In January 2007, the company launched a streaming media service, introducing video on demand via the Internet. However, at that time it only had 1,000 films available for streaming, compared to 100,000 available on DVD. The company had for some time, considered offering movies online, but it was only in the mid-2000s that data speeds and bandwidth costs had improved sufficiently to allow customers to download movies from the net. The original idea was a "Netflix box" that could download movies overnight, and be ready to watch the next day. By 2005, Netflix had acquired movie rights and designed the box and service. But after witnessing how popular streaming services such as YouTube were despite lack of high-definition content, the concept of using a hardware device was scrapped and replaced with a streaming concept.
"CNN" original series has once again done it as with this latest "History of the Sitcom" it's a historical and text book lesson a journey down TV's memory lane as it looks at landmark shows of the past and how they shaped culture and society. Any TV history or pop culture buff will love this series, as it looks thru the decades of the tube even as far back as black and white to see how times would change over the course. Interviews are given with series stars, TV network and series creators as they give their takes on how certain sitcoms changed America. Clips shown bring back memories of joy, comfort, and escape, as it's nice to see show origins along with it's growing pains. And each episode focuses on a different theme and genre that involved the overview of the sitcom from "Family", "Just Friends", "Sex", "Working for Laughs", "Race" and "Moving on Up", to being cast as "Outsiders". And with each episode the viewer sees how sitcoms and the theme changed with times and people.
Thru it all as one views each episode looking back you can again enjoy old laughs and old times while realizing that the history of sitcoms and the way they changed opened up people's minds for new thoughts. A few weeks back, we pointed you in the direction of some great movies streaming free on YouTube, for those of you who like watching movies online but don't like ponying up those Netflix dollars. That's why sitcoms are so good for YouTube viewing; as long as you have a passing familiarity with the characters, it's easy to sample an episode here or there on a lunch break and not have to worry about serialized arcs and continuity issues.
We sought out some of the best sitcoms in television history and found those that had at least a handful of episodes on YouTube — and that were either there officially or that have been up long enough to indicated that everyone's cool with it. ABC's groundbreaking police drama made headlines in its early days for pushing network TV's boundaries for language, nudity, and thematic content. In other words, it paved the way in the '90s for the directions TV dramas would go in the 21st century. Its Season1 1 cast was headed by Dennis Franz and David Caruso, though the show was so successful that Caruso left after one season to pursue an ill-fated movie career.
Through the years, Franz was partnered with the likes of Jimmy Smits, Rick Schroder, and Mark-Paul Gosselaar, but it was the hard-boiled production by Stephen Bochco and David Milch that was the real star of the show. It's always so surprising to realize that The Addams Family lasted only two seasons on ABC, from 1964 to 1966, because its influence on popular culture was so widespread. The more outlandish the character—like disembodied hand Thing and walking pile of hair Cousin Itt—the more memorable it remained in pop culture. The series famously inspired two feature films, but the original series is worth it for sheer quirk value.
A heartfelt (and now Emmy-winning) riches-to-rags story, this comedy follows the Rose family as they're forced out of their lives of the rich and famous and into a middle-of-nowhere town filled with unusual characters. They try to rebuild their old lives and find themselves building new ones instead. Schitt's Creek made history in 2020 by sweeping comedy categories at the Emmys, and the final season launched on Netflix last year. If you haven't watched this wonderfully funny show yet, now is the time. Its main characters may work in a bar, but this show is no "Cheers." Caustic, cynical, crass, and hilarious, "It's Always Sunny" delights in pushing the boundaries of good taste far beyond what would fly in a network show. The first season took a while to find its comedic footing, but since season two, which kicked off with Danny DeVito joining the cast, the show has received universal acclaim from critics.
When it was renewed for a 15th season in 2020 it became the longest-running live-action comedy series in American history. There would be the nostalgic cast member insisting that nobody else on television was doing pure, honest comedy in those days, with a swipe at shows that distressed people by evoking real life. Some current celebrities or demi-celebrities would assert it was a profound influence on them, sounding like improvised eulogies for somebody they'd barely heard of. And the where-are-they-now bit with former stars explaining how they turned their backs on big Hollywood movies to find themselves and/or rediscover their art in dinner theater. THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW was also discussed in regards to Mary Richards's dating and sex life, despite not being tied to a man. History of the Sitcom reunites audiences with the television friends, families, and co-workers they grew up with while introducing cutting-edge comedies that are sure to be your next binge-watch.
