whole time, to those who love a cozy comedy series that will have them cracking up throughout. 2011-on has seen the premiere of a number of phenomenal series that are now considered to be some of the all-time best, from The Leftovers, to The Americans, to Succession.
For sitcom fans, the 2010s and 2020s (so far) saw the premiere of some truly fantastic series, from hangout comedies, to fantasy comedies, to workplace comedies. These shows delivered uniquely hilarious and flawed characters, fantastic one-liners that fans still quote to this day, and some of the greatest TV episodes in sitcom history. Among these series,** the very best of these are the ones that stayed consistently excellent throughout**. These are the most perfect sitcoms of the last 15 years, ranked.
FX’s ***Adults ***is just two seasons in, but already, it stands out as one of the best sitcoms of recent years. The hangout comedy follows a tight-knit group of friends who all live together in one of their parents’ house in Queens: Anton (Owen Thiele), Issa (Amita Rao), Samir (Malik Elassal), Billie (Lucy Freyer), and their newest addition, Paul Baker (Jack Innanen). Each episode sees the friends getting up to hilarious antics like accidentally letting a local “stabber” into their house, and trying to get rid of a raccoon after they’ve all just taken acid that will hit in a half hour.
*Adults *already has two phenomenal seasons, as well as a fantastic bonus prequel episode that shows how everyone met Paul Baker before the start of the series. The show has unique and memorable characters, both among its main cast and its recurring side characters. It also has a sharp sense of humor and deeply compelling character dynamics, and there’s no doubt that Adults will only continue to keep getting even better if renewed for more seasons.
***Superstore ***is a workplace sitcom that follows the employees of a chain superstore called Cloud 9, at one of the store’s locations in St. Louis, Missouri. Unlike with many other workplace sitcoms, the employees of this Cloud 9 do not love their jobs. They are coworkers rather than a family, and none of them are particularly passionate about what they do. They also have to regularly deal with frustrating customers and absolutely bizarre situations occurring in the store.
As such, *Superstore *is absolutely hilarious and entertaining for the duration of its six seasons. Despite their less than ideal work circumstances, the Cloud 9 employees form real bonds with one another, and they push back against unfair rules and difficult working conditions to help each other. **Superstore has a fantastic ensemble cast of quirky and nuanced characters, and its unique angle on the workplace sitcom is really compelling and memorable.
***Schitt’s Creek ***follows the wealthy and famous Rose family: video store mogul Johnny (Eugene Levy), former soap opera star Moira (Catherine O’Hara), and their two very spoiled adult children, David (Dan Levy) and Alexis (Annie Murphy). The Roses’ lives are upended when all of their fortune is embezzled by someone they trusted, and all they have left to their names is a small Canadian town called Schitt’s Creek that Johnny once bought for David as a joke.
Until they can get back on their feet, the Roses uproot their lives and move to Schitt’s Creek in the hopes of eventually selling it. They stay together in adjacent motel rooms, and they struggle to adjust to this very abrupt change in their lifestyles. Soon, though, they start to plant roots in Schitt’s Creek, making real friends and starting jobs that they hadn’t initially planned on. Schitt’s Creek is a heartfelt, laugh-out-loud funny sitcom, and it is absolutely flawless from its pilot episode to its perfect finale.
***Happy Endings ***is a hangout sitcom that follows six extremely close longtime friends who all live in Chicago: Penny (Casey Wilson), Max (Adam Pally), married couple Brad (Damon Wayans Jr.) and Jane (Eliza Coupe), and engaged couple Dave (Zachary Knighton) and Alex (Elisha Cuthbert). The friends may have other areas in their lives that they want to improve on, but they’re content with their core friend group, and they hang out every single day.
Then, the group’s entire dynamic is upended when Alex leaves Dave at the altar to run off with someone she barely knows. Now, the six of them have to figure out how to still all be friends in the wake of Alex and Dave’s messy breakup. The result is a wildly funny, wonderfully strange sitcom. Happy Endings is packed with jokes upon jokes in every episode, and** its core group is particularly memorable for their codependency and bizarre habits, like regularly-occurring group insult pile-ons**.
Four of the largest communities on the planet, and four completely
different reasons to belong to one. Here is yours, what it would give you, and the argument you
would be having within a week.
You belong to the fandom that is really about comfort. Hogwarts
works on people because it is a place rather than a plot, and the pull is not the wizard war
so much as the corridors, the food, the weather and the sense that somebody is expecting
You belong to the deepest fandom on this list, the one where
somebody has always read further than you and is quietly delighted to say so. Middle-earth
rewards patience more than any other world in popular culture.
You belong to the loudest and largest tent of the four, the one
where three generations are all watching the same thing and none of them agree about any of
it. That disagreement is not a flaw in this fandom, it is the main activity.
You belong to the thinking fandom, the one that turns up for the
argument rather than the explosion. Trek has always been a series of ethical problems in
space, and the people who love it love being asked what they would have done.
