I’ve been busy trying to finish an amazing book and get some work outside done before storms roll through later. For today’s post I dug into my list of ideas and found this one, which has been sitting there since George Wendt died last month and news broke that there will be a Scrubs revival.

With minimal commentary, here are my favorite TV comedies of all time.

1) Cheers
A few years I went back and watched the early years and was amazed by how well they hold up. Same anytime I come across a clip. A perfect combination of high and low brow comedy.

2) Seinfeld
I used to say this didn’t hold up as well as Cheers because it was, often, so topical. Does “The Non Fat Yogurt” hit as hard now as it did at the time when it pretended to swing the NYC mayoral election? There is also the argument that Curb Your Enthusiasm takes away from Seinfeld’s brilliance. I’ve made that argument myself at times. What defeats that critique, though, is that I can flip on a Seinfeld episode and almost always get sucked in. I feel like Curb isn’t as satisfying in small bites.

3) The Office
There is no comedy I’ve watched more in the last decade. Which is weird because its original run ended in 2013. The first five seasons are so good I don’t mind that I’m not really interested in anything that came after them.

4) Arrested Development
The back half of this list is heavy with shows that were wildly popular amongst critics but rarely got good ratings. This is kind of the originator of that sub-genre.

5) Community
A lot of similarities between this and Arrested Development, in terms of how meta it was, how people who loved it REALLY loved it, etc. Also had a monkey named Annie’s Boobs.

6) Parks & Recreation
Take the bones of The Office, move it to Indiana, and make it 75% sweeter. I still maintain if Comedy Central showed reruns of P&R as often as The Office, it would be just as popular.

7) Scrubs
Where Bill Lawrence began his run of comedies with heart.

8) Curb Your Enthusiasm
Above I said that this is right there with its cousin, Seinfeld. As much as I enjoyed it, I think this is the least universal of the bunch. I know several people who either didn’t find it funny or were put off by it.

There are plenty of other shows I enjoyed, but if you were going to ship me off to an isolated location with only a hard drive that included my favorites for entertainment, these are the eight I would require.