The network is known for creating immensely entertaining pop culture documentaries — The History of Comedy, The Movies, and The 2000s are all currently streaming on HBO Max — and their newest offering might just be their best yet. Airing Sunday nights on CNN, History of the Sitcom is eight episodes of pure pop culture nostalgia. An informative stroll down memory lane, the gripping docuseries explores how sitcoms continuously help to shape our ever-evolving cultural landscape. Featuring interviews with over 180 sitcom icons, the first three episodes are now available to stream on CNNgo. This docuseries reunites audiences with the television friends, families, and co-workers they grew up with while introducing cutting-edge comedies that are sure to be your next binge-watch. Featuring over 180 original interviews with sitcom icons the series breaks down how sitcoms have helped generations of Americans navigate an ever-shifting cultural landscape.
The original voyages of the starship Enterprise may have been initially appreciated by a cult audience, but they spawned an entire science fiction universe that thrives to this day. The adventures of Captain Kirk , Spock , and their crew became a cultural institution and one of the most influential pieces of science fiction ever. At under 100 episodes, the series made its mark not through epic space battles (those phasers were set to "stun"!) but through exploration and discovery.
The concept episodes were the reason I fell so hard for Community. The show's first season is its most sitcom-like, spinning 25 episodes about the characters learning to love Greendale Community College . But late in that first season, the show unleashed "Modern Warfare," an action movie parody about a paintball game spreading across the Greendale campus that simultaneously revealed two characters hooking up for the first time. In this critically acclaimed anthology crime drama series, new cast ensembles take on challenging crime investigations each season. The first season, starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, was called one of the best drama series of the year, while other critics said it was one of the strongest in recent memory.
Season two stars Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams, and Taylor Kitsch; Mahershala Ali is the lead in the third season, with Carmen Ejogo, Stephen Dorff, Scoot McNairy, and Ray Fisher co-starring. Regularly referred to as one of the best TV shows of all time by Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, and TV Guide, "Seinfeld's" iconic characters, storylines, and catchphrases have become an indelible part of popular culture. Created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld in 1989, the show launched the careers of Seinfeld and co-stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jason Alexander, while Michael Richards' Kramer character became unforgettable. It won an Emmy in 1993 for "Outstanding Comedy Series," and in 2014, Hulu acquired the streaming rights to all nine seasons of the series' episodes for a reported $130 to $180 million. The first two episodes of the eight-part docuseries, premiering back-to-back Sunday, July 11, explore the evolution of American families in sitcoms, along with the sexual revolution and integration of LGBTQ+ storylines into television.
Before watching television about other people watching television was a thing, Craig Cash and the much-missed Caroline Aherne did it with The Royle Family, a low-key Manchester-set comedy series about the Royles, a family whose lives play out around the box. Simply put, it's a modern classic, with top tier comedy performances from Ricky Tomlinson, Sue Johnston and, well, everybody. Jessica Hynes, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's Spaced recently turned 20 .
It's two perfect series of pop culture spoofs and weird cutaway scenes, following the lives of 20-something slackers Daisy and Tim and their mad cast of friends and neighbours. It's the sitcom that launched a thousand ships/other sitcoms that aspire to achieve the same heightened, imaginative energy. Set in the late 1980s/early 1990s in the West of Ireland, it's the story of a boy with an imaginary friend that weaves silly fantasy with day-to-day family comedy. As some others have pointed out on social media, many of the show's convoluted storylines wouldn't even work in a world with cellphones.
In the show's finale, Jerry and George give Elaine a hard time for calling a friend to ask about her father's health on a cellphone while walking outside. That seems like a quaint concern now – when some people get offended if you make a voice call at all. Episodes are sprinkled with jokes about old film stars and pop culture, and while some fashions in the show were forward-looking, there's also a lot of mom jeans and big shouldered-jackets floating around. On the surface a comedy about a 30-year-old New Yorker who loves his pasta, Master of None casually throws in nuanced and moving episodes about immigrant families and their second-generation children. Dev's relatable experiences bubble with creator and star Aziz Ansari's wit and charm and,personal controversyaside, the romantic and cultural themes he explores are remarkably mature.
