Seinfeld
Seinfeld ran from 1989 through 1997 on NBC and featured Jerry Seinfeld, a stand-up comedian playing a fictional version of himself, and three friends in New York City. It is one of most beloved sitcoms of all times. Part of its brilliance was to continuously push the envelope with network television taboo subjects like masturbation, oral sex, “shrinkage” and more, without directly naming the actual topic and triggering censorship. Many phrases from the show like “Yada Yada Yada” are still part of today’s lexicon more than 25 years after the show ended. However, the four protagonists of the show are petty, insecure and generally not good people, as evidenced by the show’s controversial series finale that is also still debated today. Here are a few other shows like Seinfeld you may have missed that we think you may like.
Shows Like Seinfeld – It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has run for 16 seasons on FX and FXX since 2005 with renewals for two more seasons. It centers on an Irish pub in Philadelphia named Paddy’s Pub run by four (season 1) and five incompetent individuals. What makes it like Seinfeld is that these five are even worse than the four main characters in Seinfeld in terms of selfishness, ethics and lots more. If you love Seinfeld and only watch one episode of It’s Always Sunny, make sure it is season 13, episode 7.
It’s Always Sunny is at its best downright hilarious. Like Seinfeld, it isn’t afraid to push the envelope into political incorrectness. However, it does have a few too many episodes featuring some secondary characters that we find more stupid than funny. If you have watched Cheers, we believe the Tortellis took away from that show’s greatness and introduced some unnecessary stupid characters. It’s Always Sunny has some secondary characters like these.
Overall, however, we like this show a lot and believe you will too if you liked Seinfeld.
See streaming options at It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Shows Like Seinfeld – The League
The League ran for seven seasons on FX and FXX from 2009 to 2015. The League centers around a group of friends in a fantasy football league together who will do pretty much anything to win. Much like the characters in Seinfeld (and It’s Always Sunny), these really are not nice people. They prioritize fantasy football over everything else in the world. One particularly funny (although disconcerting) episode features two main characters (an attorney and an assistant DA) haggling over a defendant’s sentence as part of a fantasy football league trade.
Jeff Schaeffer and his wife Jackie Marcus Schaffer created, directed and produced The League. Jeff was previously a writer and a producer for Seinfeld. The show takes on several Seinfeld features, including having multiple storylines in an episode that intersect at the end. Our one criticism of the show (much like our criticism of It’s Always Sunny) is that too many later episodes feature one secondary character that is more stupid than funny. However, overall we liked The League a lot.
See streaming options at The League.
Show a Little Like Seinfeld – Hacks
Hacks has run for three seasons on HBO/Max from 2021 through 2024. It stars Jean Smart as a legendary stand-up comedian living in Las Vegas and Hannah Einbinder as a young comedy writer who goes to work for her. The show has won several Emmy awards and other television awards. It centers on the love-hate relationship between the two lead characters, both of whom are stubborn and pigheaded.
This show is not as similar to Seinfeld as the above two recommendations, but we include it here because of its focus on stand-up comedy and the abrasive main characters. The number of awards indicates how good this show is.
See streaming options at Hacks.
Shows Like Seinfeld – Crashing
Crashing ran for three seasons on HBO from 2017 to 2019. It stars Pete Holmes, a stand-up comedian, playing a fictional version of himself. However, unlike Seinfeld, it focuses more on Holmes’ stand-up career and struggles to get it off the ground. The show is based on Holmes’ real life experiences. Several real life comedians appear on the show as themselves, including Artie Lange, who is a main character.
We enjoyed this show a lot although it did not really catch on to a large audience. We did watch one of Pete Holmes’ stand-up specials which we did not find particularly funny. The show was much better.
See streaming options at Crashing.
These are four shows like Seinfeld we think you will like. We didn’t mention Curb Your Enthusiasm because that was too obvious.
Want to see shows like The Sopranos? See our post at The Sopranos.
