5 Best Sitcoms Nobody Talks About Anymore

Throughout the history of television, sitcoms have drawn a great deal of attention and plenty of viewers. Many of them are celebrated long after they go off the air. Think of series like "Seinfeld," "Friends," "Three's Company," "The Cosby Show," and many others. They all remain a part of popular culture through merch, fan appreciation, syndication, and their unique aspects that permeate the zeitgeist. Things like "Seinfeld's'" so-called "Soup Nazi," or the iconic sweaters of "The Cosby Show" ... if not so much the man wearing them, any more.

While those listed so far are among the most celebrated and remembered sitcoms ever aired, there are plenty more that society seems to have forgotten about. While most sitcoms want to maintain the recognition of something like "Gilligan's Island" or "M*A*S*H," that's not always possible. There are sitcoms that everyone needs to watch, regardless of which generation they belong to, but more and more go forgotten each year.

Some classics are lucky enough to score a revival series, like "Roseanne" and "Frasier," but they're outliers. For the vast majority of sitcoms, they have their time on the small screen, conclude or are cancelled, and that's about it. Some great sitcoms were cancelled too soon, or were popular while they aired, but all our picks have since been buried beneath a pile of what followed. Each one of these five amazing sitcoms was outstanding during its time, but they've all seemingly been lost to television history. Nobody talks about them anymore, so let's change that for a day.

"Raising Hope" is the type of sitcom that features a relatively common trope, but with some fresh twists. It centers around Jimmy (Lucas Neff), a 23-year-old man whose one night stand with a woman (and who turns out to be a serial killer) results in the birth and subsequent abandonment of a daughter named Hope. The family dynamic that surrounds Jimmy and the manner in which he raises Hope adds an unorthodox twist to what would otherwise have been a tired narrative, and it's elevated by a talented cast.

This includes "Goonies" alumna Martha Plimpton as Virginia, Jimmy's mom, and Garret Dillahunt as Burt, his dad. The biggest element of star power resides in the late Cloris Leachman, who plays "Maw Maw," Hope's great-grandmother, who adds plenty of levity to the series' four seasons of hijinks. "Raising Hope" aired from 2010 until 2014 on Fox, where it scored three Primetime Emmy Award nominations and won several others, including a Satellite Award for Plimpton.

While it was on the air, plenty of people talked about "Raising Hope," helping it to finish its time on Fox with a proper conclusion in its fourth season. At the time, Fox chairman Kevin Reilly told Deadline, "Getting to know and love the Chance family on "Raising Hope" has been a sweet, hilarious ride." If you missed it while it was on and haven't heard of it since, you can watch "Raising Hope" in its entirety on Hulu/Disney+ or Amazon Prime Video.

Some of the best sitcoms center around their unique characters, and "My Name Is Earl" is no exception. The show is all about Earl (Jason Lee), a ne'er-do-well petty criminal who's lived a life of cheating, stealing, and wanton stupidity. After he wins $100,000 from a lottery scratcher, he's immediately hit by a car and loses the ticket. After learning about the concept of karma, he decides to turn his life around.

Earl spends his days making things right by finding the people he wronged throughout his life and using his money from that recovered ticket to help them. Essentially, he atones by doing good deeds, and he's aided by his witless brother Randy (Ethan Suplee). The rest of the cast includes Joy (Jaime Pressly), Earl's ex-wife, who left him for Darnell "Crab Man" Turner (Eddie Steeples), while Nadine Velazquez plays Catalina, the maid at Earl and Randy's motel. The series was a hit throughout its run from 2005 to 2009. Unfortunately, NBC canceled "My Name Is Earl," ending its story prematurely.

The show frustratingly ends on a cliffhanger, with Earl's list of misdeeds unfinished (alongside some shocking revelations). Despite this, the series pulled in 14 Primetime Emmy nominations, winning five, including one for Pressly. "My Name Is Earl" worked well, thanks to its unusual cast, but it's rarely brought up in conversation today outside of online discussions by fans hoping for a revival that'll probably never come.

