5 Best TV Shows Like Stick

The first season of "Stick" was warmly received, but its second proved to be a significant improvement, and it may just end up eclipsing "Ted Lasso" as Apple TV's finest sports sitcom — especially after the underwhelming comeback season of the latter. Fans who can't get enough of the show will likely be looking for more comedies in a similar vein, and that's where we come in, with five binge-watch recommendations for your next sports comedy fix.

For this list, we've picked five acclaimed series that we assume most fans of "Stick" haven't seen. This is why we've avoided shows like "Ted Lasso" – which, if you have an Apple subscription, you've probably watched in its entirety — to focus on some recent cult hits or currently airing series that have flown relatively under the radar. The following recommendations are listed alphabetically and are all available to stream or rent digitally.

Adapted from an early 2010s "Funny or Die" skit, "Brockmire" gives Hank Azaria one of his rare leading roles as washed-up baseball announcer Jim Brockmire, the culmination of several years playing the character in various comic sketches and sports cable appearances. Ten years before the show starts, Azaria was at the top of his game, working in major league baseball. After discovering his wife's infidelity on-air, he had a very public breakdown, not helped by the amount of drugs and booze in his system. We pick up with him in 2017 as he's scraping by commentating for anybody who will have him, from cockfighting rings across Asia to the baseball minor leagues, which he hopes will offer him a route to a comeback.

Although a hit for IFC, running for four seasons before wrapping in 2020, "Brockmire" never broke out beyond its cult cable audience. Azaria won acclaim – and repeat Critics' Choice Award nominations – for his lead performance, proving that the comic character actor could anchor a show just as successfully as he could steal scenes within the supporting ensemble. 

Watched after the runaway success of "Ted Lasso," the series — developed by Joel Church-Cooper — can't help but feel like its darker cousin, marrying an underdog redemption story with a melancholier character study, possessing more of a comic bite than you'd find in the exploits of Jason Sudeikis's overly nice soccer manager. The sports sitcom formula relies on tried-and-tested cliches to work, but the scripts are sharply written enough that Jim Brockmire's best and worst moments are sure to entertain.

Despite hailing from "30 Rock" and "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" co-creator Robert Carlock, this gag-heavy mockumentary hasn't quite built up the adoration both of those series received, even if it has been one of NBC's big sitcom breakouts of late. Tracy Morgan stars as Reggie Dinkins, a disgraced football player who ruined his legacy decades earlier after getting caught fixing a game. He now wants to rehabilitate his image and get a shot at entering the Hall of Fame. He's joined in his quest by Daniel Radcliffe's washed-up documentary filmmaker Arthur Tobin, who needs a sellable hit after his own career publicly flamed out trying to make a Marvel movie. Arthur moves into Reggie's house and follows the family like a fly on the wall, as they try to navigate his next shot at fame, one ill-advised idea at a time.

Although about the exploits of a former footballer, "The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins" is like the best sports sitcoms in that the sport itself is rarely relevant to the plot, with Morgan easing back into his larger-than-life persona from "30 Rock" as another star without the best grip on reality. But this isn't a simple star vehicle, with Carlock and his writers crafting excellent, laugh-a-minute material for the entire ensemble, with special credit to Erika Alexander — who plays his long-suffering ex-wife and current business manager — and Precious Way, as his carefree influencer fiancée Brina. The currently airing second season will soon feature guest appearances from "30 Rock" alums including Jane Krakowski and Scott Adsit, so there's no better time to catch up with this uproariously silly show.

For a while, "GLOW" was one of Netflix's most talked-about originals, with this dramedy about women's wrestling in the 1980s garnering significant acclaim throughout its run; it even recently wound up on the New York Times' best TV shows of the 21st century list. Unfortunately, like most beloved shows on the platform, it faded from the conversation alongside its unjust cancellation (a fourth season was greenlit then reversed because of COVID production costs), very rarely appearing on the homepage carousel despite being one of the streamer's best shows of its first few years of TV production. But with Marc Maron back in sports comedy mode as Pryce's best friend Mitts in "Stick," it's a fitting time to revisit his role as the cynical director Sam Sylvia in the Netflix series, as no role in his filmography to date has been as good a fit for the comedian's curmudgeonly stage persona.

The series also offered the first leading star vehicle for Alison Brie, after years of standout ensemble turns in "Community" and "BoJack Horseman." Here, she plays struggling actress Ruth Wilder, who, after successfully auditioning for a part in a low-budget wrestling series, discovers she'll be sharing the screen with Debbie (Betty Gilpin), her former best friend who slept with her ex-husband. But their conflict gradually fades into the background as the series progresses, becoming a more heartfelt look at a group of women who can't find a place in Hollywood and weaponize how they are seen by the world into over-the-top wrestling personas. We're still sad it never got a proper send-off, but we hope that doesn't put off viewers who are yet to catch up to it.

After starring together on "The Mindy Project," Mindy Kaling and Ike Barinholtz reunited for this buzzy basketball sitcom, which was recently renewed for a third season. The Netflix comedy "Running Point" stars Kate Hudson as Isla Gordon, a college dropout who has spent most of her adult life trying to overcome the perception that she's the burnout in her well-off family. Redemption comes when she becomes the president of the team they own, the Los Angeles Waves, after her brother (Justin Theroux) gets into some legal trouble and enters rehab, unexpectedly naming her as his successor. Isla has been passionate about basketball her whole life but has been frequently ignored in favor of her brothers — she's the Shiv Roy of this sporting empire — and sees this as a chance to prove to the world what she already knows.

She quickly realizes that there are aspects of running a team she isn't prepared to handle. Although both seasons of the show have been warmly acclaimed, the first installment's reviews mostly singled out Hudson's performance, giving the actress one of her biggest leading showcases to date. The consensus seemed to be that the show around her was still finding its feet, which seems to have been fully resolved with Season 2, which climbed to an impressive 85% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. If you can stick with the show through a bumpy initial crop of episodes, you'll find a charming addition to the modern sports sitcom canon.

For those of you reading outside of Canada, a quick primer on one of the country's sitcom institutions is needed before diving into "Shoresy." The series requires no prior knowledge of "Letterkenny," the slice-of-life sitcom set in a rural Ontario town, as the character of Shoresy (who was played by series creator Jared Keeso) is a running joke: a foul-mouthed hockey player whose face is never seen. 

In its spin-off, "Shoresy," this mysterious supporting character is propelled to the lead of a classic underdog story, re-introduced after a 20-game losing streak with the Sudbury Bulldogs that inspires him to put his own career on the line, demanding to take control under the assertion that they will never lose again if he's the captain.

South of the border, critics compared the sitcom to the Paul Newman vehicle "Slap Shot," a famously potty-mouthed '70s sports comedy which this feels like the Great White North's answer to. It's unmistakably Canadian in its approach, however, with its droll dialogue and highly specific Ontario idioms helping to elevate the familiarity of its premise. The series also won acclaim not just for fleshing out a side joke of a character into a convincing lead but for affording space for strongly written female and Indigenous characters within a genre that doesn't have the best track record with such representation. A sensation in Canada with its own video game to boot, "Shoresy" is one of the better-received sports sitcoms from the post "Ted Lasso" wave, worth seeking out for fans of the genre.