There are too many streaming services.
I know, I know. Hot take! But it’s been another hard year, so I figure, why not start out stating the obvious? And just as obvious: with so many streamers that it’s impossible for even the pros among us (hi) to keep up with them all, it’s a given that, no matter how hard any one of us tries, there will be hidden gems that we nonetheless miss.
That’s been particularly true this year in the comedy realm, where, streamers of all stripes—though internationally oriented ones in particular—have proven especially prolific. Genuinely, for every Jury Duty (Freevee), Only Murders in the Building (Hulu) and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (Disney+), there have been at least three stealth bangers struggling to get even a fraction of the buzz.
In that spirit, I’ve curated a brief list of my favorite streaming comedy sleepers, along with a bonus pair of broadcast comedies I think also missed their due.
And if you don’t see your favorite niche streaming comedy on the list below? Don’t worry: if it’s Primo, Class of ‘07, Aimless, I’m a Virgo, or tk, it’s already on my to-be-watched dance card for the Christmas break. And if it’s not any of those? Well, there’s always New Year’s weekend…
Big Door Prize
Streamer: Apple TV+
Starring: Chris O’Dowd, Gabrielle Dennis, Sammy Fourlas, Djouliet Amara, Josh Segarra, Patrick Kerr, Damon Gupton, Mary Holland, Ally Maki, Crystal Fox
Seasons available: 1
Enough Ted Lasso and The Morning Show fans will have been scrolling through Apple’s queue of originals around the time Big Door Prize was brand new that this may not feel “niche” to many of you reading this list. But considering how wildly popular I was so certain this series would be when I was watching the screeners for review, and how muted any eventual discourse about it was, I’m adding it to this list all the same. Hugely funny, hugely tender, and showcasing some of the sweetest and most authentic Teen Acting I’ve seen in a long time, Big Door Prize just blew me away. Come for O’Dowds’s whistling midlife crisis, stay for the truly astounding number of comedic dance solos, and then stick around in 2024 for what promises to be an even more surprising Season 2.
The Cleaner
Streamer: BritBox
Starring: Greg Davies and Zita Sattar, with one-off guest spots from Helena Bonham Carter, David Mitchell, Asim Chaudhry, Roisin Conaty and more
Seasons available: 2
Adapted by the BBC from a German series of almost the same name (now streaming on MhZ!), The Cleaner features Taskmaster’s Greg Davies as Paul “Wicky” Wickstead, a terminally unambitious crime scene cleaner. Generally more interested in going down to the local with his high school buddies and rocking out to his favorite bands than taking adulthood seriously, Wicky is well-suited for such an alienating line of work. Well, and also he’s genuinely good at it—the stains that man can get out!
But while Wicky would be perfectly happy spending his days scrubbing blood and bone from the kitchen tiles without talking to a single other living soul, some annoying guest star always manages to show up and muck up his plans. In some cases, that somebody is the murderer. In others, they’re a neighbor, or a friend, or a lover. Sometimes it’s unclear who they are. But always, the dramatic stakes are low enough that they might as well be in the basement, which lets both Davies and the episode’s one-off guest star take their interactions to just the goofiest, most unexpected places.
Colin From Accounts
Streamer: Paramount+
Starring: Harriet Dyer, Patrick Brammall, Genevieve Hegney, Emma Harvie, Michael Logo, Zak
Seasons available: 1
The Antipodeans know how to make an awkward comedy. From Wilfred (another Brammall joint) to Please Like Me (Josh Thomas) to Wellington Paranormal (the What We Do in the Shadows team) to Deadloch (a murderous Kates production, out earlier this year on Prime Video), Aussies and Kiwis alike have been sending deeply funny, deeply uncomfortable sitcoms to North American streamers for awhile now.