***What We Do in the Shadows ***is a wildly funny and delightfully over-the-top mockumentary-style hangout sitcom about a group of vampires living together in a Staten Island mansion. The house’s residents are made up of traditional vampires Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak), Nadja of Antipaxos (Natasia Demetriou), and Laszlo Cravensworth (Matt Berry), energy vampire Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), and Nandor’s human familiar whose dream is to become a vampire, Guillermo de la Cruz (Harvey Guillén).
Initially, the vampires moved to Staten Island after being vaguely instructed to conquer the area.** In the centuries that have followed, though, they have come to live pretty mundane afterlives**. Each episode, they deal with relatable problems like annoying chain emails claiming to carry a curse if they’re not forwarded, and not-so-relatable problems like trying to find humans to kill and feed on without raising suspicion.
Abbott Elementary is a mockumentary-style workplace sitcom that follows the faculty and staff of Abbott Elementary School in Philadelphia, PA.** Despite a frustrating lack of funding and a number of other obstacles working against them, the teachers are all very passionate about their jobs**, and they always go above and beyond for their students.** **The school is run by Principal Ava Coleman (Janelle James), who got her job through blackmail but quickly proves herself to be qualified despite her unconventional methods and a lack of experience.
*Abbott Elementary *stands out as one of the best sitcoms of recent years, with its sharp writing and perfect use of its setting. It also has a phenomenal ensemble cast in its main characters: Ava, teachers Janine Teagues (Quinta Brunson), Barbara Howard (Sheryl Lee Ralph), Melissa Schemmenti (Lisa Ann Walter), Jacob Hill (Chris Perfetti), and Gregory Eddie (Tyler James Williams), and janitor Mr. Johnson (William Stanford Davis).
Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a police procedural sitcom that follows the team of detectives that work in the 99th precinct of the NYPD in Brooklyn. At the start of the series, Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) is a smart and naturally skilled detective who lacks impulse control and has a disregard for the rules. Jake is unsettled when the precinct gets a new captain, the serious and inexpressive Raymond Holt (Andre Braugher), but he soon comes to appreciate Captain Holt’s new way of running things.
*Brooklyn Nine-Nine *is one of the funniest and best-written sitcoms of the last couple of decades, with memorable bits like the show’s iconic cold opens and its annual Halloween heists, as well as a number of hilarious one-liners that fans still quote today. It also has a fantastic ensemble cast made up of unique and complex characters, as well as a number of compelling and shocking overarching mystery storylines.
***Veep ***is a sharply funny and clever political satire sitcom that follows Vice President Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), the deeply ambitious and stubborn Vice President of the United States. The position wasn’t Selina’s first choice, and she still hopes to one day become the first female president. That said, in the meantime, Selina is committed to enacting as much change as she possibly can in her position.
Selina is always working towards some larger goal, all while she and her team have to deal with any number of obstacles that inevitably come up along the way and pose a risk to this goal. **Veep is packed with constant jokes throughout each episode, and its writing is unbelievably sharp and witty. It also has some of the best sitcom characters of recent years, and each season has a compelling overarching storyline.
New Girl follows Jess Day (Zooey Deschanel), an optimistic woman who suddenly has to find a place to live after she walks in on her long-term boyfriend cheating on her in their home. Jess soon moves into a loft with three guys already living there, thanks to a posting that she found on Craig’s List. At first, Jess’ presence is an adjustment to her three new roommates: Nick Miller (Jake Johnson), Schmidt (Max Greenfield), and Winston Bishop (Lamorne Morris).
Soon, though, Jess starts to feel at home in the loft, and the guys get used to having her there as well. Through her, they also meet her childhood best friend, Cece (Hannah Simone), who quickly joins their friend group. *New Girl *has one of the best sitcom friend groups of all time, as well as absolutely hilarious writing, and some of the best and most unique sitcom episodes of recent years. Each of its seven seasons is an absolute delight, and it just gets better with each rewatch.
***The Good Place *follows Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell), a selfish woman who has just died suddenly in a humiliating grocery cart freak accident. Now, she’s in the Good Place, where she is being told that she earned her place by being an amazing person on Earth. Eleanor knows better, though, and she quickly realizes that she was sent there by mistake. **In order to keep from being caught and sent to the Bad Place, where she really belongs, Eleanor asks her mistakenly-assigned soulmate, former Ethics and Moral Philosophy professor Chidi Anagonye (William Jackson Harper), to teach her how to be a good person.
*The Good Place *is a flawless series from start to finish. It is a perfectly-told story with four intentional and incredibly well-written seasons that each have their own main overarching storylines. The writing is absolutely hilarious and wonderfully over-the-top, as are the show’s visual gags and every aspect of its clever afterlife lore. Above all else, though, the series has amazing characters that are all very funny while also having beautiful character arcs.
