Some shows just don’t leave. Decades from now, people who weren’t born when these sitcoms aired will still be quoting them, still finding them, still building fan bases around them.
Let’s be clear about what this list isn’t. It’s not a ranking of the best sitcoms ever made, and not every show here has aged gracefully. Plenty have jokes that don't land the way they used to, and premises that make no sense in the modern era.
But these 10 aren’t going anywhere. They’re woven into the fabric of television, and as long as the medium exists, these names stay in circulation. They have devoted fans for good reason. When they arrived, they broke new ground, and nothing since has quite replicated them.
The show that invented the rerun
I Love Lucy was the most-watched show in the United States for most of its run, and it basically developed, or at least popularized, syndicated TV shows and reruns. Modern television would look considerably different without it. Seventy years after it premiered, Academy Award-nominated biodramas like Being the Ricardos are still keeping the series in the public consciousness.
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz star as Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, a married couple living in New York City. The series generally follows Lucy’s attempts to break into show business, but just as often finds her tangled in whatever hijinks and situations her innocence combined with ambition can produce.
A woman with a job and no husband, which was radical
The Mary Tyler Moore Show stars the titular actress as Mary Richards, an independent, unmarried woman with a great job she cares about at a local news station. That description reads as quaint now. At the time it was groundbreaking, and it still marks a critical moment in women’s representation on television.
Across seven seasons, Mary succeeds in her career and her life goals without a man being involved in any significant way. Any conversation about keystone moments in TV representation has to include this show, and it happens to be anchored by one of the greatest sitcom performances ever given.
You know Cheers even if you’ve never watched it
Cheers is one of those shows you know the details of without having seen a frame. The setting, a bar. The characters, Norm, Sam, Diane. Even the style of the jokes, barflies wasting time any way they can. It might be just a few years too old for the streaming generation to be willing to jump back in.
Which is a shame, because it’s as much a comfort sitcom as The Office, Friends or Seinfeld, the podium for comfort shows. It’s a surprisingly modern series for something that began in the early ’80s, and the ensemble cast of Ted Danson, Kelsey Grammer, Woody Harrelson, Rhea Perlman and Kirstie Alley all went on to relevant and fantastic careers.
Four women in Miami, treating age like a construct
The Golden Girls has become shorthand. You use the phrase now to describe any group of older women living like age is just a construct. But the show is memorable well beyond its conceit, starring Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty as four elderly women sharing a house in Miami.
The four of them handle age and life together while making the most of their late-life freedom. There really aren’t many shows or movies like it, and the ones that have tried to emulate it land nowhere close. It’s the only show you can turn to when you want something in its exact register.
Seinfeld is too funny to disappear
Even if three-quarters of the jokes don’t work as well anymore, whether because of the outdated laugh track or because they inspired so many copycats, one-quarter of the jokes in a Seinfeld episode is still a lot of laughs.
Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Michael Richards and Julia Louis-Dreyfus play four friends who wind up in absurd and unfortunate situations, almost always because of their own selfishness and lack of tact. The show stays relevant no matter the time period, as long as people keep acting with only their self-interest in mind.
Bel-Air still holds up
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air remains fresh, even after its star has fallen a bit in the cultural eye. That’s a testament to the comedic chops of the entire cast and the brilliant writing. After a combative game of basketball in West Philadelphia, young Will (Will Smith) gets sent to live with his bougie cousins in Bel-Air, California.
Will’s street-wise attitude clashes hilariously with the buttoned-up, upper-class sensibilities of his family. It’s an idea that never gets old. What keeps the series relevant is its strong grip on the dramatic storylines, whether that’s Will’s difficult home life or the discrimination a black family in the United States faces no matter their income bracket.
The prototype everyone copied
Friends is a wonderful sitcom about, well, friends. It’s on the modern side of this list, and it still feels like the blueprint for much of what came after. This is the quintessential sitcom, containing every trope you can name, from interfriendship romances to giant apartments no barista could afford.
It’s a comedy with a lot of heart, and one of the sitcoms where watching start to finish pays off. The silly jokes and ridiculous situations eventually give way to tearjerking arcs between romantic partners, families and friends. A panoramic series with something for everyone.
The most honest show about American families
Everybody Loves Raymond occupies a unique spot in the pantheon. Ray Romano stars as Ray Barone, a sportswriter on Long Island living with his wife and three children. Across the street are his overbearing and intrusive parents, plus a dopey older brother who’s a cop in the area but spends more time on Ray’s couch than in his patrol car.
Typical sitcom setup, sure. And yet the show is more honest about American family life than almost any other. It almost never extends beyond the core family unit, which shows how deep it wants to mine the idea of nuclear families. That rigorous storytelling method will keep it relevant for years.
Twenty years later, everyone’s still shooting mockumentaries
The Office popularized the mockumentary style sitcom, which remains a staple of network and streaming comedies more than 20 years later. That alone earns its place here. It also cleared the hurdle of turning a hilarious, sharp British series into an American sitcom that stands on its own.
Most importantly, it delivered nine years of brilliant, hilarious writing. The jokes in the first two seasons are just as funny now as they were then, and it almost feels like shows have gotten a little less funny since, as if they’re worried they won’t reach the heights of a series that’s going to be remembered for years.
Then there are the hangout shows nobody talks about
Worth mentioning: the lesser-known hangout sitcoms with charming casts and relatable character-driven humor, the ones consistently overlooked in favor of more mainstream classics.
New Girl gets rediscovered every decade
New Girl is the most recent show here, and for some, that might make it feel too soon to call. But so much works in its favor that you can already tell it’s the type of show that’s going to be rediscovered every 10 years.
Few other American sitcoms can claim a cast with this chemistry, where every configuration of characters produces a compelling and funny storyline. Jess (Zooey Deschanel) is an incredible point-of-view main character, and someone everyone will relate to in one way or another.
Trust the ones that keep coming back. Somewhere right now, a teenager is discovering Lucy Ricardo stuffing chocolates into her mouth on a conveyor belt, 70 years after the fact, and laughing exactly as hard as the people who watched it live.
