The 30 Best Sitcoms on Netflix [Fall 2020]

What started off as an unassuming, if not charming, sitcom following the life of Jess Day has evolved into one of the best comedies on television. While no one would ever call New Girl an innovative television show, it is one of the best hangout shows on the air today, featuring a fantastic cast and some hilarious writing. Zooey Deschanel stars as Jess Day, an outgoing, energetic, offbeat teacher who catches her boyfriend cheating on her in the pilot of the show. She moves into an empty room inside the apartment of Nick (Jake Johnson), Schmidt (Max Greenfield), and Coach (Damon Wayans, Jr., who moves out in the second episode of the show only to return in the third season as a main character), and later Winston (Lamorne Morris), and together, they try to navigate both their professional lives, personal lives, and love lives. It’s a fantastic, comfortable show—don’t miss out. All seven seasons are currently streaming.

Being a pro athlete didn’t pan out for Colt. Now he’s helping his dad and brother keep the family ranch afloat, and figuring out how he fits into the family. With a heavyweight cast including Ashton Kutcher, Sam Elliott, and Debra Winger, The Ranch has gained a reputation for sensitivity and strong performances, as well as a focus on red-state situational comedy. This also marks the second time Kutcher and Danny Masterson have shared the screen together, following their performances as Kelso and Hyde on That 70’s Show. All four seasons—split into two parts each—are now streaming.

The original One Day at a Time ran for nine years from 1975 to 1984, and was developed by TV legend Norman Lear (and created by Whitney Blake and Allan Manings). When Gloria Calderon Kellett and Mike Royce decided to recreate the original sitcom for Netflix, they chose to rework the entire show to focus on a Latinx family consisting of single-mother Penelope (Justina Machado), her children Elena and Alex, and her mother Lydia (played by EGOT winner Rita Moreno, one of twelve people ever to manage to win all four awards). Together, they help Penelope manage her love life, family life, and her difficulties adjusting to normal life after being involved with the military and going back to school. One Day at a Time is regarded as one of the best shows on television, but after the third season premiered, Netflix cancelled the show, sparking fan outrage. Luckily, PopTV picked up the show for a fourth season, the first half of which aired this past spring.

Romantic comedy fans, rejoice—you aren’t out of luck. While Crazy Ex Girlfriend takes the tropes of the classic rom-com and flips them on their head, fans of more traditional, if slightly raunchy, comedy set up by the likes of When Harry Met Sally will fall in love with Lovesick, a British import co-produced by Netflix with three seasons streaming on our favorite service. The show was probably best known for its original name, Scrotal Recall, which picked up a lot of flack when the first season premiered in 2014. Don’t let it fool you, though, because the name change was a good way to get new viewers onto this excellent love story about a man going back through his romantic history to figure out where it all gone wrong (and, well, also to let his past lovers know about a certain health concern). Lovesick has three seasons streaming on Netflix, which gives you plenty of time to fall in love with Dylan, Luke, and Evie if you haven’t already. Definitely check this one out; it’s the definition of a hidden gem.

Grace and Frankie is the ideal example of how you can start a show with a rocky beginning, and eventually—through finding your own footing as an independent show, become critically acclaimed and lauded for your representation and sense of humor. The show stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as Grace and Frankie, respectively, two retired women whose husbands work together as successful divorce lawyers. At the start of the show, their husbands—played here by Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston—leave their wives after announcing they’ve fallen in love with each other, leaving the two women to deal with their incoming divorces with each other. Despite Grace and Frankie’s mutual dislike of each other, the two women band together to try and navigate the next phase of their lives. Six seasons are currently streaming.

Glow was one of the best new shows of 2017, founded on the same idea of comedy, drama, and the exploration of womanhood that made Orange is the New Black such a massive success at Netflix. In Glow, you’ll explore the world of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, or GLOW, an 80s wrestling expansion designed to appeal to fans of traditional male wrestling with over-the-top comedy and some sexualization of the wrestlers. Glow stars Alison Brie (Community) as Ruth Wilder, a down-and-out actress who stumbles upon an audition for the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling league. While trying to manage her new life as a wrestler, Ruth must also deal with GLOW’s director Sam Sylvia (Marc Maron) and the arrival of her former best friend, Debbie Eagan (Betty Gilpin). Glow has been praised since its inception, having been nominated for several critics awards and making it onto a dozen best-of lists in 2017. Three seasons are streaming, and although the show had been renewed for a fourth and final season, it was axed by Netflix after production was delayed in 2020.

