The TV shows that made office life worth watching

A cab company's misfit night-shift drivers, anchored by some of the best sitcom writing of its era — the workplace comedy ensemble's template.

A Boston bar where everybody knows your name — the will-they-won't-they blueprint every workplace comedy since has quietly copied.

A late-night host's ego and insecurity, skewered from behind the curtain — meaner and sharper than talk shows ever let on.

A chaotic New York radio station run by a lovable, insufferable staff — underrated, endlessly quotable, stacked with comedic talent.

A hospital comedy that swings from surreal daydream sequences to genuinely moving medical drama without ever losing its footing.

Ricky Gervais's cringe-comedy blueprint, set in a dead-end paper company office — shorter, bleaker, arguably funnier than its remake.

A documentary crew captures the mundane absurdity of a Scranton paper company — turns workplace tedium into one of the warmest sitcoms ever made.

A sketch show's chaotic writers' room, powered by jokes fired at a speed no other sitcom has matched — Tina Fey at her sharpest.

Two basement-dwelling IT guys and their hopelessly technophobic manager — broad, silly, and reliably hilarious.

A catering crew of failed actors serves LA's elite between auditions — bitter, hilarious, painfully accurate about a dream that isn't coming.

A relentlessly optimistic local government employee tries to get anything done in small-town bureaucracy — one of the warmest ensembles ever.

The Vice President and her staff flail through Washington incompetence — the filthiest, funniest political satire television has produced.

A precinct of goofball detectives solves crimes between running elaborate pranks on each other — pure, big-hearted sitcom joy.

A startup founder's app gets fought over by billionaires and idiots alike — brutally accurate satire of tech culture's worst instincts.

BBC bureaucracy mocked from the inside by the very institution it's skewering — a masterclass in corporate meeting-speak nonsense.

A big-box retail store's staff navigate low pay and higher-ups who don't care — funnier and angrier about labor than a sitcom should be.

A support group for alien abductees gets investigated by a skeptical journalist — a workplace comedy in disguise, stranger than most.

Two junior employees try to survive a soul-crushing conglomerate — bleak millennial office comedy with real bite underneath the jokes.

A video game studio's dysfunctional creative team fights over a game nobody can agree on — funny about the misery of making things by committee.

An aging Vegas comedian gets paired with a disgraced young writer — a mentor-mentee comedy with genuine teeth and two career-best performances.