Season 3 takes things down a different road again, starring Lena Waithe and Naomi Ackie. Ansari features in an episode, letting us know where Dev's at in his love life. A show inspired by the true story of the first pro female wrestling syndicate in the '80s? GLOW's purely fun comedy, packed with eccentric female characters, teams campiness with underdog triumph and soars.
Season 3 progresses deeper into the lives of its diverse ensemble, shifting the series to Las Vegas. A fourth and final season was in the works, but sadly production fell victim to the pandemic and Netflix cancelled the show. In this animated Netflix series, a former sitcom star voiced by Will Arnett attempts to reignite his showbiz career. While many reviewers found the show's first season too short on laughs to justify its bizarre premise, subsequent seasons added surprising depth to the BoJack character and drew acclaim from audiences and critics alike.
A remake of a British series, this Showtime dramedy takes on the struggles of a Chicago family headed by a deadbeat patriarch (William H. Macy) whose only concerns are what his next scheme will be and where his next beer will come from. Although some critics initially thought Macy was miscast, he has racked up three Screen Actors Guild awards for his performance in the role. The show's ninth season made it the longest-running Showtime show in the network's history. Emmy Rossum, who plays Macy's eldest daughter Fiona, did not return as a regular for the 10th season, and the show concluded with its 11th and final season in 2021. Originally on the Syfy channel, this show based on "The Expanse" series of books is set in a universe where the solar system has been colonized. An ice hauler ship named the Canterbury is involved in an accident, sending the crew into the center of a conspiracy that threatens the uneasy peace among different planetary governments.
Canceled in 2018, Amazon revived the series for an upcoming fourth season on Prime; it began streaming in late 2019. Like several shows on this list, the first season of "Person of Interest" received a mixed response from critics for its shallow character development, while later seasons seemed to remedy the issue. The story sees an ex-CIA operative and a scientist teaming up to try to prevent crimes before they occur. The show's creator, Jonathan Nolan, is the brother of director Christopher Nolan.
Ready or not, the fall TV season is here, and so is Deadline's comprehensive annual list of premiere dates for new series and new seasons of returning series. It covers more than 450 broadcast, cable and streaming shows bowing from September 1 through December 31 in all dayparts but does not include specials or movies. Please send any additions or adjustments to We'll update the post regularly as more dates are revealed. Soon enough, everyone will be able to see themselves reflected in the screen, but the 184 interviews conducted for the upcoming miniseries illustrate how all the major architects of the sitcom made it part of their lives before joining its pantheon.
At a certain point, our favorite episodes cease to be entertainment so much as a way for us to spend time with people we care about. Through America's upheavals and revolutions, we could always return to the apartment sets and laugh tracks that feel like home. Everyone has an innate understanding of that "inherent comfort", and their own relationship with it. Some part of the human brain has been hardwired to seek out and respond to the soothing reliability of the sitcom, even as viewing habits have mutated with the advent of online video. "A couple of the other executives in my department are younger than me, and they didn't really grow up watching sitcoms," Gamm says.
"And yet they still have a close familiarity with them, and that comes from streaming. In early August 2019, Netflix negotiated an exclusive multi-year film and television deal with Game of Thrones creators/showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Due to their commitments to Netflix, Benioff and Weiss withdrew from an earlier agreement with Disney to write and produce a Star Wars film series. The first Netflix production created by Benioff and Weiss was planned as an adaptation of Liu Cixin's science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem, part of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. The agreement with Disney ended in 2019 due to the launch of Disney+.
Netflix retains the rights to continue streaming the Marvel series that were produced for the service. On September 18, 2011, Netflix announced its intentions to rebrand and restructure its DVD home media rental service as an independent subsidiary called Qwikster, separating DVD rental and streaming services. Andy Rendich, a 12-year Netflix veteran, was to be CEO of Qwikster. It was also announced that the re-branded service would add video game rentals.