A romantic comedy developed by Judd Apatow, Lesley Arfin, and Paul Rust, Love is a down-to-earth look at dating that explores the nature of romantic relationships through a variety of characters. Stars Rust and Community‘s Gillian Jacobs are forced to navigate their newly-formed relationship. The series isn’t perfect—it suffers from a number of problems we’ve seen with other Apatow productions, including an overlong pilot—but if you’re in the mood for some dark romantic comedy in the vein of You’re the Worst or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, you’ll find plenty to love here (no pun intended). All three seasons are currently streaming, with the third (and final) having premiered in 2018.

In all honesty, this show shouldn’t have worked. The original Wet Hot American Summer, first released in 2001 to middling reviews and poor box office returns before slowly but surely growing into a cult classic, is like lightning in a bottle. Nearly every line or action in the film is quotable (“You taste like a burger. I don’t like you anymore.”; “The phone! The phone! Where’s the—phone!”; several other quotes we can’t mention on a family-friendly site), the cast is filled with incredible names you’d recognize immediately (Amy Poehler! Bradley Cooper! Paul Rudd! Molly Shannon! Christopher Meloni! Elizabeth Banks! The voice of H. Jon Benjamin!), and it’s basically endlessly rewatchable. So when this prequel series set at the start of the 1981 summer covered in the film hit just as hard as the original, we were as shocked as anyone. Fans of the original must see this continuation of a cult classic.

…and once you’re done watching First Day of Camp, you can jump back in with Ten Years Later, the series that makes good on the promise set during the original film to reunite exactly ten years after their summer at camp, in 1991. Ten Years Later doesn’t hit quite as hard as the original film or First Day of Camp, playing almost like a greatest hits and a reunion special than even the original prequel series did. But for those fans of the original film, you can’t quite beat seeing what happened to your favorite character over the decade since they went to camp together. This is as much a sequel to First Day of Camp as it is to the original film, so you’ll want to make sure you’ve seen both before diving into the closing chapter of the Wet Hot American Summer story.

One of the few shows on Netflix to have been revived from a different network, Arrested Development premiered on Netflix on May 26th, 2013, just a few months after Netflix debuted their first original show, House of Cards. Arrested Development‘s original run from 2003 to 2006 on Fox was critically acclaimed, but a low viewing audience (for the time) meant it squeaked by quietly unnoticed by much of its potential fanbase. Years of strong DVD sales and, yes, streaming on Netflix, meant that the show was able to be picked up for a fourth season distributed by Netflix, exciting the fanbase and continuing the adventures of the Bluth family. Though the fourth season is occasionally seen as a disappointment (the cast, which includes Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, Jessica Walter, Jeffrey Tambor, Michael Cera, Tony Hale, David Cross, Portia de Rossi, and Alia Shawkat, have all gone on to do major film and television roles, which made scheduling the fourth season difficult), the show is absolutely worth watching in its entirety. All three original seasons, plus the two Netflix seasons, are streaming.

This sitcom was created by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, and stars Ellie Kemper (of The Office) in the title role. 29-year-old Kimmy was rescued from a Doomsday Cult after spending 15 years as an underground hostage, held by the Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne (played by Jon Hamm). She moves to New York to begin her life as an adult, and we get to follow her as she discovers our weird modern world with enthusiasm and zany naivete. Any fans of Fey and Carlock’s previous show, 30 Rock will find plenty to love here, including actress Jane Krakowski, who played Jenna Maroney on Fey’s previous sitcom. All four seasons are streaming.

Master of None represents the culmination of much of Aziz Ansari’s stand-up, which focuses primarily on relationships and dating in the 21st century. Ansari, who also co-created and writes the show along with Alan Yang, stars as Dev Shah, an actor living in New York who hasn’t seen much success over his career. In the first moments of the show, we find him hooking up with a girl named Rachel, an incident that ends with a trip to the drug store for Plan B. The show revolves around Dev’s relationships with both his friends and women, including Rachel, and see him exploring career options, trying new things, and even travelling the world. With some incredible cinematography, acting, and specific standalone episodes like the Emmy-winning “Thanksgiving” or “New York, I Love You,” Master of None represents a must-watch. The first two seasons are streaming on Netflix.

A cult hit that gained popularity thanks in part to Netflix, Schitt’s Creek follows the Rose family, a wealthy clan that includes video store magnate Johnny (Eugene Levy), his wife and former soap opera actress Moira (Catherine O’Hara), and their adult children David and Alexis (Daniel Levy and Annie Murphy), who lose their fortune after being defrauded by their business manager. They are forced to rebuild their lives with their sole remaining asset: a small town named Schitt’s Creek, which they had bought their son as a joke birthday gift back in 1991. The Roses relocate to Schitt’s Creek, moving into two adjacent rooms in a run-down motel. As the family adjusts to their new lives, their well-to-do attitudes come into conflict with the more provincial residents of Schitt’s Creek, including mayor Roland Schitt (Chris Elliott), his wife Jocelyn (Jenn Robertson), and the motel’s manager, Stevie (Emily Hampshire).