20 Best TV Comedy Shows Of The 21st Century

Comedy comes in many forms, from the biting incisive satire of Arrested Development and Bojack Horseman to the warm, fuzzy sitcom charms of Modern Family and How I Met Your Mother, to the silly sight gags and inventive puns of 30 Rock and… er, also Bojack Horseman actually. That show really can bounce between tonal extremes on a dime.

Whatever flavour you prefer, we’re living in a golden age of television comedy wherein there’s a show for everyone, whether you’re after some light-hearted romantic comedy from The Mindy Project, a classic hang out show in the form New Girl, a meta-commentary on the very idea of sitcoms from the deconstructive Community, or a warm workplace ensemble cast comedy like The Office or Brooklyn Nine Nine.

It’s difficult to pick a top fifty, let alone a top twenty, from such a crowded field of contenders—we had Parks and Recreation on the first draft of this list, but with apologies to the late great Harris Wittels, there are simply too many phenomenal pieces of TV comedy for all of them to make the cut, even with a whopping twenty spaces to fill.

With this limited space in mind, it’s time to run down the twenty greatest TV comedies of the new millennium—and before you ask, no, we’re not including the desperately pretentious wannabe-artsy likes of Master of None and Louie here.

It’s not only animated families which have excelled in the new millennium’s TV offerings.

This 2009 hit offered us over ten years of adventures from the sprawling Dunphy clan, whose antics offered a more contemporary spin on classic sitcom tropes. The show updated the milieu of the classic Brady Brunch style set up without sacrificing any of the cringey laughs, charming stupidity, or sweet emotional pay offs we all want from a family sitcom.

Sweeter and sillier than the likes of Arrested Development, this one is more suited to family viewing than most on this list, but as far as PG-rated television comedies since 2000 go, it’s hard to beat this massive talented cast and their many seasons of absurdly unlikely misunderstandings.