For me The Office Simpsons Seinfeld It's Always Sunny Parks & Recreation (vastly underrated) Entourage King of Queens Fresh Prince of Bel Air Modern Family has it's moments but I think it's tailed off the past season or 2 minus the episode with Phil & Matthew Broderick.
Everybody loves Raymond is great. It holds up solidly on reruns even now. Yeah Frank was amazing in that show. The show writer or producer whoever has a book "You're Lucky You're Funny" about writing the show and behind the scenes and stuff. I haven't read it in a long time, but great book
I Love Lucy and the Honeymooners definitely get honorable mention but the funniest show of all time was Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. The writers on the show were in no particular order: Mel Brooks, Buck Henry, Carl Reiner, Neil Simon and Danny Simon. After your Show of Shows ended Sid Caesar did several specials that allowed young writers like Woody Allen and Larry Gelbart to add their names to the list of people who wrote for him. There's a great movie from the 80's that is based on that show called My Favorite Year that looks at the show from a young writer's perspective. It's a good way to get a look at what the magic was all about without having to wade through grainy poor quality film from the early 50's.
Not that it's at the top of my list, but nobody's even mentioned Saturday Night Live? Seinfeld Curb IASIP Monty Python South Park Arrested Development Get A Life Chappelle Three Stooges The State The IT Crowd The Office UK
I wish WWOR and WPIX were still like this today. Those were the two stations I watched the most growing up but now when i come home they're so different. I never watched it but my dad used to watch Morton Downy Jr on WWOR and he would let us watch the Stern Show even though I was too young to really get a lot of the jokes. I did about 2 pages back but yeah not a lot of mentions in this thread. I think it's because most posters are too young to remember the better years when guys like Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers were on it.
Thought it said sitcom (hence my apology for Rocky and Bullwinkle), but I see it says best comedy show, so (parts of) SNL certainly would qualify. Time for another "back in my day" moment - it is impossible now to really get how culturally important SNL was in its first five years. No one had ever seen anything remotely like it before then. You have to remember that cable TV was in its infancy then, and broadcast TV wasn't showing young standup comedians. For years life on college campuses came to a standstill on Saturday nights at 11:30; the parties would stop, everyone would watch NBC, and then the parties would start up again at 1. And of course the "Not Ready for Prime-Time Players" changed the course of comedy history, with John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, and Bill Murray absolutely brilliant. By the end the drugs and fame had pretty much destroyed what they had, but for a while it was amazing. Of course there were plenty of memorable cast members to come, but they never recaptured that sense that you had to watch every week to see what would happen.
morton downey jr was gold, pure gold. he would fit right in today with all the political crap going on.
I'm surprised no one has even mentioned some of my top favorites Scrubs & How I met your mother And dude please edit Entourage off your list, it's so not a comedy. One of the best shows to ever be put on television but not a comedy.
