10 MeTV shows make Rolling Stone list of 50 Best Sitcoms of All Time

Andy and Lucy made it — but which is higher?

The Everett Collection

Rolling Stone has ranked the 50 Best Sitcoms of All Time in its May 2021 issue. Well, in print. Online, the pop culture magazine expanded the list to a full 100. You can find the list here

The rankings pull from all across television history, from the early 1950s to shows still airing. We're going to focus on the Top 50, as 20% of that list is MeTV content, shows either currently on the schedule or shows we have aired in the past. Six of the top 11 are "MeTV shows." We'll take that, honestly.

Though, unsurprisingly, there is a recency bias. Of all the titles, 13 of them are began in the 2010s, nine of them began in the 2000s, and ten began in the 1990s (six are from the 1980s, eight are from the 1970s, while only two come from both the 1960s and 1950s). Six are animated. Two of them star Danny DeVito. Two of them are The Office.

Nothing gets a debate stirred quite like arbitrary rankings online. So let's take a look.

First, here are the 10 series in the Top 50 that are either airing on MeTV or have aired on MeTV.

2. Cheers

4. I Love Lucy

6. M*A*S*H

7. The Mary Tyler Moore Show

8. The Honeymooners

11. The Dick Van Dyke Show

14. The Andy Griffith Show

17. Taxi

26. The Bob Newhart Show

48. The Jeffersons

Now, let's contextualize those. Here is the full Rolling Stone list of the 50 Best Sitcoms of All Time.

1. The Simpsons

2. Cheers

3. Seinfeld

4. I Love Lucy

5. All in the Family

6. M*A*S*H

7. The Mary Tyler Moore Show

8. The Honeymooners

9. Parks and Recreation

10. The Larry Sanders Show

11. The Dick Van Dyke Show

12. Curb Your Enthusiasm

13. Frasier

14. The Andy Griffith Show

15. Arrested Development

16. The Cosby Show

17. Taxi

18. 30 Rock

19. Roseanne

20. BoJack Horseman

21. Fleabag

22. South Park

23. The Office (U.S.)

24. Community

25. Atlanta

26. The Bob Newhart Show

27. Louie

28. Malcolm in the Middle

29. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

30. The Office (U.K.)

31. Fawlty Towers

32. The Golden Girls

33. Better Things

34. SpongeBob SquarePants

35. Everybody Loves Raymond

36. Sex and the City

37. Bob's Burgers

38. Friends

39. Black-ish

40. Review

41. King of the Hill

42. Brockmire

43. Brooklyn Nine-Nine

44. Veep

45. Broad City

46. The Good Place

47. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

48. The Jeffersons

49. Barney Miller

50. Newsradio

What is too low? What is too high? What is missing? Tell us what you think!

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113 Comments

vinman63 32 months ago
Irony no Monkees listed on Rolling Stone magazine listing.
Aventurero62 34 months ago
How could any list of the 50 Best Sitcoms of All Time leave out "Our Miss Brooks", "Father Knows Best", "My Little Margie", "Bewitched", "The Burns and Allen Show"?
AnnieM 34 months ago
The favorites of mine not listed would be Dobie Gillis, Bosom Buddies (which had pretty meta humor for it's time), Laverne & Shirley, Green Acres, and Gilligan.
Romans15 34 months ago
No Married With Children invalidates this list.
idkwut2use 34 months ago
Lucy is #1, undoubtedly. I mean, it’s just so unbeatable. Up there for sure should be Laverne & Shirley, The Honeymooners, Golden Girls, Odd Couple, Wonder Years, Cheers & Frasier, All in the Family, maybe a few others.
I appreciate the inclusion of SpongeBob, BoJack, South Park, The Simpsons, & even King of the Hill, but considering animated sitcoms opens it up to...ugh, any of my favorite toons that could be called one. And I'm an animation freak with loads of favorite cartoons...plus it gets tough to tell what's eligible since live-action tends to come to mind when you say "sitcom." AND some excellent ones are kid-aimed, which tend not to be considered even when they're live-action.
Overall there are a lot of great ones in there, but a bunch I surely do disagree with, especially in the latter half...let's face it, you can easily toss most of the more recent ones and fit more classics in. That'd be a huge improvement. A few I'm not familiar enough with to say.
Corey 34 months ago
The Simpsons hasn't been funny for 25 years.
LoveMETV22 34 months ago
Glad that 10 MeTV shows made RS's list. I wish MeTV would do a similar survey. It could be their shows or all shows. Just a thought.
goplad 34 months ago
Seinfeld is arguably the most overrated TV sitcom of all-time. It wouldn't make my list at all. Typical Rolling Stone Magazine list. Such posers. They are irrelevant in this day and age.
CurleyGirl1018 goplad 34 months ago
I agree....I know I am a minority but I just never cared for it.
denny 34 months ago
My list
1. The Andy Griffith Show
2. Seinfeld
And no particular order
Beverly Hillbillies, The Munsters, All in the Family, King of the Hill, King of Queens, Last Man Standing, Married with Children, Two and a Half Men, Rules of Engagement, 3rd Rock From The Sun, Leave it to Beaver, News Radio, Just Shoot Me, Gilligan's Island, Silicon Valley.