As the decades pass, it's understandable that some sitcoms fall into the dustbin of television history, but it strains credulity that "3rd Rock From the Sun" got that treatment. The series premiered back in 1996 and ran for six seasons, ending in 2001, and it was incredibly popular throughout its run. The show is all about a group of aliens who come from another galaxy but have settled in Cleveland, Ohio, where they pass themselves off as humans. Every one of them is perfectly cast.

The Solomon family includes Dick (John Lithgow), Sally (Kristen Johnston), Harry (French Stewart), and Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), all of whom share an attic apartment. Dick teaches at the local college and instantly becomes infatuated with Mary Albright, who is hilariously played by Jane Curtin. Essentially, it's a fish out of water tale taken to extremes, but told via over-the-top hilarity centered on numerous misunderstandings of human culture and behavior.

"3rd Rock from the Sun" was a huge hit for NBC, winning eight Primetime Emmy Awards out of 31 nominations. You'd think that would be enough for the network to champion the series, but they just didn't believe in it enough to keep it alive. NBC shuffled the show to 18 different timeslots across six seasons, which didn't help its viewership numbers and resulted in its cancellation. Fortunately, the series was allowed to conclude, running its course to a proper ending. There's also an alternate ending to "3rd Rock from the Sun" that almost changed everything.

In 2015, Disney and Pixar released "Inside Out," and if you thought the premise seemed familiar, you might have grown up watching "Herman's Head." The show kicked off in 1991 and ran for three seasons until Fox pulled the plug in 1994. It's about Herman Brooks (William Ragsdale), a fact-checker working in Manhattan who lives through the typical plot-drivers and tropes you'd expect to find in an early '90s sitcom. The only difference is the show's focus on the four people living inside his head.

These are Angel (Molly Hagan, best known these days for "Silo"), who represents Herman's sensitive side, Animal (Ken Hudson Campbell), who is all about lust, Genius (Peter Mackenzie), who handles Herman's logical side, and Wimp (Rick Lawless), who is the representation of Herman's anxiety. The four function much like a Greek Chorus that coalesces into Herman's psyche, but they rarely get along and only work together to handle bodily functions like sneezing.

While the series was entertaining and had an unusual concept, it didn't do well in the ratings. Fox killed it after "Herman Head's" third season. While it's not well known today, "Herman's Head" wasn't the first project to explore the concept of internal people driving a person's actions — Woody Allen did it in 1972 with one segment of "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex* (*And Were Afraid To Ask)" –  and it certainly wasn't the last.

There was a time where you couldn't go a few days without hearing someone talk about "Wings," but that era is long gone. The show, which was a huge hit throughout its eight seasons, began in 1990 and ran until 1997, concluding naturally without the network cancelling it before its time. The series focuses primarily on Joe (Tim Daly) and Brian Hackett (Steven Weber), brothers who co-own and operate a tiny airline consisting of a single aircraft on Nantucket Island.

Their only route is a quick ride off and on the island, so there's plenty of downtime at the airport to socialize with Helen (Crystal Bernard), Roy (David Schramm), Lowell (Thomas Haden Church), and Antonio (Tony Shalhoub). "Wings" had an amazing cast, and it's the series that made Shalhoub a star who's since gone on to head numerous projects, including the phenomenal "Monk." Much of the show is set in the airport itself, and "Wings" combines many of the usual tropes of relationships and work, making it a classic sitcom.

While "Wings" was popular, having earned three Primetime Emmy Awards nominations across its run, it wasn't as well-known as some other programs airing at the same time. These were "Friends," "Frasier," and "Seinfeld," all of which continue to generate buzz and nostalgia. Meanwhile, "Wings" is barely mentioned outside of the occasional Shalhoub career retrospective. Regardless, it's a fantastic sitcom that's well worth anyone's time, whether they caught it in the 1990s or are just discovering it on Paramount+ or Amazon Prime Video today.