Still, there’s something about the cringe-filled rom-com Colin From Accounts that I think will especially appeal to American audiences right now. Starring Harriet Dyer as Ashley, an overstressed, underpaid medical resident fresh of off a devastating breakup and ready to make some questionable choices, Patrick Brammall as Gordon, a forty-something microbrewery owner with terrible choice in women and anxiety that his cancer might be returning, and Zak as Colin From Accounts (the scruffy dog Gordon partially paralyzes with his car when Ashley flashes him while crossing the street one morning), the series plays a bit like an enemies-to-lovers story, but with a more scatalogical edge than you might expect.
Colin is obviously the star here (Logie award for Zak!) but the humans manage to pull their weight: grating and compelling in equal measure, Ashley and Gordon as a pair—chilly, friendly, romantic, or otherwise—bring the kind of energy to the screen that’s impossible to look away from. Add in Genevieve Hegney, Emma Harvie, and Michael Logo as the couple’s more age-coherent (but no less messy) friends, and you’ve got a solid ensemble. I hope we get more.
Fisk
Streamer: Netflix
Starring: Kitty Flanagan, Julia Zemiro, Marty Sheargold, Aaron Chen
Seasons available: 2
Speaking of Australia’s killer comedy scene…
Created by comedian Kitty Flanagan, Fisk is the probate-based (wills, etc.) legal comedy you didn’t know you’ve been looking for. Flanagan also stars as the titular (Helen Tudor) Fisk, an awkwardly opinionated weirdo who has recently returned to practice law in her hometown of Melbourne after having 1) had her annoying author husband leave her for an older woman and 2) been fired from her job. Inexperienced in trial law and both disinterested in and bad at talking to other human beings, Fisk is assigned by a recruiter to an open position in a small probate firm, where she it turns out she has to deal with other human beings quite frequently, almost universally when—given that most of them are grieving—they are at their least sensible. It’s a bad fit! It’s also very funny.
Rounding out Fisk’s work life are her new colleagues, played eccentrically by Julia Zemiro, Marty Sheargold, and Aaron Chen, who make her new role much weirder and less convenient than it ought to be. Thankfully, she has her beloved dog Artie to go home to (dogs must be a contractual requirement for Australian sitcoms!), along with a handful of equally exasperating family members—including her dad, now retired from his position as one of Melbourne’s most well-known judges. Part work comedy, part family comedy, and wholly awkward, Fisk is a treat.
The Lovers
Streamer: AMC+/Sundance NOW
Starring: Roisin Gallagher, Johnny Flynn, Alice Eve
Seasons available: 1
CW: suicidal imagery
You ever meet the exact wrong right person for you, at the exact right wrong time? It sucks! But it also, as the internet might say, makes for tremendous content. Or, in this case, romantic comedy, as that’s the dramatic engine fueling the ill-timed connection that forms between Seamus (Johnny Flynn), a famous politics presenter from London, and Janet (Roisin Gallagher), a suicidally depressed grocery clerk from Belfast, in The Lovers, which hit AMC+ and Sundance NOW late this fall.
Brisk and sweet and more than a little tricky—Seamus is dating a famous actress named Frankie (Alice Eve) when his flirtation with Janet starts—The Lovers is well worth the watch for any current AMC+ subscriber (few of you though there might be). It also has great music.
That said, fair warning: it can also be bitingly dark—the couple’s meet-cute happens when Flynn is running away from some teen hooligans who didn’t appreciate his very British, very condescending monologue about the rampant depression sweeping Belfast’s streets, only to interrupt Gallagher just moments before she can pull the trigger on her shotgun in her back garden. This scenario is taken quite seriously by the show, but is also wrapped tight with pitch-black humor. For me, it feels balanced. But check your own headspace at the queue!
The Syd & TP Show
Streamer: Maximum Effort Channel on Fubo TV (some episodes also occasionally available on Sling TV)
Starring: Sydney Colson and Theresa Plaisance
Seasons available: 1
I don’t know what basketball deities we pleased to deserve The Syd + TP Show, new this year from Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Fun channel (streaming on the sports-centric Fubo TV), but I respectfully nod my head to whomever they are, as this show is nothing short of a gift.
