Emmy Winners: Comedy

Every Outstanding Comedy Series since 1970, newest first — All in the Family to The Studio. How many of the greats have you actually watched?

30 titles

  1. The Studio (2025), Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory, Seth Rogen, Frida Perez, Evan Goldberg
    Seth Rogen as the newly appointed head of a major Hollywood studio. Won Best Comedy at the 2025 Emmys. Industry satire from people inside the industry. A show about the impossibility of art inside a machine that does not believe in it.
  2. Hacks (2021), Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, Jen Statsky
    Jean Smart as a legendary Las Vegas stand-up forced to collaborate with a broke young comedy writer. Won Best Comedy in 2024. A show about women, ambition, and what you give up for your career. One of the best things on television.
  3. The Bear (2022), Christopher Storer
    A fine-dining chef inherits his family's sandwich shop. Won Best Comedy in 2023. Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, Ebon Moss-Bachrach. The kitchen sequences are as intense as any drama on television.
  4. Ted Lasso (2020), Jason Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly
    An American football coach hired to manage an English Premier League club. Won Best Comedy twice. A show about optimism in the face of professional humiliation. The first two seasons are near-perfect.
  5. Schitt's Creek (2015), Dan Levy / Eugene Levy
    A wealthy family forced to live in a small town they once bought as a joke. Won Best Comedy in 2020 and swept all four acting categories. The final season is as satisfying as television finales get.
  6. Fleabag (2016), Phoebe Waller-Bridge
    A young woman in London breaks the fourth wall to tell you things she will not tell the people in her life. Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Won Best Comedy in 2019. Twelve episodes. The Priest episode. The finale. The look at the camera.
  7. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017), Amy Sherman-Palladino
    A 1950s Upper West Side housewife discovers she is funny and decides to become a stand- up comedian. Won Best Comedy in 2018. Rachel Brosnahan. Amy Sherman-Palladino's most fully realized vision.
  8. Veep (2012)
    Selina Meyer is the Vice President of the United States. Won Best Comedy three times. Julia Louis-Dreyfus in one of the greatest performances in American comedy. Every supporting player is perfect.
  9. Modern Family (2009), Steven Levitan, Christopher Lloyd
    Three interconnected Los Angeles families in a mockumentary style. Won Best Comedy five consecutive years. A network sitcom that dominated the Emmy race during the peak of cable's ascendancy. Essential viewing for the 2010s television landscape.
  10. 30 Rock (2006), Tina Fey
    Tina Fey plays the head writer of a sketch comedy show run by Alec Baldwin's network executive. Won Best Comedy three consecutive years. The fastest comedy on broadcast television.
  11. The Office (2005), Greg Daniels
    The Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin. The American adaptation that became something different and in many ways better than the original. Won Best Comedy in 2006. The show found its tone in season two and ran it expertly through season five.
  12. Everybody Loves Raymond (1996)
  13. Arrested Development (2003)
    A dysfunctional wealthy family loses their fortune. Won Best Comedy, was canceled anyway, revived to a more complicated reception. The first three seasons are a sustained comedic achievement without parallel in network television.
  14. Friends (1994), Marta Kauffman, David Crane
  15. Sex and the City (1998), HBO
    Four women in Manhattan talk about men, sex, careers, and friendship. Won Best Comedy in 2001. Changed how women on television were permitted to speak and what they were permitted to want. Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie Bradshaw is the defining character of the premium cable era.
  16. Will & Grace (1998)
    A gay lawyer and his straight best friend share an apartment in New York. Won Best Comedy in 2000. A network sitcom that reached a mainstream audience with gay characters as leads when no other show was doing it.
  17. Ally McBeal (1997)
    A Boston attorney at a quirky law firm. Won Best Comedy in 1999. A show about feminism and ambivalence that provoked more cultural conversation than almost any other sitcom of the 1990s. Calista Flockhart and Greg Germann. The dancing baby.
  18. Frasier (1993), David Angell, Peter Casey, David Clark Lee
    A Boston therapist in Seattle hosting a radio advice show. Won Best Comedy five consecutive years. The best-written network sitcom of the 1990s. The crane brothers' dynamic never wore out across 264 episodes.
  19. Seinfeld (1989)
    A comedian and his friends in New York do nothing in particular and make it interesting. Won Best Comedy in 1993. The show about nothing that turned out to be about everything.
  20. Murphy Brown (1988)
    A recovering alcoholic TV journalist returns to work. Won Best Comedy twice. Candice Bergen's performance is one of the great sustained comedic performances in network television. The show that provoked Dan Quayle into attacking a fictional character.
  21. Cheers (1982)
    A bar in Boston. Won Best Comedy four times. Ted Danson, Shelley Long, then Kirstie Alley. The show built around a place and the people who could not leave it. Still the high-water mark for network ensemble situation comedy.
  22. The Wonder Years (1988)
  23. The Golden Girls (1985)
    Four older women share a house in Miami. Won Best Comedy twice. Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty. A show that treated its characters' ages and desires with equal seriousness. Genuinely funny and genuinely radical for its era.
  24. The Cosby Show (1984)
    An upper-middle-class Black family in Brooklyn. Won Best Comedy in 1985 and is credited with saving the American network sitcom. Complicated by what became known about Bill Cosby. The show's influence on Black representation on American television is documented; the context in which it exists now…
  25. Barney Miller (1975)
  26. Taxi (1978)
  27. All in the Family (1971)
  28. The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970), Allan Burns, James L. Brooks
  29. M*A*S*H (1972)
    Army surgeons during the Korean War. Won Best Comedy in 1974. The finale in 1983 drew 106 million viewers, still a record for an episodic series. Alan Alda's Hawkeye Pierce is the definitive American television protagonist of his era.
  30. My World and Welcome to It (1969)