The 6 Most Perfect Sitcoms of the Last 25 Years, Ranked
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Sitcoms sneak into your life in a way no other genre can manage. You do not merely remember what happened. You remember being among them. You remember the conference room, the terrible apartment, the break room, the campaign office, the stupid little corner where two characters always end up arguing.
That is the standard I care about for this list of 6 most perfect sitcoms of the past 25 years. Not most important” not “most influential,” not which one generated the cleanest critical consensus. I mean the shows where the cast chemistry becomes muscle memory, the jokes survive repetition, and even a five-second reaction shot can make you laugh because you already know everything that person is trying not to say.
6
‘Abbott Elementary’ (2021-)
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Image via ABC</figure>
Abbott Elementary follows a group of teachers working at an underfunded Philadelphia public school, with relentlessly optimistic Janine Teagues (Quinta Brunson) convinced that almost every institutional problem can be solved if somebody cares hard enough. Around her are veteran teachers Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph) and Melissa (Lisa Ann Walter), awkward Jacob (Chris Perfetti), increasingly competent Gregory (Tyler James Williams), and principal Ava (Janelle James), a woman whose relationship with professional responsibility remains wonderfully theoretical.
Brunson created the show, and her smartest instinct was making the school feel loved rather than merely dysfunctional. The broken facilities and absurd bureaucracy generate jokes, but the teachers are never treated like fools for caring about their students. I especially love watching Gregory slowly become somebody who belongs there, because Tyler James Williams can turn one tiny glance at Janine into an entire argument with himself. And then there is Ava, who should be unbearable on paper and somehow becomes essential. Abbott Elementary worked because everybody is ridiculous in a slightly different direction, yet when something genuinely matters, you understand exactly why these people keep showing up the next morning.
5
‘What We Do in the Shadows’ (2019-2024)
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Image via FX</figure>
Four vampires share a house on Staten Island and spend much of eternity behaving like roommates who have somehow survived centuries without developing basic competence. What We Do in the Shadows centers on Nandor (Kayvan Novak), Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), Laszlo (Matt Berry), Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), and Guillermo (Harvey Guillén), Nandor’s painfully devoted familiar, whose dream of becoming a vampire becomes considerably more complicated once we learn what he is actually capable of.
I adore how seriously the show takes completely stupid problems. A supernatural council can become office politics. Ancient blood feuds collapse into petty grudges. Laszlo can spend decades impersonating a bartender named Jackie Daytona and somehow make that feel emotionally complete. Jemaine Clement developed the series from the film he made with Taika Waititi, but the television version eventually creates its own magnificent rhythm. Guillermo is the secret weapon for me. He begins as the exhausted human cleaning up everybody else’s bodies and gradually becomes one of the most dangerous people in the house. The vampires barely notice. That gap between who these people think they are and who they actually are is comedy gold.
4
‘Veep’ (2012-2019)
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Image via HBO</figure>
Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) begins Veep as Vice President of the United States, a position she rapidly discovers has far less power than she expected and considerably more opportunities for humiliation. The show follows Selina and her catastrophically self-interested staff through elections, scandals, alliances, betrayals, and repeated demonstrations that practically nobody in politics is behaving for the reasons they claim.
The insults get quoted most, understandably, because some of them sound chemically engineered to destroy another human being. But I think the real genius is how Armando Iannucci built an entire political ecosystem where competence occasionally appears and is immediately punished. Selina wants power with such naked desperation that every brief moment of success makes her worse. Gary’s (Tony Hale) devotion becomes increasingly tragic. Jonah (Timothy Simons) keeps failing upward like a virus with congressional ambitions. And Louis-Dreyfus performs humiliation better than almost anybody alive. She can lose an election, destroy a friendship, receive terrible news, and still somehow make the funniest thing in the room the way Selina adjusts her face before somebody walks in.
Four Netflix characters, four completely different ways of showing up
for somebody. This is the one who fits how you actually do friendship, and what having them in your
life would be like.
You do not do friendship at half volume, and neither does he.
What you want is somebody who says yes to the plan before you have finished describing the
plan.
- Dustin is the friend the entire show runs on: loyal past the point of sense,
enthusiastic about everything, and incapable of leaving anybody behind. - You have the same instinct. Your friendships are loud, specific and slightly ridiculous,
and they last for decades because of it. - He is also the one person who would take your strangest interest completely seriously,
which is far rarer than it sounds. - You would have a group chat. It would never once be quiet.
You are the friend who makes things happen, and so is she.