For anyone who doesn’t subscribe to Fubo TV (count me among you!), here’s this loosely scripted comedy’s deal: The Syd + TP Show follows the exploits of 2022 WNBA champions (and best friends) Sydney Colson and Theresa Plaisance as they spend their off-season attempting to become The Faces of the league. And for anyone who doesn’t keep up with the W, here’s the other part of this loosely scripted comedy’s deal: while Colson and Plaisance absolutely did earn their championship rings alongside the rest of the Las Vegas Aces in 2022, they did so fully off the bench. And as for their friendship? It’s nearly as new as those rings, the pair having met for the first time at the start of that winning season and immediately bonded over their shared love of pranks and sense of humor. (Which anyone who caught any of Deloitte’s TP and Colson-heavy ad campaign over the summer will have already gotten a small taste of.)
All that to say, the premise of the show is its central joke: Sydney Colson and Theresa Plaisance are about as far from being The Faces of the league as any of the 144 players on the W’s roster at any one time could possibly be. This tension forms the backbone of every scene, as the pair pitch themselves far and wide with equal parts obliviousness and gameness. Because whatever it might take to achieve their dream, they’re trying it. Maybe improv lessons will help? Maybe throwing down some beats with college ball star Flau’jae? Maybe a jam session with Seth Meyers scribe Jenny Hagel? Maybe an afternoon with some drag queens? Any one of these things might do the trick, so Syd and TP are going to try, and be dryly funny while doing so.
What adds extra comedy to the pair’s endeavor is, of course, the context the show landed in: on a channel that’s nearly impossible to find and wildly expensive to subscribe to when you do (by comparison, a subscription to Fubo TV will set you back about 3x more than a single season of WNBA League Pass). What’s more, when the show premiered, Plaisance, who opens her intro talking about transferring to the Seattle Storm during the off-season, had already been during the league’s notoriously cutthroat training camp.
And yet! As the series’ first season ended, Colson and Plaisance found their way to co-hosting the 2023 Players’ Ball. Which might mean the joke of the show was never a joke at all: there’s a future where Syd + TP are the faces of the league yet.
BROADCAST BONUS
Animal Control
Streamer: Hulu (by way of FOX)
Starring: Joel McHale, Vella Lovell, Michael Rowland, Ravi Patel, Grace Palmer
Seasons available: 1
If you’re looking for a procedural workplace comedy that neatly evades falling into the trap of fun copaganda—which is to say, if you’re among those who audibly wished that Brooklyn Nine-Nine had turned into a Postal Service comedy in its rewritten sendoff season—then FOX’s Animal Control is worth checking out.
Set in an animal control department in Seattle, Washington, the series functions formally in much the same way the B99 did before it: there’s a quartet of investigative officers who mix and match from episode to episode to solve cases in the field (McHale, Rowland, Patel, and Palmer), a new boss who doesn’t quite know how to deal with them (Vella Lovell, absolutely selling the sweetly nerdy combo she’s been tasked with), and even some slow-burning romantic subplots (make sure to stick around for the very fun cameo from Upload’s Kevin Bigley, who plays a great foil to Rowland’s ex-snowboarder bro, Shred). Plus with McHale’s character coming to the job from the police department, having grown officially disillusioned with/infuriated by the rampant corruption therein, you even got the nod to the kind of copaganda Animal Control wants to replace.
In all, a stealth winner from FOX’s slim live-action comedy slate, and better yet: Season 2 is officially on the way.
Grand Crew
Streamer: Peacock or Hulu (by way of NBC)
Starring:
Seasons available: 2 (RIP)
Look, there’s not much more that I can say about Grand Crew here that I haven’t already said in my Season 1 rave or my end-of-Season 2 interview with creator and showrunner Phil Augusta Jackson—save, obviously, for RIP (Rest in Pinot Gris). What a dream of a modern hangout sitcom, and what a nightmare it got canceled before it could hit it big! May the Crew find a long cult fandom life on Hulu and Peacock for years to come.
Alexis Gunderson is a TV critic and audiobibliophile. She can be found on Authory.