The Best Science Fiction Series Ever Made, Ranked
Ten shows that used the genre to argue about something, scored on our rubric, with the episode that makes the case for each one.
Read article →The Best Comedy Series, Ranked
Comedy is the hardest thing to score and the first thing awards bodies get wrong. Ten series since 2000, graded on the same rubric as the dramas, which is a far less forgiving test than it sounds.
Scoring comedy on a drama rubric is brutal, and that is exactly why we do it. A half-hour comedy has to carry a script, performances, direction, emotional effect, originality and rewatch value, just like anything else, and it has to be funny on top. Almost nothing clears that bar at the highest level. The ten series below do, and the order is the order our rubric produced rather than the order my affection would have chosen.
How This List Was Built
Same six categories as everything else on this site, no genre allowance. Two consequences are worth stating up front, because they explain most of the surprises in the order.
First, rewatch value does unusual work in comedy. A show built on surprise scores worse on a second pass than a show built on character and density, which is why joke-per-minute machines rank below series you can run annually. Second, we score the strongest complete unit a show offers rather than its lifetime average. Long-running network comedies are penalised by that less than you would think, because their peak runs are genuinely sustained, but a show that declined badly cannot hide behind its best two years.
Eligibility is simple: narrative series, first broadcast in 2000 or later, at least one complete season. No sketch, no stand-up specials, no panel shows.
The Top Three
1. Fleabag · 9.2
Twelve episodes, no wasted frame, and the only show here that is flawless on every one of our categories. Phoebe Waller-Bridge built the whole thing on a device that should have been exhausting, a protagonist who turns to camera and makes us her confidant, and then used it to do something devastating: the second series slowly reveals that the device is a symptom, that the asides are how she avoids being present, and that someone noticing her do it is the most intimate thing that has ever happened to her.
The scene that makes the case: the family dinner that opens the second series, a single sustained sequence of escalating catastrophe that is funnier and better constructed than most films manage in two hours.
2. The Bear · 9.0
A show about a kitchen that is really about inherited panic, filmed with a restlessness that puts you inside the anxiety rather than observing it. Whether it is a comedy at all is a live argument, and the entry below acknowledges it. What is not arguable is the construction: this is a series that can spend a full episode on one unbroken bad night and another on a family dinner that functions as a horror film, and make both feel like the same show.
The scene that makes the case: the single-take chaos episode in season one, which turned a gimmick into the most accurate depiction of work-induced dread on television.
3. Veep · 8.9
The most densely written insult comedy ever produced, and far crueller than its reputation suggests. What keeps it above the merely vicious is structural: every character is incompetent in a specific, consistent way, so the humiliations are earned rather than arbitrary. Julia Louis-Dreyfus gives the best sustained comic performance of the century, a woman whose ambition has eaten every other quality she might have had.
The scene that makes the case: any of Selina’s campaign strategy meetings, in which a room of professionals converts a simple decision into a catastrophe over eight minutes of overlapping dialogue.
Four to Seven
4. Arrested Development, seasons one to three · 8.8
The most intricately engineered sitcom ever made. Jokes are planted in season one and harvested two years later, background details become plot, and the narration lies to you on purpose. It is the highest rewatch score on this list by a clear margin, because roughly a third of the material is invisible on a first viewing. The later revival seasons are a separate and much weaker show, and we score the original run.
5. Atlanta · 8.7
The least predictable series here and the most formally adventurous. Nominally about a rapper’s cousin managing his career, it is really an anthology of surreal American anxieties that happens to share characters. One week it is a hangout comedy, the next a horror film, the next a fake television broadcast complete with invented adverts. The unevenness is the cost of the ambition and it is worth paying.
6. What We Do in the Shadows · 8.6
The purest joke-delivery mechanism of the last decade, and proof that a one-premise comedy can run for years without fatigue if the ensemble is perfect. Four hopeless vampires and an energy vampire in suburban Staten Island, played by a cast with total tonal agreement. It ranks here rather than higher because its emotional category is deliberately thin, which is a choice rather than a failure, but our rubric still counts it.
7. Ted Lasso, season one · 8.5
An unfashionable inclusion now, and the score is for the first season, which is close to perfectly built: ten tight episodes, a sincere thesis about kindness as a discipline rather than a mood, and a sports comedy that respects both the sport and the comedy. The later seasons lengthened, sprawled and began to agree with their own press, which is why the unit scored here is season one alone.
Eight to Ten
8. Hacks · 8.4
A two-hander about a veteran Las Vegas comic and the young writer she cannot admit she needs, and the best show on television about the actual craft of comedy: the rewriting, the stealing, the willingness to use your own life as material. Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder play mutual exploitation as a love story. It loses points only on originality, since the mentor pairing is a very old shape.
9. Abbott Elementary · 8.3
The strongest proof that the network half-hour is not dead. Quinta Brunson writes underfunded public school teaching as a workplace comedy with genuine stakes and no cynicism, using a mockumentary form that most shows had worn out. Twenty-two episodes a year is a punishing rate and the consistency is remarkable; the format’s familiarity is what keeps it out of the top five.
10. Only Murders in the Building · 8.0
The most purely enjoyable show here and the least substantial, which is exactly what an 8.0 means on our scale. Three podcasters investigating deaths in a Manhattan apartment block, carried by a generational gap that produces real jokes rather than cheap ones, and anchored by Martin Short doing the best work of a long career. Each season is a new case, which keeps it fresh and caps how deep it can go.
Why the funniest show is not number one
If this list were ordered by laughs per minute, Veep and What We Do in the Shadows would top it comfortably. They do not, because our rubric grades emotional effect and rewatch value alongside the jokes. Fleabag wins because it is nearly as funny as either and also does something neither attempts. That is the trade a six-category score makes, and it is worth knowing before you argue with the order.
The Arguments We Are Expecting
Five omissions will annoy people, so here they are with reasons. The Office, in both versions, came closest: the UK original is twelve near-perfect episodes with a deliberately narrow range, and the US version has the highest peak of any workplace comedy here attached to a final third that drags its whole-series score down.
30 Rock has the highest joke density of anything on television and a thin emotional category. Parks and Recreation is warmer and slightly softer than its best seasons suggest. Community is three extraordinary seasons and two difficult ones. Curb Your Enthusiasm is the most influential show of the period and is penalised by our rewatch criterion, because improvised discomfort rewards a first viewing far more than a second.
Two genre calls. Succession and Barry are both excluded as dramas, on the test given in the FAQ: whether the jokes carry the structure or decorate it. And Reservation Dogs is the omission I expect to regret, left off by a single decimal in a tie we broke on consistency.
What the Half-Hour Does Best, and Its Recurring Failure
✓What the form does well
- Density: a tight half-hour wastes nothing
- Character comedy compounds across seasons into real feeling
- Episodes can experiment wildly without risking the series
- The best of it rewatches better than any drama
✗How it keeps failing
- Success stretches the running time and the jokes thin out
- Sincerity arrives late and overcorrects into sentiment
- Breakout supporting characters get promoted and overexposed
- Awards categories reward drama wearing a comedy label
Where to Watch These
Rights shift between markets and over time, so check locally rather than trusting a list. As a starting point: Fleabag is on Prime Video. The Bear, Atlanta, What We Do in the Shadows and Only Murders in the Building are FX and Hulu titles, which means Hulu in the United States and Disney+ under Star in much of the world. Veep and Hacks are HBO properties and sit on HBO Max. Ted Lasso is an Apple TV+ original.
Arrested Development and Abbott Elementary are the two most likely to move. Both have rotated between services, and network comedies with large episode counts frequently appear on free ad-supported tiers such as Tubi or Pluto TV depending on region, which is a sensible place to start a long rewatch if you find them there.
The Verdict
Top of the list: Fleabag at 9.2 / 10 · Scored on our standard six-category rubric
The half-hour is where television is most technically accomplished
Comedy gets treated as the lighter category and it is the harder one, because everything a drama must do has to be done in half the time while also landing jokes. Six of the ten series here arrived in the last decade, which suggests the form is in better health than the awards coverage implies. Start with Fleabag if you want to see the ceiling, and Abbott Elementary if you want to see how hard the ordinary version of this job actually is.
Questions About This List
Why is The Office not in the top ten?
Both versions came very close. The UK original is a near-perfect twelve episodes and loses points only on range, while the US version has the highest ceiling of any workplace comedy and a weak final third that a whole-series score cannot ignore.
Is The Bear even a comedy?
It was submitted and awarded as one, which is largely a category convenience. We include it because its construction is comic even when its effect is not, and we flag the debate in its entry rather than pretending it is settled.
Why is Succession missing?
Because it is a drama that is extremely funny, not a comedy. The test we apply is whether the jokes carry the structure or decorate it. In Succession the humour is characterisation inside a tragedy.
Does stand-up or sketch count?
Not here. This is a list of narrative series. Sketch and stand-up are scored on a different basis, because a sketch show has no cumulative character work to grade and that is two of our six categories.