Since the early days of television, families gathered weekly on their couches to revisit their favorite series on the small screen. From “I Love Lucy” and “The Flintstones” to “Friends” and “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” these shows served to make us laugh and forget, delivering some of the most beloved characters of our culture. Such shows were a product of network TV, which has lost the majority of its stranglehold on the industry in the last decade or so.
The rise of streaming services led to a commensurate rise in ambitious projects thanks to the creative freedom offered to show producers under these new models. But what has happened to the comfort show? Are they a dying breed, or are they merely evolving?
The 1990s saw a rise in the sophistication of the comfort show. “Frasier,” which won the Emmy for top comedy series for five straight seasons, was often branded as the smart-person’s sitcom. It featured the same situational antics as its contemporaries, but the characters (and in turn, the jokes) were a tad more sophisticated, part of what made it such a success in the awards racket. Shows like “Ally McBeal” and “Sex and the City” also won the top comedy prize around the turn of the century while dropping the whole laughtrack schtick altogether, with the latter becoming the first cable series to win the award.
However, one sitcom that really took a step in a different direction, helping evolve the genre to what it has become, was “Arrested Development.” The Fox series utilized narration, overt editing and cutaway gags in a way few live-action sitcoms before it had done, while also opting to ditch the canned laughter. Its humor was also much darker than other contemporary comedies. It was popular among Emmy voters, winning best comedy series in its first season, but failed to garner much in the way of commercial success. The first season averaged just over six million viewers per episode, making it the 120th most popular show at the time, and later seasons only saw a decline in ratings. No fan of “Arrested Development” would argue that it isn’t a comfort watch, but its less traditional format alienated the average TV viewer.
“Arrested Development’s” Emmy win was sandwiched between victories for “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Friends,” two network shows that today seem from a completely different generation of TV comedy. “The Office’s” mockumentary structure also signaled an evolution in style for the new era of comedies. But the fact that it opted for a broader comedic approach than the British original helped it attract a large audience in the U.S. “30 Rock” had a massively successful awards run, winning 16 Emmys in its seven seasons, but it suffered in the ratings for the same sort of reasons as “Arrested Development.” Its offbeat comedy delighted critics, but it was a far cry from “Friends’” and “Two and a Half Men” when it came to attracting the masses. It was viewed as a bit too inside to generate a mainstream audience.
The 2012 Emmy race marked a significant change in the comedy contenders. All but one show among the 2011 nominees for top comedy series were network sitcoms, but the following year saw an even split between network TV and HBO. “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Veep” are both hilarious comedies, but one is a bit too dark and sarcastic to be everyone’s cup of tea, while the other is a sharp political satire that doesn’t make for excellent escapism from our already political lives. The third HBO show that year was “Girls,” a comedy-drama that was at times far from comforting. Among the six nominees, only two were ratings juggernauts for network TV: “The Big Bang Theory” and “Modern Family” (the eventual winner of the top prize that year).
The fall of network television continued to be reflected in 2014, when those same two network shows were the only ones nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series. Cable retained their three spots among the nominees (HBO with “Silicon Valley” and “Veep,” FX with “Louie”). The sixth nominee was “Orange is the New Black,” the first streaming show to garner a nomination in the category. Following the inmates of a women’s prison, the Netflix comedy-drama was a cultural phenomenon. Its success ushered in a new competitor to the stage, straining even further the control that networks once had in the zeitgeist.
In 2015, “Veep” became just the second cable show to win the top prize, and since, only the final season of “Schitt’s Creek” took one home for the network crowd. Network television’s weekly release structure gave viewers the perfect excuse to tune in on Thursday nights to get away from it all and watch Sheldon Cooper or Michael Scott get into their usual hijinks. As that model begins to fade and all sorts of shows become accessible to watch online, cable networks like HBO offer high-caliber niche alternatives to the broadness of situation comedy. Meanwhile, streamers provide viewers the opportunity to binge-watch content, meaning its shows have strayed away from the episodic nature of network TV that worked better with a weekly structure. They infuse their comedies with drama and cliffhangers to keep the viewer watching ’til the final episode.
So is the comfort show well and truly gone? Well, not quite. For one, network TV still has its critical darlings every now and then. “Black-ish” was a mainstay at the Emmys for a few years, while “Abbott Elementary” seems poised to win the comedy series trophy in the near future. Both of these shows are stylistically a far cry from “Friends” and the like, but feature broad-enough gags to be considered a spiritual successor. Notably, neither shy away from commenting on socio-political issues of the day, making them more politically charged than the comfort show we’d be accustomed to seeing in the early 2000s.
On the other hand, cable and streaming services still offer up their fair share of comfort television. Apple TV’s “Ted Lasso” is an infectiously positive show about working as a team and supporting your loved ones through thick and thin. It combines its laughs, though, with some tearjerking moments as it tackles themes such as loss and mental health. Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building” may be a mystery show, but it’s undeniably comforting and funny (how could it not be when it stars Steve Martin and Martin Short?). The comedy here, though, is paired with twists, cliffhangers and murder. A comfort show for a generation of binge-watchers. On the cable side of things, the last two seasons of “What We Do in the Shadows” have been nominated for comedy series. Strip away the gothic horror elements and you’re left with a broad mockumentary sitcom along the lines of “The Office” or “Abbott Elementary.”
PREDICTthe 2023 Emmy nominees through July 12Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?
