TV Has A Serious Comedy Problem, And This Year's Emmy Nominations Prove It
Amazon Freevee's Jury Duty was one of this year's most pleasant surprises, and we were thrilled to see the unscripted courtroom comedy nab an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series this week. (We asked for it, in fact!) But after surveying this year's list of Emmy nominees for best comedy series, we started to wonder: If an elaborate prank show like Jury Duty can break into the nominee field, what does that say about the state of TV comedy these days?
Simply put, TV is facing a comedy crisis right now, with an appalling lack of shows that actually make us laugh.
The proof? You can find it in this year's eight Emmy nominees for best comedy series. Yes, Jury Duty is funny, but it was mostly improvised and kind of a lightning-in-a-bottle situation, not really built to last for multiple seasons. The Bear is fantastic, but it's a half-hour drama with a light dusting of humor. Barry has basically become Breaking Bad with a few zany interludes. Ted Lasso and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel are both hour-long dramedies that play like serialized dramas. Wednesday is an hour-long supernatural teen drama with the occasional dose of Addams Family gallows humor.
Oh, and Barry and Maisel both ended this year, with Ted Lasso likely done as well. So the comedy field, as thin as it is, is getting even thinner.
Of this year's Emmy nominees, that leaves us with Abbott Elementary and Only Murders in the Building as the only two genuine half-hour comedies in the running, and even Only Murders is as much a murder-mystery as it is a comedy. So Abbott stands alone as a shining, Emmy-nominated example of traditional broadcast situation comedy — and we hope it runs for 10 seasons, for the record. But as wonderfully talented as Quinta Brunson is, she shouldn't have to uphold the entire legacy of TV comedy all by herself.
Now, some of this is due to the Emmys' wonky classification criteria: Nominated "dramas" like The White Lotus and Succession arguably offer more punchlines than the comedy field. But even factoring that in, it's clear there's a severe comedy deficit on TV right now.
If we look beyond this year's Emmy nominees, there are quality TV comedies out there, of course: Max's The Other Two, CBS' Ghosts, FX's Dave and What We Do in the Shadows, Hulu's The Great and Reservation Dogs. But they are sadly few and far between, especially compared to TV just a decade ago. In the fall of 2012, the broadcast TV networks combined to air 31 (!) comedies in primetime. A decade later, in the fall of 2022, they aired less than half that number: 14, with NBC (once the home of Must-See TV) airing no comedies at all. This fall looks even more grim, with only 10 comedies on the broadcast slate, and most of those are either foreign imports or bound to be delayed due to the writers' and actors' strikes.
Fine, that's just broadcast TV, which is in sharp decline anyway. What about streaming? Well, it's grim there, too: Somehow the explosion in scripted content over the past few years hasn't resulted in a comedy renaissance. Many of the streamers' "comedies" tend to be mopey dramedies that rely on meaty narrative hooks to keep us binge-watching. (Netflix does offer a few throwback sitcoms, with laugh tracks and everything, but they're not exactly Emmy-caliber.) Peak TV has resulted in a record number of scripted shows being produced — nearly 600 last year alone — so how is it possible that so few of them are designed to be funny? And not just "hmmm, that is indeed amusing" funny. We're talking laugh-out-loud, fall-off-the-couch funny. It's almost as if that's a lost art.
So we find ourselves asking (nay, pleading): What happened to good old-fashioned comedies? Even streaming services are finding that their most popular shows are classic sitcoms like Friends and The Office. Why aren't they trying to replicate that success? There's something undeniably comforting about tuning into a half-hour show and watching a bunch of people we like who do something new each week, with lots of jokes along the way. The Big Bang Theory, Cheers, Parks and Recreation, The Golden Girls.... These are the shows we come back to when we need to feel good and unwind, and we're always going to want something to fill that need. It doesn't have to be three cameras and a live studio audience... but it needs to make us laugh, dammit.
Have TV networks and streamers given up on comedy? Are they afraid of offending anyone by venturing into the modern-day minefield of social media? Are they conceding all of our laughs to short-form content like YouTube and TikTok? Why have we all seen tweets that made us laugh more than any TV show this year?
We don't have all the answers, but we do have faith that someone out there is going to create the next great TV comedy, and we can't wait to see it. After all, every comedy has a happy ending, right?
What's your take on the state of TV comedy? Is it as dire as we think, or are you still finding funny gems out there? Hit the comments to make your voice heard.