31 Best Comedy Series On Netflix

Netflix took off as a DVD-by-mail service in the early 2000s, around the same time that physical media producers started putting whole seasons or entire runs of TV shows onto easily shipped and quickly consumed discs. With viewers now able to devour most — if not all — of a series in one sitting, "binge-watching" was born, a concept Netflix helped further turn into a common phrase and international pastime when it moved to a streaming model. 

Before long, Netflix had thousands of shows available at the click of a mouse or remote control button, making binge-watching all the easier. In addition to acquiring classic and forgotten shows alike produced and aired by broadcast and cable networks, Netflix bolstered its library by producing its own original series, particularly comedies. In fact, Netflix remains the industry standard in streaming and the leader in binge-worthy material that'll make you laugh. Here are all the great, overlooked, and worth-watching comedy shows — both originals and off-network stuff — you can catch right now on Netflix.

Updated on July 5, 2022: Netflix frequently adds and drops comedy shows, so we'll keep an eye on the service and update this list as appropriate. Check back often to see what funny shows can be found on Netflix.

With its steady churn of addictive, in-house-produced true-crime documentaries, Netflix has solidified the tropes of such investigative limited series. "American Vandal," a Netflix original, makes fun of the hand that feeds, embracing every trick and cliche of true-crime documentaries — the slowly burning plot, soaring overhead shots, wildly speculative filmmakers, intense crime scene re-creations — to present stories of a hilariously puerile and scatological nature. In Season 1 of "American Vandal," a couple of filmmakers from a high school's AV department throw themselves into an investigation into the crime and possible cover-up over who painted male genitalia on all of the teachers' cars, and in Season 2, they look into what caused an entire school's worth of students to suffer simultaneous diarrhea.

• Starring: Tyler Alvarez, Griffin Gluck, Jimmy Tatro
• Creators: Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda
• Years: 2017 – 2018
• Rating: TV-MA
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

"Big Mouth" is revolting, embarrassing, and brutally frank, which is what makes it the funniest and most realistic TV series to ever address the universally relatable and humiliating experience of puberty. A cast of stellar modern comedians (Nick Kroll, Maya Rudolph, Jason Mantzoukas, John Mulaney) play a friend group in their early adolescence navigating the challenges of burgeoning sexuality and forging their identities as their bodies change a lot faster than their brains. Also, they're not so much guided along as much as they're goaded by anything-goes agents of chaos known as Hormone Monsters, which constantly encourage them to make terrible, mostly sex-obsessed decisions that won't end well for anyone.

• Starring: Nick Kroll, John Mulaney, Maya Rudolph
• Creators: Nick Kroll, Andrew Goldberg, Jennifer Flackett, Mark Levin
• Year: 2017
• Rating: TV-MA
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 99%

"Community" began as a crackling, quick-witted, mildly silly show about campus life at a terribly funded, poorly staffed last-resort of a community college. This enabled its writers to bring in a large and wide variety of characters because such a setting organically would include many different people at a crossroads, like slick yet disgraced attorney Jeff, high school overachiever turned burnout Annie, student of life Britta, and former high school big shot Troy. But then "Community" changed. Usually through the point of view of Abed, a film-and-TV-obsessed nerd, "Community" became meta and self-aware, commenting on the tropes and cliches of media as it embraced them. That led to wildly fun themed and parody episodes, like a "Goodfellas"-inspired installment about the cafeteria chicken finger trade, one built around a campus-wide pillow fort, and several about an intense annual paintball war.

• Starring: Joel McHale, Donald Glover, Chevy Chase
• Creator: Dan Harmon
• Years: 2009 – 2014
• Rating: TV-14
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%

Adapted by Justin Simien from his hit indie movie of the same name, "Dear White People" is a brutally satirical and viciously funny comedy about race relations in present-day America. It's set at Winchester University, a fictional Ivy League college so inflamed with revolutionary ideas and resistance by the old guard that it threatens to boil over. Among the overwhelmingly white student body, a handful of Black students strike back against racism that's outward, institutional, or systemic, led by a wryly funny campus DJ who hosts a radio show that doesn't hold back in its mocking of offenders.

• Starring: Logan Browning, Brandon P. Bell, DeRon Horton
• Creator: Justin Simien
• Years: 2017 – 2021
• Rating: TV-MA
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%

Amidst the heyday of colorful televised pro wrestling in the 1980s was GLOW, or Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, an all-women grappling organization with just as many over-the-top and bizarre ring personas as the male circuits offered. The Netflix original "GLOW" presents a fictionalized origin story for the troupe, an inspiring, hardscrabble tale of fringe-dwellers who come together to make something empowering, athletic, and entertaining. 

