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The 20 best TV sitcoms of all time – readers' choice

From Lucy Ricardo trying to make it into show business to four friends sitting in a diner talking about nothing, sitcoms have been one of TV audiences' favorite forms of entertainment for decades.

To come up with the "Best TV Sitcoms" ranking, Monitor editors compiled a list of 20 sitcom contenders which we felt encompassed a wide range of television history and showed how TV has changed since the medium was created. Then, we put a poll on our website and almost 1,900 readers weighed in. We won't give away which sitcom took the top prize, but it got 19 percent of all votes (360 votes), with the second place show following closely behind at 17 percent (314) of the total.

Here they are in the order of the least-to-most-votes received, the best TV sitcoms ever.

CBS/AP

20. 'Will & Grace'

Chris Haston/NBC

  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

The NBC program ran from 1998 to 2006 and starred Eric McCormack and Debra Messing as Will, a lawyer, and Grace, an interior decorator, who were best friends in college and dated briefly before Will came out of the closet. The two spend time with their other best friends, wealthy society wife Karen (Megan Mullally) and flighty, flamboyant Jack (Sean Hayes).

"Will & Grace" co-creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick based the show on Mutchnick's relationship with a friend, Janet, whom he dated before he came out. NBC president Warren Littlefield was the one who hit on the idea of a show featuring the friendship between a straight woman and gay man, and during the development period, Kohan and Mutchnick faxed Littlefield the box office grosses for hit movies such as "My Best Friend's Wedding" and "The Birdcage," demonstrating that stories with gay characters could succeed financially.

"Will & Grace's matter-of-fact gay characters undeniably made a big difference, thanks in large part to the smart writing of creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, and the direction by one of the grand masters of the form, James Burrows," Bloom and Vlastnik wrote in their book "Sitcoms."

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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