The best comedy series to watch now
Rib-tickling shows from Margot’s Got Money Troubles to Daddy Issues
From a hilarious reboot of a beloved sitcom to a star-studded OnlyFans comedy, these are the funniest series to stream now.
Margot’s Got Money Troubles
Adapted from Rufi Thorpe’s 2024 novel, this comedy drama has the “pleasing smack of comfort television”, said Patrick Smith in The Independent. Elle Fanning stars as Margot, a college dropout whose “ill-fated affair with her married professor has left her broke, single and literally holding the baby”. Struggling to make ends meet, she creates a “green-skinned alien OnlyFans persona” to bring in some cash, and starts building bridges with her estranged father Jinx (Nick Offerman) an “ex-pro-wrestler” who is “fresh out of rehab and desperate to make amends”. Michelle Pfeiffer plays Margot’s mother, Shyanne, bringing “nuance” to the role of “reluctant grandmother who spends $400 a month on face cream and can’t hold a baby without it crying”. Eschewing the “poverty-porn trap entirely” the show manages to find humour in the “indignities of early motherhood without condescension”. It’s a must-watch.
Apple TV
Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair
The celebrated American sitcom about a “tightly knit calamitous family of weirdos” is back almost two decades after the final episode aired, said Robert Lloyd in the Los Angeles Times. Child genius Malcolm (Frankie Muniz) is now nearly 40 and the single father of “smart, beloved, socially isolated” teenage daughter Leah (Keeley Karsten). Things are going surprisingly well as long as Malcolm stays away from his dysfunctional family. But when Hal (Bryan Cranston) and Lois (Jane Kaczmarek) decide to throw a party for their 40th wedding anniversary, he is drawn back to his old life. Getting a “little sentimental and a little serious in the clutch”, it “stays true” to the original. “Take it, and celebrate it”.
Disney +
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How to Get to Heaven from Belfast
“Derry Girls” was always going to be a tough act to follow, said Rebecca Nicholson in the Financial Times: by the time it ended in 2022, “after three perfect seasons, it had become one of the best-loved comedies of recent times”. Now its creator Lisa McGee is back with this eight-part Netflix comedy-drama – and while it’s cut from a similar cloth to “Derry Girls”, she “has rearranged the pieces, turned them upside down, thrown in a few new shapes and then glued it all together with impressive flair”. Caoilfhionn Dunne, Sinéad Keenan and Roisin Gallagher star as three old mates from Belfast, who are winding their way through their 30s when they receive an email informing them that an old schoolfriend has died. From there, the series evolves into “a murder-mystery, a road-trip buddy comedy, a ghost story, a romance, a cop show, a meta exploration of TV” and more. I’d recommend it as “your next binge-watch”, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. It all “bowls along with supreme confidence”, and there is an absolutely cracking twist at the end of episode one. Producing a worthy follow-up to Derry Girls was always going to be a challenge, but McGee “has delivered”.
Netflix
Can You Keep a Secret?
Dawn French’s new show is “a lot of fun, and the best work she’s been given since ‘The Vicar of Dibley’”, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. When her husband William is mistakenly declared dead after a “comic misunderstanding” with the family doctor, Debbie (French) “spies a £250,000 life insurance opportunity” and fakes his death, continuing to live with him at their West Country home. Plenty of “farcical” scenes follow as she attempts to “cover her tracks”, while William hides in the loft. The set-up is “ridiculous” and the family “eccentric”, but the writing is excellent and paints a “wonderfully observed portrait of a certain kind of couple in retirement”. Serious themes are tackled with a “light touch” and French’s comic timing is perfectly matched by her on-screen husband and son. “It’s all pleasantly silly.”
BBC iPlayer
The Change
Bridget Christie’s “quirky” comedy is a “hearty and pleasant reminder” that British television is still able to deliver “small, hugely personal visions” that stand out in a sea of formulaic shows, said Ben Dowell in The Times. Christie stars as Linda, a “menopausal woman who, fed up with her lazy and selfish husband”, hops on her motorbike and heads to the Forest of Dean to “find herself while living in a caravan”. Mackenzie Crook (the “mastermind” behind “Detectorists”) co-directs the second season, bringing his “sensitive, uncluttered eye” to proceedings and allowing the “lovely landscapes” and “English mythos to seep through the show like a summer breeze”. Tricky subjects are addressed with “deftness and delicacy”, while a “tender” message of “growth and redemption” makes this feminist sitcom a “joyous” watch. Channel 4
Daddy Issues
“Brilliantly acerbic though the first series of ‘Daddy Issues’ was, you sensed it never felt entirely at ease with itself,” said Sarah Dempster in The Guardian. Now, in its second season, the father-daughter sitcom has “found its feet”. At the end of the first instalment, pregnant Gemma (Aimee Lou Wood) finally “booted out” her hapless dad Malcolm (David Morrissey) from her flat. Series two sees him return to the “dilapidated bedsit of his terminally divorced friend (and ‘emotional support dickhead’) Derek”, while Gemma adjusts to the “joys of single motherhood”. Packed with “sublime one-liners”, this warm-hearted parenting comedy has “enormous affection” for its characters – “for all their buffoonery, these are complex and believable souls.”