"GLOW" is all about the growing pains of starting a business and following one's dreams, what with sleazy producer Sam putting the whole thing together and building it around the rivalry between patriotic Liberty Belle (aka Debbie) and loathsome Soviet Zoya the Destroyer (aka Ruth), who outside of GLOW are moderately successful actors desperately attempting to mend their friendship torn apart by adultery. While the first three seasons are all fantastic, take note that the show was canceled before it could wrap up all its loose ends in Season 4.

• Starring: Alison Brie, Marc Maron, Betty Gilpin
• Creators: Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch
• Year: 2017 – 2019
• Rating: TV-MA
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

Headline by two iconic and masterful comic actors in Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, "Grace and Frankie" takes the much explored "Odd Couple" premise of mismatched roommates and adds a progressive twist to make a breezy comedy about a topic rarely explored on TV — female friendship, particularly one shared by older women. 

Prim and proper Grace and diehard hippie artist Frankie have always been begrudging acquaintances, as their husbands have run a law practice for decades. But then those husbands announce that they've been carrying on a long-term affair and decide to divorce their wives and marry each other. Out of circumstance, Grace and Frankie wind up living together in Grace's palatial beach house. From sharing the experience of divorce together and managing their respective large families of needy adult children, they become close friends and each other's champion.

• Starring: Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Sam Waterston
• Creators: Marta Kauffman and Howard J. Morris
• Year: 2015 – 2022
• Rating: TV-MA
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%

"Saturday Night Live" veteran Tim Robinson has a very unusual sensibility when it comes to sketch comedy — the humor comes from the details in very specific situations or awkward buffoons doubling down on their boorish behavior. That makes "I Think You Should Leave" an exhilaratingly funny collection of unpredictable weirdness, offering a little something for everyone and numerous, quotable highlights. There's the guy who thinks a baby doesn't like him because he used to be the kind of guy who poured water on steaks. Or there's the man who can't move during a staff meeting because he spent his per diems on ugly shirts with complex designs. And then there's the lady who doesn't know how to gently razz her brunch friends and winds up comparing everyone to hog slop, as well as the folk singer obsessed with skeletons and how bones are their currency. It's all silly, strange, and addictive.

• Starring: Tim Robinson, Patti Harrison, Sam Richardson
• Creators: Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin
• Year: 2019 – Ongoing
• Rating: TV-MA
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

A slow-paced Canadian family sitcom set in a public place in fast-paced Toronto, "Kim's Convenience" revolves around the interactions and proprietors of a small neighborhood grocery store. Korean immigrant Mr. Kim is curt and unfriendly to his customers, and he's just as harsh to his grown kids, desperately and aggressively trying to keep them on a moral path to success in his adopted homeland. Much of the comedy on "Kim's Convenience" comes from Mr. Kim clashing with his independence-wanting but tradition-pulled artist daughter, Janet, as well as trying to reconnect with his estranged son, Jung, who rejected his father's overbearing ways and left home to work a stepping stone job at a car rental agency.

• Starring: Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Andrea Bang, Simu Liu
• Creator: Ins Choi and Kevin White
• Year: 2016
• Rating: TV-14
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

A messy, barely optimistic, mostly realistic, 21st-century romantic comedy, "Love" tracks the evolution of a single romantic entanglement and how something potentially true, lasting, and profound develops between two people who maybe aren't ready or emotionally mature enough for it. Mickey (Gillian Jacobs) has family issues and is in recovery for substance abuse and sex addiction while Gus (Paul Rust) seems charmingly awkward and gawky but he's actually needy, manipulative, and has problems with anger and passive aggression. Can these two navigate the minefield of dating (and themselves and each other) and make it work?

• Starring: Gillian Jacobs, Paul Rust, Claudia O'Doherty
• Creators: Judd Apatow, Lesley Arkin, Paul Rust
• Years: 2016 – 2018
• Rating: TV-MA
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

One of the most beloved, acclaimed, and influential sketch comedy series of all time, the British comedy troupe Monty Python made four seasons of classic British television with "Flying Circus," an aptly titled anarchic journey into the extremely highbrow and the gloriously stupid and silly alike. The stars and creators of institution-skewering films like "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and "Life of Brian" honed their chops with this sketch comedy show in the '60s and '70s, in which one bit dazzlingly leads into another, despite their often diametrical opposition. "Flying Circus" mocks with equal ease literary, historical, and religious targets (and there are many such sacred cows in the U.K.), as well as regular fools and bureaucrats. The show takes wild swings and makes them, veering from bits about the Spanish Inquisition to dead parrot salesmen and guys who walk funny, all interspersed with bizarre animated interstitials.

