5 Great HBO Comedies That Almost Nobody Talks About Anymore

Since launching in 1972 as an alternative to traditional television, HBO has always valued comedy. The genre was front and center when the network first started to dabble in original programming. Satirical sketch series "Not Necessarily The News" was a precursor to John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight." Proving that the pay to view business model wasn't just for adults, Jim Henson presented the musical puppet show "Fraggle Rock" for an audience that was younger or simply young at heart. And before stand-up specials were scattered among streamers like Netflix, Hulu, or YouTube, it was considered a high honor to earn a place on the HBO roster alongside greats like George Carlin, Sam Kinison, Tracey Ullman, and Chris Rock.

This appreciation for comedy carried into HBO's slate of shows. Some of the all-time greats include "Sex and the City," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," "Girls," "Silicon Valley," and "Veep." But for every massively successful or fondly remembered series, there are plenty of excellent offerings that have fallen out of the social consciousness for one reason or another. In an effort to keep a few of these excellent shows from being forgotten, here are five great HBO comedies that almost nobody talks about anymore.

Before New Zealand's "fourth-most-popular comedy-folk duo" came over to America and gained a cult following in the late 2000s with "Flight of the Conchords," HBO was working with another duo in the late 1990s to bring their musical misadventures to the small screen. And though the run wasn't as long as originally intended, the world was introduced to Jack Black and Kyle Gass' totally awesome alter egos in "Tenacious D."

The limited series only consists of three half-hour episodes that aired from 1997 to 2000, but they packed a lot of good stuff in a short amount of time that introduced viewers to JB and KG as "the greatest band on Earth." While the film "Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny" goes further in depth into their exploits (including how they came up with "the greatest song in the world"), this show acts as a prequel to their epic journey. Fans can see the band playing open mics and debuting early versions of songs that the world would eventually come to know and love like "History" (which would later appear on the "Pick of Destiny" soundtrack), "Kyle Quit The Band" (a song that would appear on two releases in the band's discography), and "Tribute" (arguably one of the band's most memorable songs that would later be revised for their self-titled album and serve as the partial basis for the plot of their movie).

A highlight of the show finds JB and KG about to give up their dream of being in a band. While nearly burning their guitars while camping, they're stopped by Sasquatch (played by John C. Reilly). While the mythical creature tries to join the band as the drummer, the duo ends up writing a song about him instead.

Following in the footsteps of Tenacious D and Flight of the Conchords, Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci joined forces to create the folk comedy duo known as Garfunkel and Oates. They achieved acclaim through YouTube in the late 2000s after meeting at the Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles, California. Soon after that, their popularity brought them to "The Tonight Show," "Scrubs," and a collaboration with Donald Glover's musical alter ego Childish Gambino. But like the successful musical comedy tandems before them, they eventually landed at HBO.

Lindhome and Micucci signed a deal in 2011 to develop a series based on their act of observational songs like the self-explanatory "Pregnant Women Are Smug" and the third-wheel anthem "Me, You, and Steve." Unfortunately, again like Jack Black and Kyle Gass, the working relationship was cut short as the network did not give their pilot a full series order. But rather than have their work go to waste, they split the episode into five webisodes for HBO Go, a precursor to HBO Max, and released them in 2012.

Eventually, the sitcom "Garfunkel and Oates" would premiere on IFC in 2014. However, despite that series ultimately presenting a more complete story that fleshes out their characters, the pair's quick stop at HBO has a lot of fun moments and serves as an interesting prequel for their time on television.

Though HBO Go had already launched in 2010, HBO continued their tradition of favoring experimentation by doing something different with cannabis comedy-drama "High Maintenance" in 2012. The series created by Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld follows a marijuana delivery guy (only known as The Guy) as he peddles around New York City making deliveries to his clients. This unique slice-of-life anthology premiered on YouTube alternative Vimeo and aired for six seasons until 2015. Then in 2016, it made the jump to HBO and switched up its five to 20 minute episodes by moving toward a more standard 30 minute television format.

Regardless of the way it was presented, the show maintains its silly premise, sharp writing, and succinct stories about the diverse melting pot of people you might see around NYC on any given day. Sinclair's Guy encounters such a wide sampling of the city's population. From chefs to authors to dog walkers to computer programmers, the audience gets a little bit of everything in these well-crafted tales that can be hopeful, sentimental, and even bittersweet at times. Plus, with big name guest stars including Dan Stevens, Greta Lee, Britt Lower, Ken Leung, Hannibal Buress, Margaret Cho, and even the legendary Martha Stewart, it's always a pleasant surprise to see how The Guy intersects with so many different facets of the human condition.

HBO has always featured shows that pull back the curtain on several corners of the entertainment industry. "Entourage" and "Ballers" probably come to mind immediately. But before they debuted, Robert Wuhl's "Arli$$" created the blueprint for them to satirically spotlight "what really happens" behind the scenes of professional sports.

The dark comedy was created by and starred Wuhl, who was best known before this for appearing in films such as "Good Morning, Vietnam," "Bull Durham," and "Batman (1989)." After reading "The Art of the Deal" by Donald Trump and Tony Schwartz, the actor was inspired to highlight the greed and hypocrisy of someone who is so full of it that no one believes him. Using the world of sports as a backdrop, he made it so that the audience could hear the story from high-powered agent Arliss Michaels, then see what actually happened.

A lot of the comedy came from the unreliable narrator and the outrageous situations that he finds himself in. Similar to Dr. Frasier Crane, who can also be classified as pompous, long-winded, and generally well-intentioned, Arliss always gets his comeuppance and is quickly knocked down a few pegs when he needs to be. But it also helps that Wuhl enlisted an incredibly talented supporting cast, including Sandra Oh in one of her breakout roles as intelligent and passionate assistant Rita Wu and Michael Boatman of "Spin City" fame as financial advisor and reluctant co-conspirator Stanley Babson. And though some might say that the sitcom was too "inside baseball" at times, it did tackle some rather controversial topics like political corruption, LGBTQ athletes, and steroids that are still hot topics today.

"The Larry Sanders Show" starring Gary Shandling is one of the best HBO original series of all time and one of the best sitcom pilots of all time. The series about the daily life of a late-night talk show host was revolutionary in so many ways. On top of excellent writing and performances, it masterfully blurred the lines of fact and fiction by presenting real celebrities as fictional versions of themselves (a device that could be brilliant or incredibly cringey) and managed to make deeply flawed characters likable and relatable (which has been attempted many times on many sitcoms since then with varying degrees of success).

And yet nobody really talks about it in the same way as other great HBO comedies or sitcoms in general. It's popular among creative types with an appreciation for comedy or television history, as well as those involved in the industry, but it doesn't exactly have the mainstream appeal of shows like "Friends," "The Office," or "Cheers." However, without "The Larry Sanders Show," we probably wouldn't have gotten "The Office," "Arrested Development," or "Curb Your Enthusiasm" because they were all greatly influenced by Shandling's landmark series.