The best comedy series to watch now
Big-hearted shows from Chad Powers to Colin from Accounts
From a funny sports comedy about a quarterback in disguise to a will-they, won’t-they Australian romcom, these are some of the best comedy TV shows to stream now.
Colin from Accounts
This “unassuming Sydney-based” show became a “comedy smash hit” when it first aired in 2022, said Rebecca Nicholson in the Financial Times. Named after the dog that sparked their “unlikely” on-off love story, the first series was “both scaldingly hilarious and utterly uncynical”. Its co-creators and lead actors are real-life married couple, Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer who play Gordon and Ashley. At the start of season three, the pair haven’t seen each other in a “very long time”. But soon their lives “become entangled again” and it doesn’t take long to figure out “where their hearts truly belong”. Will-they, won’t-they stories can become “tedious”; maybe that’s why “Colin from Accounts” is “bowing out after just three seasons”. A comedy that “relishes the small humiliations of life”, it’s a show that’s always “generous” even at its “most excruciating” moments. “Its warmth and wit have made it a rare treat.”
BBC iPlayer
Chad Powers
Season two of this warm, funny sports comedy is back and it “hits the ground running”, said Nicholas Quah in Vulture. Glen Powell stars as Russ, a “disgraced former college-football star who disguises himself as a hawk-nosed, puffy-cheeked hick named Chad Powers to sneak back into the game” as a quarterback for a struggling Southern team. Now, he must wrestle with a “conundrum”: does he “live forever under an increasingly famous identity, trapped inside the lie that has become his life?” The “complications” keep stacking up (among them, his prosthetic nose falls off during a tackle) and his situation is gradually becoming “harder to contain”. Just how far is he willing to go “down the path of depravity?” The latest instalment of the show is “far more interesting and stimulating than it had any right to be”.
Disney +
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We Might Regret This
This “groundbreaking” comedy from Kyla Harris and Lee Getty about a disabled artist and her best friend turned personal assistant returned for a second series earlier this year, said Frances Ryan in The Guardian. The show is brilliant at subverting our expectations: “we’ve been socialised to think the wheelchair-user is going to be the incompetent, needy oddball but (wait for it) it’s actually her personal assistant”. Delving into “messy friendships and sex with men dressed as Smurfs” this is not, it turns out, a show about “disability per se”. But the writers have “no issue with skewering an ableist trope” if they need to. Packed with “laugh-out-loud funny” moments, and appearances from an “enviable” list of guest stars, the latest instalment is just as good as the first.
BBC iPlayer
Ann Droid
Inspired by news reports about humanoid robots being used to care for the elderly in Japan, “Ann Droid” stars Diane Morgan as a robot bought to assist 80-year-old widow Sue (Sue Johnston) at home, says Rebecca Nicholson in the Financial Times. Sue’s feckless son (Morgan’s “Motherland” co-star Paul Ready) is anxious to shrug off responsibility for her care, but he doesn’t want to pay for a decent robot so he buys Linda, a “second-hand, low-spec, dated” model with a rigid gait, dead eyes and a mechanical voice.Co-written by Morgan and Sarah Kendall, the sitcom mines the premise for physical comedy, but it is not just farce. “At its heart, this isn’t really about robots,” said Carol Midgley in The Times. It is about “what it means to be human” and “the profundity of grief”. Two years after her husband’s death, Sue is struggling, and her anxiety is movingly conveyed. “I don’t know how to do this last bit alone,” she says at one point, “but I don’t want to spend it with a robot.” Happily, she revises this opinion, as she starts to discover that Linda is not such a bad carer after all. “Ann Droid” is “daft, but deceptively deep”.
BBC iPlayer
Amandaland
The “delusional” lead in this excellent show can be filed next to the “narcissistic, indefatigable likes of Alan Partridge and David Brent”, said Rachel Aroesti in The Guardian. Lucy Punch is “mesmerisingly convincing” as Amanda – the “smug, slinky blonde” who was once the “resident antagonist” in “Motherland”. Back with the second season of her own show, she’s still living in a “Harlesden maisonette” after her relocation from Chiswick, and “fruitlessly pursuing a social media following” with her lifestyle brand Senuous. Joanna Lumley is “magnetic” as Amanda’s mother, Felicity, and Philippa Dunne puts in an “equally bravura” performance as the “beleaguered Anne, whose flustered wittering I could listen to all day”. The show might not be as “delectably spiky” as “Motherland” but it remains an “undeniably comforting” comedy that’s well worth watching.
BBC iPlayer
Margo’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 Margo, 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 Margo’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
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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
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
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
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
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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.