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#16 in Sitcoms
of 16 ranked entries
Dan Goor & Michael Schur · 2013–2021
Goor and Schur took the Schur workplace-sitcom formula to a police precinct and made it work by treating its characters’ competence as seriously as their jokes. Rarely mean, always specific. Recorded specifics: premiered 2013, creator Dan Goor & Michael Schur, seasons 8. Panel highlighted an ensemble sitcom with real structural discipline, braugher’s Holt is a masterclass in comic restraint and handled a network cancellation reversal gracefully. The reservation on record is a couple of early episodes lean on jokes the show later outgrew.
Score breakdown
Each criterion is scored independently, then combined using the weights published on Sitcoms.
On the record
| Premiered | 2013 |
|---|---|
| Creator | Dan Goor & Michael Schur |
| Seasons | 8 |
| Rating | 8.4 |
Panel verdict
What it gets right
Where it gives ground
1 appearance
From the same list
Larry David & Jerry Seinfeld · 1989–1998
David and Seinfeld built an entire show on the premise that petty grievances are the realest material there is, and refused every sitcom instinct toward growth or sentiment. The plotting is tighter than shows twice as serious.
Greg Daniels · 2005–2013
Daniels adapted Gervais and Merchant’s premise and slowly let warmth back into the mockumentary format the UK original had deliberately withheld. By season two it had built its own identity entirely.
Mitchell Hurwitz · 2003–2019
Hurwitz packed sight gags and callbacks into single-camera episodes at a density built for rewatching, which is exactly why the show found its real audience only after cancellation.
John Cleese & Connie Booth · 1975–1979
Cleese and Booth wrote exactly twelve episodes and walked away rather than dilute them, and the hit rate across those twelve is close to perfect. Basil Fawlty remains the most controlled comic performance on this list.
Glen Charles, Les Charles & James Burrows · 1982–1993
Burrows and the Charles brothers proved a bar could sustain eleven seasons of will-they-won’t-they without repeating itself, mostly by trusting the regulars around the edges as much as the leads.
David Angell, Peter Casey & David Lee · 1993–2004
A spinoff with no right to outclass its source material did it anyway, trading Cheers’ barroom sprawl for apartment farce and radio-booth pomposity. The door-slamming choreography alone took real stagecraft.
Greg Daniels & Michael Schur · 2009–2015
Daniels and Schur spent one shaky season finding the show’s actual heart, then built six more around a small-government bureaucrat who somehow made earnestness genuinely funny.
Tina Fey · 2006–2013
Fey wrote jokes at a rate that demands a pause button, layering sight gags into backgrounds most viewers only catch on a rewatch. Denser than almost anything else in the format.
Top 49 rankings are editorial. Scores are produced from the published criteria on each list and are refreshed on the cadence stated there. Figures shown across this section are curated demonstration data.