More and more TV shows are blurring the divide between comedy and drama, resulting in many complex series that are both. The winners of the 2024 Emmys and Golden Globes reflect a growing taste for shows that are not so easily defined, showcasing elements of more than one genre. With shows like Succession and The Bear amounting to massive success, more showrunners are likely to take an interest in producing comedy dramas.

Shows like this present the challenge of how to balance the comedy and the drama, so the comedy is not in bad taste and the drama is not undermined. Yet in some cases, the jokes being in bad taste might be the point of the show. Many comedy dramas by nature overlap with satire, as it is easy to make fun of characters who represent corruption and injustice in the real world. On the other hand, the comedy may be carefully planned to break up a stressful show and make it more palatable for audiences, likely extending its run.

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The Bear (2022-Present)

The Bear’s stressful atmosphere features a subtle comedy.

After The Bear, Beef, and Succession collectively won almost every category at the 2024 Emmys, some people complained about the ceremony’s repetitiveness, and The Bear’s dominance in the comedy category (via IndieWire). The Bear depicts the highly stressful environment of the culinary industry, focusing on a young chef who has recently returned home to take over his family’s business. Almost every episode introduces a new stress-inducing restaurant catastrophe that the cooks have to deal with.

However, the sheer number of ways things can go wrong for the characters can come across as comedic, especially when the audience has to laugh because becoming too invested is a minefield. Additionally, many of The Bear’s main characters have such outrageous personalities that their reactions to professional and personal problems lean into comedy. The Bear will include jokes mixed in with drama because that’s what life is like, while the show’s overall tone is too wild to be considered a straightforward drama.

9

Grey’s Anatomy (2005-Present)

Grey’s Anatomy’s doctors are wickedly funny about their dramatic lives.

Grey’s Anatomy is notorious for its soap-opera-inspired storylines and its painful character exits; the saddest Grey’s Anatomy deaths are solid evidence that the show is a drama. Core storylines are based on real, serious things like relationships, professional struggles, diagnoses that necessitate long-term care, and the rare all-out life-threatening disaster. However, throughout Grey’s Anatomy, there is a calculated comedic tone in how the doctors approach these events with as much confidence as possible.

The original, full theme song for the show has an elevator-tune quality that suggests an almost bored attitude about all the drama. Meredith and Cristina’s shared dark sense of humor means that they are always saying hilariously cynical things about their boyfriends and co-workers. Other Grey Sloan Memorial doctors crack jokes characteristic of their personalities or end up in the craziest situations at the hospital. The only possible response is to laugh out loud, protected from the consequences by the lens of fiction as the audience is.

8

Veep (2012-2019)

Veep is a political drama led by the queen of comedy.

Veep arguably falls into the category that has recently been on the rise of “black comedy.” The entire story revolves around a pessimistic approach where the writers use comedy to approach distressing events, which in most recent TV are representative of something happening in the world right now. It often overlaps with satire, written with the intent of bringing attention to current events and showcasing what the public needs to be cautiously aware of to prevent the problem from getting worse.

Veep is mostly advertised as a comedy and nothing else. Of course, Veep cemented its future as a groundbreaking comedy when it scored the lead actress of Julia Louis-Dreyfus. The Seinfeld alumna can make objectively rude but shamefully hilarious jokes like no one else and went on a winning Emmy streak for her performance as ambitious Vice President Selina Meyer. However, Veep’s ending darkly showcases its dramatic aspects that derail it from being a straightforward sitcom.

7

Our Flag Means Death (2022-2023)

Our Flag Means Death starts out as a comedy and brings in more drama later.

Our Flag Means Death starts out as a non-negotiable comedy but progressively adds more dramatic elements while maintaining the wacky tone all the way through. The first few episodes introduce aspiring pirate captain Stede Bonnet and his rag-tag crew, who end up in too many ludicrous situations due to Stede’s poor leadership. Even when they are about to die, the viewer can infer based on the tone and the fact that there are several more episodes left that none of it should be taken too seriously.

However, somewhere along the way, Our Flag Means Death begins to demand a more solemn audience investment. The completely serious storyline of Stede and Ed’s romance is at the heart of the show, while other characters’ personal woes have an emotional effect. Ed’s rampage and terrorizing his crew at the beginning of season 2 is too dark to be negated by the show’s comedy, while the major character death in the series final is also heartbreaking. What starts out as wacky pirate fun gradually becomes an impactful drama.

6

The White Lotus (2021-2025)

The White Lotus is an “Eat the Rich” satire comedy-drama.

