12 Great Comedy Central Shows Streaming on Paramount+
Photos courtesy of Comedy Central. Broad City photo by Matthew Peyton. Detroiters photo by Art Streiber.
For years it’s been notoriously hard to watch Comedy Central shows without a cable subscription. Some of their hits have been streaming at different points in time at places like Hulu and Netflix, but it’s never been consistent, and Comedy Central’s own streaming app requires you to log in through your cable provider. Yeah, smashes like Chappelle’s Show and Key & Peele have never been too hard to find, but smaller and no less brilliant shows like Detroiters and Review couldn’t attract the audience they deserve due to how hard it was to watch them.
Fortunately Comedy Central’s corporate overlords at Viacom made it a whole lot easier to find the channel’s shows when they turned CBS All Access into the all-purpose streaming service Paramount+. Paramount+ has a healthy selection of Comedy Central originals, with a broad selection of stand-up supplemented by The Daily Show and all of those roasts. It also features some of the best sitcoms and sketch comedy shows that the channel has hosted over the years, and that’s what we’re going to focus on today.
We’re not looking at stand-up here. We’re not talking about talk shows or The Daily Show or whatever Tosh.0 is supposed to be. We’re looking exclusively at the best scripted Comedy Central originals currently streaming on Paramount+, whether they’re sketch shows like Inside Amy Schumer and Kroll Show, or sitcoms like Broad City and Corporate. And hey, we’ll let Nathan For You slide and include it here, because it’s brilliant and hilarious and doesn’t really fit easily into any category, anyway.
There are still a lot of gaps in Paramount+’s Comedy Central collection. Don’t expect to find everything that’s ever aired on there. (Sorry, Exit 57 fans.) Due to corporate entanglements the last gasp of Comedy Central live-action originals, 2019’s The Other Two and South Side, aren’t on here; both shows had second seasons that were produced but never aired on Comedy Central, and have since been sold off to HBO Max. Other unsung Comedy Central shows we’d love to see stream anywhere are Jon Benjamin Has a Van and Big Time in Hollywood, FL. Hell, Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, probably the first true original hit for the channel, isn’t streaming anywhere, either. And if Paramount+ really wanted to earn my undying love, they could dust off the old Higgins Boys and Gruber and Rich Hall’s Onion World masters from 1989 and 1990 and stream that stuff straight into my brain, inside which they’ve been kicking around in an increasingly nebulous state for 30 years now.
Enough what-ifs, though. Let’s get down to business. Here are the best Comedy Central originals now streaming on Paramount+, in alphabetical order.
Another Period
Created by: Natasha Leggero, Riki Lindhome
Stars: Natasha Leggero, Riki Lindhome, Michael Ian Black, Paget Brewster, Brett Gelman, Christina Hendricks, Dave Koechner, Jason Ritter, David Wain, Missi Pyle, Brian Huskey, Beth Dover
Natasha Leggero and Riki Lindhome’s Comedy Central show follows a rich family in the millionaire summer resort of Newport, Rhode Island, in the first few years of the 20th century, using their extreme wealth and the restrictive Victorian mores of the day to satirize both modern-day reality TV and how society treats women and the lower class. Leggero and Lindhome’s oblivious Bellacourt sisters see no problem with the money-focused, patriarchal world they live in, embracing their role as glorified trophies for the men in their lives. The Bellacourts treat the poor servants who live in their basement like they’re invisible at best and subhuman at worst, and blindly support both their rich father, even as he openly cheats on their mother, and their even less intelligent brother as he’s groomed for power. The one politically conscious Bellacourt, the suffragette sister Hortense, is openly mocked and hated by everybody else in the family, who treat her like an unpleasant, unattractive shrew who’ll never find a man to marry her. By adopting the regressive, discriminatory viewpoint of its turn-of-the-century setting, Another Period doesn’t just comment on the ridiculousness of our history, but spotlights how those archaic beliefs still impact our culture today.—Garrett Martin