BBC iPlayer
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Overcompensating
Benito Skinner went viral during the pandemic for his impersonations of celebrities from Sabrina Carpenter to Kourtney Kardashian. In his hilarious college comedy series, he stars as Benny Drama, a closeted freshman trying to convince his peers he isn’t gay. The eight-part show is an “absolute hoot”, said Maddy Mussen in The Standard. Based on his personal experience, Skinner “mines endless humour from an objectively depressing situation, playing on his failed sexual escapades with women, his foray into hyper-toxic frat culture and his agonising first crush on a straight man”. With a “stellar supporting cast”, the series is filled with “countless laugh-out-loud moments”. It’s “utter gold”.
Amazon Prime
The Chair Company
“It is quite something to build an entire comedy series around a broken office chair,” said Carol Midgley in The Times. But that’s exactly what kicks off Tim Robinson’s “utterly original” eight-part comedy series. The star of “I Think You Should Leave” plays Ron: an Ohio corporate manager with an “extremely short fuse”, who is “furious” when the office chair he is sitting on collapses, ruining his speech. He becomes hell-bent on “tracking down the company” who made it to call out their “shoddy workmanship”. The premise might sound “dementedly thin” but, if anyone is able to transform a “middlingly embarrassing office occurrence into a crazed theatre of the absurd, it is Tim Robinson”.
Sky
The Paper
This mockumentary about an Ohio newspaper is a “charming” spin-off of the US version of “The Office” that “deserves to be just as big a hit”, said Caryn James on BBC Culture. With the same “droll humour” and a “similar ensemble of characters”, it is nonetheless “distinctly itself”, reflecting how times have changed in the two decades since the US version of “The Office” was adapted from the British original. Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson) is the “earnest” new editor at the “pointedly” named Toledo Truth Teller. Less “acerbic” than both David Brent and Michael Scott, he gives the show a “warmer” feel and helps make it “just the kind of soothing escapism today’s fraught times might call for”.
Sky
Platonic
Season one of “Platonic” made for a “slyly surprising” show that was “all the better for refusing to follow the predictable rules of engagement”, said Rebecca Nicholson in the Financial Times. The action followed Sylvia (Rose Byrne) and Will (Seth Rogen), two estranged friends who reconnected in their early 40s after an earlier falling out. Somewhat refreshingly, viewers expecting a “will they/won’t they dynamic” instead discover a thoughtful exploration of male/female friendship. In the second season, Will is preparing to wed Jenna (Rachel Rosenbloom), Sylvia is planning his engagement party and the old friends “get involved in a series of low-stakes capers”. This is “silly, self-aware slapstick” at its best, held together by the “charm of its two leads”. Don’t be fooled by its “laid-back” feel, though; the twist at the end of the second episode reminds us of the show’s “darker side”, and sets up “Platonic” as “one of the better comedies of the year”.
Apple TV
Such Brave Girls
Kat Sadler’s Bafta-winning series about a dysfunctional family is back for more. The show’s appeal lies in watching the mother-daughter trio “plumb the lowest emotional depths” and make some “frankly woeful decisions”, said Katie Rosseinsky in The Independent. From mental illness to parental estrangement, “nothing is off limits here, and it’s all attacked with an almost feral comic energy”. Watching the siblings – played by Sadler and her real-life sister Lizzie Davidson – spur each other on to make dreadful life choices is an “unhinged delight”. Darkly humorous and “refreshingly realistic”, it’s “truly brave TV”.
BBC iPlayer
The Studio
This “witty, knowing and cameo-jammed” satire follows “hapless” Hollywood exec Matt (Seth Rogen) as he struggles to produce a “billion-dollar blockbuster while not pissing off ‘the talent’”, said Nick De Semlyen in Empire. A “fizzy, acidic” spoof of the “inherent daftness of the movie business”, it’s a “triumphantly funny” series that feels like it could easily “run and run”. At the point Martin Scorsese is “sobbing in the arms of Charlize Theron”, “The Studio” will likely have you hooked.
Apple TV
Hacks
When this scooped its “thoroughly deserved” Emmy for best comedy last year, I “cheered”, said David Mack in Slate. The “hilarious” show follows the lives of two women, at very different stages of their comedy careers, who form an unlikely friendship. Now in its fourth season, “Hacks” is a “masterclass in meta-exploration”, thoughtfully examining the “very same questions as its characters”: “what do you do when you’re on top?” The latest batch of episodes is a “riot”, cementing its status as one of the “funniest shows” on TV.
Amazon Prime
Amandaland
“Spin-offs are always a risk,” said Chitra Ramaswamy in The Guardian, but “Amandaland” was a “sure bet”, with the “best character” in the BBC winner “Motherland” providing ample opportunity for exposing “the worst excesses, blind spots and hypocrisies of the posh, white, west London middle classes”. Following her divorce, Amanda has upped sticks from Chiswick to the far less chi-chi south Harlesden. Gone are the old gang of Julia, Liz and Kevin, but Anne is back as the put-upon best friend. Amanda’s mother is played by Joanna Lumley “with Ab Fab levels of relish” and with gags covering the likes of “Gloria Hunniford, the Just Seventeen problem page and Sinn Féin”, this is a very British comedy.
BBC iPlayer
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Irenie Forshaw is the features editor at The Week, covering arts, culture and travel. She began her career in journalism at Leeds University, where she wrote for the student newspaper, The Gryphon, before working at The Guardian and The New Statesman Group. Irenie then became a senior writer at Elite Traveler, where she oversaw The Experts column.