• Starring: Terry Gilliam, John Cleese, Michael Palin
• Creators: Monty Python
• Year: 1969
• Rating: TV-14
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

Years after the kooky and charmingly low-budget sci-fi comedy puppet show "Mystery Science Theater 3000" jumped from local Minneapolis TV to early Comedy Central and the Sci-Fi Channel, it returned to Netflix for a couple more seasons with new cast members and new characters but the same refillable premise. A man named Jonah is kidnapped by wicked space scientists and forced to watch some of the worst movies ever made, but he at least has ramshackle robots Crow and Tom Servo to keep him company — and also assist him in his running, rapid-fire commentary making fun of those objectively bad movies, such as "Reptiicus," "Mac and Me" and "Atlantic Rim."

• Starring: Jonah Ray, Patton Oswalt, Felicia Day
• Creator: Joel Hodgson
• Year: 2017
• Rating: TV-14
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

In the 1970s, producer Norman Lear made a career out of progressive, realistic sitcoms about modern American life and tough familial relationships, and he brought to the air classics like "All in the Family," "Maude," and "One Day at a Time," the 1975–1984 series about a newly divorced single mother and her two independence-craving teenage daughters. In 2017, Lear helped reimagine the series for the 21st century, with this "One Day at a Time" being a warm, sweet, but still boundary-pushing show about a multi-generational Cuban-American family living under one roof. Among the many members of the Alvarez family, there's divorced, PTSD-suffering military veteran and mother Penelope, her two kids, her very traditional mom, and the building's wannabe-woke superintendent Schneider.

• Starring: Justina Machado, Todd Grinnell, Rita Moreno
• Creators: Gloria Calderon Kellett and Mike Royce
• Years: 2017 – 2020
• Rating: TV-PG
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 99%

Finally, a show about zombies that doesn't take itself so seriously. The idea that some kind of ancient curse can doom a person to an endless existence of feasting on the flesh of others is actually wildly ridiculous, and "Santa Clarita Diet" mines that for comedy, particularly as to how such a scenario would affect a family already bristling against its stifling upscale California community. The ever-likable Drew Barrymore plays Sheila Hammond, a content wife, mother, and realtor who, after a violent and astounding vomiting episode, develops an insatiable taste for human meat. Her devoted but squeamish husband Joel is happy to help supply her with food, doing whatever illegal tactics are necessary while their hyper-intelligent teen daughter uncovers the ancient mysteries behind her mother's situation.

• Starring: Drew Barrymore, Timothy Olyphant, Liv Hewson
• Creator: Victor Fresco
• Year: 2017 – 2019
• Rating: TV-MA
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 89%

A Canadian production that aired on the relatively obscure U.S. basic cable channel POP, Netflix picked up "Schitt's Creek" and turned it into a cultural sensation, a fever that peaked when the sweet, smart, small-town sitcom swept the major comedy categories at the 2020 Emmy Awards. 

Comedy legends Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara play Johnny and Moira Rose, a video store tycoon and his loopy, self-absorbed, B-level actor wife, who lose their life of wealth and privilege after a tax scandal. As a result, they're forced to move with their spoiled, prickly adult children, David and Alexis, into a couple of motel rooms in the only asset they hold onto — a tiny rural town with the semi-profane name of Schitt's Creek. Their commitment to one another never wavers as they slowly but surely adapt to life in the very strange town, presided over by a crass mayor and populated by unimpressed weirdos.

• Starring: Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Dan Levy
• Creators: Dan Levy and Eugene Levy
• Year: 2015 – 2020
• Rating: TV-14
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

One of the most popular and enduring bits of Canadian pop culture of all time, "Trailer Park Boys" has spawned a movie, animated adaptations, a comic books, a live show, and more, but it all started with the original mockumentary-style comedy series about a trio of ne'er-do-wells living in a Nova Scotia trailer park where they also plan their various get-rich-quick scams and schemes. But Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles just aren't smart enough to ever pull anything off without it blowing up in their faces, nor are they smart enough to ever quit while they're ahead.

• Starring: John Paul Tremblay, Robb Wells, Mike Smith
• Creator: Mike Clattenburg
• Years: 2001 – 2019
• Rating: TV-MA
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%