The decision to split the services was widely criticized; it was noted that the two websites would have been autonomous from each other , and would have required separate user accounts. On August 29, 1997, Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings founded Netflix in Scotts Valley, California. Hastings, a computer scientist and mathematician, was a co-founder of Pure Atria, which was acquired by Rational Software Corporation in 1997 for $700 million, then the biggest acquisition in Silicon Valley history. Randolph had worked as a marketing director for Pure Atria after Pure Atria acquired a company where Randolph worked. He was previously a co-founder of MicroWarehouse, a computer mail-order company as well as vice president of marketing for Borland International. Hastings and Randolph came up with the idea for Netflix while carpooling between their homes in Santa Cruz, California and Pure Atria's headquarters in Sunnyvale.
Patty McCord, later head of human resources at Netflix, was also in the carpool group. Randolph admired Amazon.com and wanted to find a large category of portable items to sell over the Internet using a similar model. Hastings and Randolph considered and rejected selling and renting VHS tapes as too expensive to stock and too delicate to ship.
When they heard about DVDs, first introduced in the United States on March 24, 1997, they tested the concept of selling or renting DVDs by mail by mailing a compact disc to Hastings's house in Santa Cruz. When the disc arrived intact, they decided to enter the $16 billion home-video sales and rental industry. Hastings invested $2.5 million in cash from the proceeds of the Pure Atria sale into Netflix.
Netflix launched as the world's first online DVD-rental store, with only 30 employees and 925 titles available—almost the entire catalogue of DVDs at the time. I also had no idea that Pamela Adlon - a voice actress from my childhood - now has her own live action "sitcom" . And I'm talking about sexual activity in general, not sexuality or gender identity . The days and nights of the Sugarbaker & Associates interior design firm in Atlanta is the setting for one of the best comedies of the 1980s. Designing Women was a smart, snappy, often overtly political sitcom about women striving to make it in business in a world that just as often tries to belittle and overlook them.
Featuring a bulletproof central ensemble of Dixie Carter, Delta Burke, Jean Smart, and Annie Potts, the series offers female-centric comedy that still feels smart and funny, particularly when Julia Sugarbaker winds up for one of her classic fiery monologues. Between the rugged Victorian backdrop, the hints of the paranormal, and the rather ominous Dr. Watson , there's a lot happening in this new take on the Sherlock Holmes stories. Bea and her makeshift chosen family struggle to deal with the onset of mysterious powers. Blending some of the teen drama of Outer Banks, the mystery and danger of any Sherlock Holmes story, and a historical setting reminiscent of Bridgerton , this series is practically guaranteed to be a hit (and it's a great binge-watch, either way). Looks like the trending hashtag #SaveManifest worked, because Netflix recently renewed the hit NBC mystery series for a fourth and final season.
The story, which follows a group of passengers on a flight missing for five years that suddenly reappears, has made a huge splash on social media and sailed high in the Top 10 on Netflix for several weeks. A lot can happen in five years, which means most of their spouses have moved on, kids have grown up, and parents have passed away, making their return to society more unimaginably difficult. To make matters worse, the passengers begin to experience voices and visions representing events yet to occur, sending them down a bumpy moral road that they can only navigate together. Did you know that if you own a Samsung television, you have access to an entireBaywatchchannel that just streams the iconic '90s drama? This cult-favorite series followed the ins and outs of daily life for the lifeguards at Malibu Beach.
Have you been on a break from this hit '90s sitcom since it wrapped up in 2004? While the couple attempts to acclimate to their neighbourhood and take on a seemingly ordinary life, they spend a great deal of time trying to conceal their extraordinary powers from their neighbours and coworkers. Other familiar faces from the MCU join the duo in the series, including Randall Park (Jimmy Woo from Ant-Man and The Wasp) and Kat Dennings .
A new face to the MCU family is Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau, the daughter of Captain Maria Rambeau, Carol Danvers' (A.K.A. Captain Marvel) best friend. Monica was still a child at the end of Captain Marvel, and Parris is now playing her as an adult. Marvel Cinematic Universe and classic television fans alike are in for a real treat as Marvel Studios debuts their first-ever series. WandaVision is now streaming on Disney+, starring veteran MCU actors Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff and Paul Bettany as Vision, and featuring the comedic chops of Kathryn Hahn (who plays Agnes, their next-door neighbour).