JudyScarbeck 34 months ago
WKRP definitely should have made the top 50. If this were my personal list, I'd have also added Hazel to the list as well.
bcassner 34 months ago
They are missing the best show ever. Classic Doctor Who!
denny bcassner 34 months ago
Is that a comedy?
mrparkhill 34 months ago
“The Simpsons”, “BoJack Horseman”, and “Bob’s Burgers”. In the top-50? Sitcoms? Of ALL-Time??!?! Come on man. That’s a bunch of Malarkey.
vinman63 34 months ago
No mention of my mother the car?
ScoobyDoo169 34 months ago
I think that Frasier was the funniest sitcom, that should have been at the top. Cheers was funny at first but the later seasons weren't that entertaining. The Simpsions in my opinion aren't funny at all. Any sitcom that was funny at all was back in the day. Any newer shows like some of them in that list aren't funny at all. The people who write shows these days don't capture the same humor or anything else like the old ones did.
Aventurero62 ScoobyDoo169 34 months ago
You hit the nail on the head. No one on the Rolling Stone staff who compiled that list is over 35.
34 months ago
What the hell does Rolling Stone know and I could care less about their ranking. Junk like Sex in the City outranking an exceptional show like Barney Miller is indicative of the morons who put the list together. 🤬
CurleyGirl1018 cabugi 34 months ago
I thought RS was focused on the music business. I guess TV Guide should rank greatest musicians!
CurleyGirl1018 34 months ago
hahaha great point!
Lillyrose 34 months ago
I Love Lucy should be #1!
1. I Love Lucy 2. Leave it to Beaver 3. Hazel 4. Newhart 5. The Partridge Family 6. The Brady Bunch
7. Home Improvement 8. The Ed Sullivan Show 9. The Lawrence Welk Show 10. The Monkees
goplad Lillyrose 34 months ago
I'm sure Lawrence Welk would be insulted that you thought his show was a comedy. It wasn't. Ed Sullivan Show was a variety show and not a comedy.
Corey Lillyrose 34 months ago
Hazel really!!!
Aventurero62 Corey 34 months ago
"Hazel", most definitely!!!
vinman63 Aventurero62 34 months ago
Shirley Booth is number one.
Andybandit 34 months ago
Good rankings for the shows. I wish MeTV aired Barney Miller, Cheers, Mary Tyler Moore show, Taxi, and alot of different shows.
Moverfan Andybandit 34 months ago
Barney Miller is on Antenna TV and I think Mary Tyler Moore is on Decades. Never got into Cheers and I quit watching Taxi because the jerk Louie DePalma. Didn't anybody ever report that loser to the bosses?
LoveMETV22 34 months ago
The article or story says in the first paragraph " Online, the pop culture magazine expanded the list to a full 100. You can find the list here. It is Rolling Stone's list not MeTV's list. If you click on the blue "find the list here", it shows their top 100 list.
StrayCat 34 months ago
What? No mention of WKRP?
AnnieM StrayCat 34 months ago
It was on the RS list, somewhere between #51 - 100; I remember seeing it. You have to follow the blue hyperlink above to see the entire list, as this article only shows only #1 - 50 of the RS list.
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