In the same vein as the Knives Out movies, The White Lotus introduces an ensemble cast of rich hotel guests each season who are all comically awful. The viewer is prompted to uncomfortably laugh with them or at them, depending on the comment, while taking in the implicit themes of privilege and corruption. As the season goes on, the cast realizes that the paradise they have come to is not what it seems as their “problems” come to light, and they clash with the hotel’s employees.

The White Lotus is one of the shows that is specifically advertised as a comedy-drama. It is satirical in intent, which is often a byproduct of this combination. The whole thing is elevated by the talents of the main cast, such as headliner Jennifer Coolidge, who is best known for her comedic roles and leads each new season.

5

Succession (2018-2023)

Succession is the drama TV show of the decade but is strangely funny.

Succession is another black comedy satire intended to critique the upper class and highlight the corrupt influence of the media in American politics. These elements are the basis for possibly the most acclaimed and awarded TV show of the past five years. Succession is a TV show where all the characters are terrible people, which allows for a viewing experience with a certain amount of detachment. The point isn’t to care about the Roy family but to think about what they represent.

While their personal and professional problems are dramatic and represent high stakes not just for them but for the entire country, most of Succession’s main characters are still morbidly comedic. The Roys pull no punches when it comes to insulting each other. Sometimes, the situations they put themselves in are so overblown it is just funny to watch them suffer.

4

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017-2023)

Mrs. Maisel is always funny, even when facing family and professional drama.

Like Veep and Our Flag Means Death, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel comes at the drama from the comedy angle. The Maisel-Weissman family are all colorful sitcom-reminiscent characters who argue over foolish things, while Midge talks like a comedian even when she is not onstage. In a metatextual way, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel works hard to remain comedic to tell a story about an aspiring comedian. However, some truly dramatic moments punctuate that comedy.

The dialogue surrounding Joel leaving Midge is too funny for it to be as devastating in the real world as it is for her. On the other hand, Midge’s confrontations with her family, Rose’s assertion that her life is also subject to a man’s whims, and the setbacks in Midge’s rise to stardom convey serious themes. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a comedy, but also a compelling story about a Midge struggling to make it as a female comedian, the dark side of fame, and a family trying to remain whole while pursuing their individual goals.

3

Beef (2023-Present)

In Beef, a feud spins out of control with insane results.

Beef completes the trifecta of shows that dominated the 2024 award season, all of which can be considered comedy dramas. Like in similarly written series, Beef depicts main characters whose outbursts of anger are so ridiculous that they are weirdly comedic. A road rage incident leads to an ongoing feud between two people with no previous connection to each other, while they are each dealing with personal strife.

With each new episode, the stakes of Steven Yeun’s Danny and Ali Wong’s Amy’s feud only get higher and the suspense gets more intense. The story showcases and ridicules how these two people, frustrated with their own lives, are prone to take out their anger on strangers. However, the dramatic counterpart comes in with an effective moment of Danny and Ali realizing their similarities. Each character’s inner turmoil drives both the comedy and the drama of the show.

2

Orange Is The New Black (2013-2019)

Orange Is the New Black depicts Piper’s time in prison with a cast of hilarious inmates.

Orange Is the New Black, based on Piper Kerman’s memoir, is stacked with unique characters who throw around plenty of great one-liners. While living a difficult reality, most of the main characters make light of the situation with ironically optimistic or harshly pessimistic jokes. These moments break up the dark story and change the tone of the show, making it more than a straightforward prison drama.

However, Orange Is the New Black is still mostly praised for being a drama that criticizes the prison system, shedding light on the lives of incarcerated women. The humor perhaps makes the show more enjoyable when what Kerman hoped to accomplish with her memoir was likely not humor but emphasizing the problems with the system. Orange Is the New Black found a perfect balance between the two elements, resulting in it running for seven seasons, and allowing it to have a bigger impact.

1

Better Call Saul (2015-2022)

Jimmy McGill makes the Breaking Bad spinoff a true comedy.

Breaking Bad may be considered a TV show that is secretly a comedy, but Better Call Saul further embraces it. This is largely due to the personality of the main character; Jimmy McGill a.k.a. Saul Goodman was always a comic relief character for Breaking Bad, contrasting with Walt and Jesse with his overly cheery attitude about crime. A show with Jimmy at the center of the story was bound to be more comedic by virtue of his constant jokes.

Better Call Saul generally has a lighter tone through the “fake it until to make it” story. However, it is still a drama of Jimmy’s personal and professional woes as he is drawn further into the drug trade. To an extent, Better Call Saul strikes a balance between comedy and drama by showing the Breaking Bad world from Jimmy’s perspective rather than Walt’s. Like its predecessor, it is a massively popular and acclaimed series that shows the potential of mixing the two genres.

Source: IndieWire