60 best sitcoms of all time

48. The Drew Carey Show

The Drew Carey Show was a good-hearted, working class sitcom and didn’t ever aspire to be anything else. Its four original main cast members — Carey, Christa Miller, Ryan Stiles and Diedrich Bader – -were supposed to be playing longtime friends, and they actually felt like longtime friends. We can thank this show for introducing us to Kathy Kinney and Craig Ferguson, scene stealers here way before Ferguson became a now ex-late night talk show sensation.

What makes it one of the greatest sitcoms of all time? Its unabashed sense of fun both in front of and behind the camera. The Drew Carey Show always had that feeling like ABC had just paid Carey and his friends to have a good time and this was what they came up with. It could be incredibly imaginative, like when it started doing live shows and recruiting cast members from the US version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? (which Carey hosted) to pop up in various roles. It was bold enough to make Drew’s brother a cross-dresser at a time when that was still a bit of a taboo.

But things went downhill big time in the final two seasons, when Miller, Ferguson and John Carroll Lynch all left the cast. With Miller’s departure, the show shoehorned in a quick romance with her replacement, played by Cynthia Watros. It also went crazy on the reality TV cameos and committed the last gasp of many a sitcom: totally changing its premise. But hey, at least we’ll always have this show to thank for giving us “Cleveland Rocks.”

Next: 47. It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia