The 33 Best Comedy Shows Ever on TV
I Love Lucy (1951)
The mother of all the scripted comedy series, shot in front of live studio audiences, it starred the glamorous Lucille Ball and her real life husband Desi Arnaz, playing a glamorous but ditzy wannabe singer and her bandleader husband. I LOVE LUCY was a show that ran and ran in many incarnations, and still is seen around the world.
The Phil Silvers Show (1955)
Phil Silvers crafted Ernest G Bilko into the greatest TV comedy character of the Fifties. In THE PHIL SILVERS SHOW, more commonly known as Bilko, his Master Sergeant was an incorrigible gambler and conman in charge of a rag-bag platoon in the peacetime backwater of Fort Baxter, Kansas. Nat Hiken’s scripts fizzled with humour and Silvers was surrounded by a cast who could play up to the satire, especially the loveable slob, Private Doberman. The show also featured black actors, a rare, racially integrated TV show for the Fifties. Bilko ran for 143 episodes, from 1955 to 1959, on CBS.
Bewitched (1964)
Elizabeth Montgomery wrinkled her nose and cast a spell over 1960s audiences as witch turned suburban housewife Samantha, in Sol Saks’ sitcom BEWITCHED. The winning combination of romance, gentle humour and a charismatic star led to the show achieving widespread popularity, until it came to an end in 1972. Today, it regularly crops up in lists of the all-time greatest US sitcoms. In contrast, the 2005 Nicole Kidman film based on the series was notoriously awful, and best forgotten as swiftly as possible.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970)
Having cut her teeth in The Dick Van Dyke Show, the beautiful Mary Tyler Moore was then given her own series. Its resolute resistance to make Tyler Moore conform to the suburban housewife stereotype was nothing short of groundbreaking and it paved the way for such other successful shows as Veronica’s Closet and Ellen in which the central female character is surrounded by a host of endearingly quirky characters. THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW produced several spin-offs, most notably Rhoda starring Valerie Harper.
M*A*S*H* (1972)
M*A*S*H is easily the best anti-war television comedy series ever, lampooning military procedures in a show set in a US Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War. The series was adapted from the successful 1970 feature film of the same name, presenting an anti-war theme at the same time the United States was extricating itself from the Vietnam War. Harry Morgan (above left with Alan Alda) played the cantankerous Colonel Potter. Morgan cried during a 1983 news conference after taping the final episode of “M*A*S*H,” which became the most-watched show in the history of US television. He told reporters, “I’m feeling very sad and sentimental. I don’t know if ‘M*A*S*H’ made me a better actor but I know it made me a better human being.”
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