Together you would be mildly exhausting to everyone around you and completely delighted with
yourselves.
- Emily treats an ordinary Tuesday as something that could be turned into an occasion,
which is either the best or the worst quality in a friend depending on your energy
levels. - You share her refusal to sit still. Neither of you has ever accepted a night in when
something was happening somewhere else. - She is far more loyal than people give her credit for. She defends her friends loudly,
publicly, and occasionally before checking the facts. - She would post the photo without asking. You would forgive her, because it is a very
good photo.
You have no patience for pleasant lies, and she has no ability to
tell them. What looks like coldness from the outside is the most reliable friendship on this
list.
- Wednesday never says a kind thing she does not mean, which makes the rare ones count for
an enormous amount. - You would rather be told the truth than be made comfortable. She is constitutionally
incapable of offering you anything else. - Underneath all of it she is ferociously protective. She simply refuses to make a
performance out of caring. - Do not expect a birthday message. Do expect her to ruin anyone who wrongs you.
You look after whoever is having the worst day. So does he. It is
the least strategic way to move through the world and the best possible quality in a friend.
- Gi-hun is not the strongest player in Squid Game, or the cleverest. He is the one who
keeps choosing to protect somebody else, over and over, at genuine cost to himself. - You have the same instinct. You notice who is struggling and you stay with them, long
after anybody would blame you for leaving. - He is a flawed friend, and that is part of why it lands. He lets people down, then comes
back and tries again, which is more than most manage. - He would give you his last chance and never once mention that he had done it.
3
‘The Office’ (2005-2013)
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Image via NBC</figure>
The Office (original one) turns the Scranton branch of a paper company into a documentary subject, trapping salesman Jim Halpert (John Krasinski), receptionist Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer), terrifyingly committed Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson), and everybody else under the management of Michael Scott (Steve Carell), who desperately wants to be considered both an extraordinary boss and everyone’s closest friend.
Greg Daniels developed the American version, but the thing that eventually separated it completely from its British inspiration was affection and its vlog-like camera-work. Michael can be selfish, inappropriate, exhausting, and spectacularly bad at reading a room. Then you see him quietly show up to Pam’s art exhibition when almost nobody else does, and suddenly the character expands. That is what the show keeps doing. Dwight stops being merely the weird guy. Jim’s effortless coolness occasionally becomes avoidance. Pam discovers that wanting another life and building one are different things. Even after you know every prank and every awkward meeting, those relationships still work. I can hear the first few notes of the theme and immediately feel like I know where I am.
2
’30 Rock’ (2006-2013)
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Image via NBC</figure>
Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is trying to run a live sketch-comedy show while managing unstable performers, idiotic network decisions, and Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), an NBC executive whose frightening corporate competence somehow makes him one of the most dependable people in her life. 30 Rock barely gives you time to recover from one joke before three more have already happened in the background.
Fey created a sitcom that seems actively offended by empty space. A throwaway sign can contain a joke. A character can mispronounce something once and the mistake can return two seasons later. Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) is capable of saying something so irrational that the sentence becomes funnier every time you remember it. Yet Liz and Jack are why I keep coming back. Their relationship never needs to become romantic to matter enormously. He thinks she wastes her potential. She thinks he has allowed capitalism to replace several normal human organs. They are both occasionally correct. Beneath all the lunacy, 30 Rock understands the strange intimacy of finding one person at work who actually knows how your brain malfunctions.
1
‘Fleabag’ (2016-2019)
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Image via Prime Video</figure>
Fleabag follows an unnamed London woman (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) stumbling through grief, sex, family resentment, friendship, and an extraordinary talent for turning emotional disaster into a joke before anybody can ask whether she is okay. She talks directly to us constantly, making the audience her private accomplice while everyone around her receives a more edited version. And then the Priest (Andrew Scott) notices.
That tiny moment still gives me chills because Waller-Bridge, who also created and wrote the series, spends so long establishing the camera as Fleabag’s hiding place. She can escape into us whenever an interaction becomes too intimate. When somebody finally catches her doing it, the entire storytelling device becomes emotional rather than clever. That is why the second season hits so hard. Fleabag is funny because she is protecting herself with comedy, and the show gradually asks what happens when someone sees through the protection without demanding that she stop being herself. The final goodbye is devastating for exactly the same reason. She walks away, looks back at us, and gently tells us not to follow. Six episodes earlier, losing access to her thoughts would have seemed impossible. Now it feels like proof she might finally be able to live without needing us there.
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