5 Best Sitcoms Of The 2000s, Ranked

The sitcom as we know it completely transformed during the 2000s. Yes, plenty of new multi-camera shows filmed in front of a live studio audience made it to air, with some like "The Big Bang Theory" picking up where "Friends" left off. These traditional series were sharing space on major networks with far riskier propositions that changed the visual language of the genre altogether; single-camera comedies, mockumentaries, and even meta shows dense with fourth wall-breaking gags would become just as common on screens by the end of the decade.

This list of the best sitcoms of the 2000s leans more towards the shows that turned the format on its head — which, over 20 years later, now feel so comfortingly familiar through endless rewatches that it's easy to forget how revolutionary they were in the first place. As there were plenty of great titles to choose from, we narrowed down the list by only including live-action shows that premiered from 2000 onwards and ran beyond the decade, making sure most of their episodes premiered between 2000 and 2010. This means shows like "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" are ineligible, even if it would be a worthy contender for the title.

We do bend this rule just once, as one cancelled show got a later revival. And while we wanted to stick to the shows which premiered on U.S. networks (which means this writer's beloved cult U.K. sitcom "Peep Show" couldn't make it in), there is one noteworthy exception that was propelled there thanks to its U.S. awards success and place in the cultural consciousness. With those rules set in stone, we ranked our final picks in order of how funny we found them, and these are the results.

Whether it's the groundbreaking, deadpan BBC original by Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais or the beloved cringe-comedy misadventures of Michael Scott and the Dunder Mifflin team, both original iterations of "The Office" deserve a place on this list for breaking new ground for the sitcom format. The British series was revelatory for incorporating a mockumentary framing device into a conventional workplace comedy, its mundane depiction of corporate work only heightening the sheer embarrassment that came from watching boss David Brent (Gervais) do anything he could to be liked by his employees. Premiering a few years later, the American adaptation took longer to find its feet and escape the shadow of its Golden Globe-winning predecessor, but overcame a shaky first season and the threat of cancellation to establish a more distinctive (but no less painful to watch) voice.

We're counting "The Office" as a mega-franchise rather than choosing one take over another because the original series was one of the most influential sitcoms of all time, and the NBC remake became one of the most beloved. The latter wouldn't exist without the foundation of the earlier show, but it arguably surpassed it as its lengthy run continued, with many of its most lauded episodes (such as "Dinner Party") premiering when it was already several seasons into its run. The U.S. "Office" did eventually run out of steam towards the end, and its predecessor is now something we're increasingly reluctant to revisit because of how insufferably desperate for controversy Gervais' schtick has become in recent years. However, no list of the best sitcoms of the 2000s would be complete without their inclusion; the comedy landscape was transformed in their image by the end of the decade.

We've tried to avoid including series which ran long beyond the 2000s in this list, but most of the highlights of Larry David's post-"Seinfeld" sitcom are considered to have aired during its first decade — although it remained pre-tay, pre-tay, pretty good long after that.

"Curb Your Enthusiasm" was a much more scathing cousin to the observational humor of that prior series (which didn't have a hard time painting its characters in a bad light to begin with). It may have had distinct season-long arcs fluctuating character relationships, and a ton of celebrities playing fictionalized versions of themselves, but it always remained grounded in whichever social faux pas Larry had stumbled into on a given week. Some were misunderstandings, some were entirely self-inflicted wounds, and every single one was navigated in the worst possible way, pushing the "Seinfeld" writers' rule of "no hugging, no learning" to greater heights of discomfort.

It was a formula David didn't deviate from in the near quarter-century "Curb" was on the air, managing to evolve its social dilemmas with the shifting cultural climate of the times without affording his character anything in the way of character growth. If Larry ever stopped believing he was in the right, no matter how heated the situation, the show would have fallen apart completely.

This was the key to the show's continued success; despite a Hollywood setting for most of its run, it was often easier than we'd be comfortable admitting relating to an old grump with no filter. Part of the show's continued appeal was witnessing someone transgress the social rules in ways we wish we could. The weekly fallout he experienced was enough reason to ensure we'd continue thinking before we speak.