Broad City
Created by: Ilana Glazer, Abbi Jacobson
Stars: Ilana Glazer, Abbi Jacobson, Hannibal Buress, Arturo Castro, John Gemberling
Being in your 20s is like going to war, and no show on television understands that better than Broad City. War is surely ugly, but the going is easier with a trusted, hilarious comrade by your side. Abbi and Illana, the two heroes and self-described “kweens” at the center of the New York City-set Broad City, aren’t just best friends. They’re that for certain, but they take the concept of finding one’s “person” (originally defined by another great TV friendship, that of Meredith and Cristina on Grey’s Anatomy) to a new level. Where Meredith and Cristina hugged each other and cried, Abbi and Illana tripped out on mushrooms and crashed parties. Forget responsibilities, finances and even actual partners—they are each other’s soulmates. Through five seasons of hilarity and shenanigans, joints and jazz singers, guest stars (Hi, Hilary Clinton!) and coat checks, Abbi and Illana (portrayed by their real life counterparts, Abbi Jacobson and Illana Glazer) gave us humor and heart in a post-Girls New York. Some (me) might even say they one-upped their HBO foremothers. —Ellen Johnson
Chappelle’s Show
Created by: Dave Chappelle, Neal Brennan
Stars: Dave Chappelle, Charlie Murphy, Donnell Rawlings, Anthony Murphy, Neal Brennan, Bill Burr
In the last decade, no comedian made racially tense, cringe-worthy moments funnier than Dave Chappelle. His show, dubbed simply Chappelle’s Show, originally aired on Comedy Central in 2003, and its three seasons spawned instantly quotable characters. With characters ranging from the blind white supremacist Clayton Bigsby, who didn’t know he was actually black, to Tyrone Biggums, the high-voiced crack addict that always reminds the audience “I smoke rocks,” Chappelle and long-time collaborator Charlie Murphy cemented their spots among the greats of sketch comedy. —Tyler Kane
Corporate
Created by: Pat Bishop, Matt Ingebretson, Jake Weisman
Stars: Matt Ingebretson, Jake Weisman, Anne Dudek, Adam Lustick, Aparna Nancherla, Lance Reddick
For everyone who’s had a soul-crushing job where they can almost feel the walls closing in on them. For those who’ve sat in the office parking garage on Monday mornings and wondered if this would be the week that their guilt over their company’s environmental and/or human safety conditions finally broke them enough to quit their mid-level executive gig. For all the HR people who nod as workers blubber about unfair conditions, but who secretly know their mission is to protect the business at all costs. For the two Yes Men who know only one of them is actually needed on the payroll. For these people and more, creators Pat Bishop, Matt Ingebretson and Jake Weisman’s Comedy Central series is for you (and not at all for your human steroid of a CEO). —Whitney Friedlander
Detroiters
Created by: Zach Kanin, Joe Kelly, Sam Richardson
Stars: Sam Richardson, Tim Robinson, Pat Ver Harris, Lailani Ledesma
The key to Detroiters is its sincerity, which shines through almost every episode without any kind of smugness or self-congratulations. Sam Richardson (Veep) and Tim Robinson (Saturday Night Live) genuinely love each other, and their families, and their advertising company, and most of all their city. (It’s Detroit. Detroit, Michigan. That’s where they’re from.) The tone gets dark at times, and Tim and Sam occasionally act petty or vindictive, but there’s almost none of the cynicism and mean-spiritedness so often found in comedy today. When they’re making illicit purchases in a back alley at night with Tim’s sanity-challenged father, they’re not buying drugs, but fireworks. When Sam unintentionally becomes a gigolo, it takes him a while to realize it, and he’s convinced he’s in love with his only client. When they accidentally run over prospective client Jason Sudeikis, it gnaws at them until they inevitably let Sudeikis run them over as penance. Without this sweetness, Detroiters would probably still be funny, but it wouldn’t be as charming or as powerful. Garrett Martin
