Preview data: all rankings, scores, votes, refresh labels, methodology, testing and editorial-process statements in Top 49 are illustrative demo content, not live measurements or documented reviews.
#6 in Sitcoms
of 16 ranked entries
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. Recorded specifics: premiered 1993, creator David Angell, Peter Casey & David Lee, seasons 11. Panel highlighted farce plotting rivaling stage comedy, grammer and Pierce’s sibling rivalry never runs dry and one of the rare spinoffs that surpassed the original. The reservation on record is later seasons lean harder on repeating established bits.
Score breakdown
Each criterion is scored independently, then combined using the weights published on Sitcoms.
On the record
| Premiered | 1993 |
|---|---|
| Creator | David Angell, Peter Casey & David Lee |
| Seasons | 11 |
| Rating | 8.3 |
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.
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.
Dan Harmon · 2009–2015
Harmon built a study-group sitcom that kept breaking its own format — a bottle episode here, a stop-motion Christmas special there — without ever losing the emotional throughline underneath the gimmick.
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.