Underrated by critics and underseen by audiences in 2005, Lisa Kudrow's post-"Friends" sitcom — co-created by former "Sex and the City" showrunner Michael Patrick King — used the increasingly popular mockumentary sitcom formula to explore the growing conflict between reality and scripted TV. This was a period where culture was dominated by shows like "American Idol," with many new network sitcoms and dramas struggling next to those unscripted behemoths in the ratings — and the anxieties felt by many writers were taken out on poor Valerie Cherish (Kudrow).

A mostly forgotten early '90s star, she was cast in a supporting role on teen sitcom "Room and Bored," an irrelevant part forced upon the show's creative team because the network wanted a reality TV show about a celebrity reappearance to air alongside it. "The Comeback" consists of the raw, unedited footage from the reality shoot, making us flies on the wall during every painful interaction.

The tensions between the crews of both shows and their varying degrees of hostility towards the fame-hungry, clueless Valerie adds a satirical sting to the cringe comedy, with the in-universe producers frequently manipulating her routine in the hopes of making a good reality show. In this era of Bravo dominance, the reality TV parody has aged brilliantly, but "The Comeback" was ahead of its time for 2005.

Revival seasons, where Valerie has entered the worlds of prestige TV and AI-scripted streaming sitcoms, have seen the show finally become the critical darling it should have always been. Now that time has caught up to it, "The Comeback" feels like the defining sitcom of the mockumentary era, with Kudrow delivering the finest performance of her career.

We won't talk about the ill-fated Netflix revival here (did anybody even watch the fifth and final season?), but even that ambitious misfire couldn't sour our love for the original three-season run of "Arrested Development."

Producer and narrator Ron Howard's idea to make a tightly scripted sitcom using the rougher, handheld camera style associated with reality TV was combined with creator Mitchell Hurwtiz's premise of a dysfunctional family saga about a rich family forced to downsize after a major real estate corruption scandal. From there, Hurwitz departed from the grounded realism that the reality style would afford the timely premise, with his series quickly falling down a rabbit hole of surreal, meta gags as Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) struggled to keep the rest of the family in line.

Already unusual for a live-action network sitcom of this period due to its shot-on-location form, "Arrested Development" further toyed with the format with its wealth of cutaway gags and repeated breaking of the fourth wall. It was a live-action cartoon shot like a gritty documentary, and its disregard for sitcom conventions has made it one of the century's most influential TV shows.

More importantly for this list, however, is just how consistently funny it remains on rewatch, with its sheer density of jokes meaning we're still discovering hilarious new throwaway lines decades later. It hasn't all aged perfectly (Charlize Theron's second season romantic interest is, shall we say, a little problematically written), but most of "Arrested Development" is as fresh as the day it premiered.

Premiering in the same season when Aaron Sorkin's "West Wing" follow-up "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" was expected to become a sensation, Tina Fey's heightened look at life behind the scenes of a live comedy show very quickly overshadowed the competitor it was expected to get trounced by. Sorkin's self-important series was too reverent towards comedy writers and their ability to speak truth to power, without any of his scripts for the show containing a single successful punchline.

Fey and co-creator Robert Carlock, on the other hand, were far less enamored with the lame "Saturday Night Live" equivalent in their show's universe, quickly making it a distant second to the ego-driven feud of its stars Jenna and Tracy (played by the brilliant Jane Krakowski and Tracy Morgan) and cutting-edge satire about showbiz and the stupidity of Hollywood execs.

Some plotlines, like Jenna's ill-fated Janis Joplin biopic that couldn't get music or life rights, were directly translated from real entertainment industry headlines at the time. All-timer performances from Fey as beleaguered head writer Liz Lemon and Alec Baldwin as network executive Jack Donaghy anchored the show at its silliest.

However, as was the case when we saw vintage "Simpsons" episodes at a young age, the gag rate remained so consistently high that it never mattered if we got each and every niche pop culture reference thrown at the screen. In terms of sheer joke quantity, "30 Rock" might be the funniest network sitcom to have ever aired.