60 best sitcoms of all time

47. It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia

If you like Family Guy but prefer your comedy of the live action variety, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia is the show for you. All of its characters are terrible to each other, almost as bad to everyone else they meet, and most of the things they do are things that you’d never dream. Yet the show has gone on for 12 seasons and become the cornerstone of FX’s (now FXX’s) comedy block.

That’s because it’s somehow entirely addicting even as it makes audiences cringe. It just won the 2016 People’s Choice Award for Favorite Cable TV Comedy. Entertainment Weekly ranked it as one of the Top 10 best cult TV shows, even after the magazine’s critic had negatively reviewed the first season four years earlier. With all the insanity and depravity that happens, this seems like the show everyone should hate, and yet its cast and crew have turned all of that into something that people don’t just love but really love.

Besides, even if it’s not your cup of tea, it’s incredibly creative while it’s being inappropriate. Name another show on the air that has three of its main stars in the writers’ room. And in the recently concluded eleventh season, the series gave us an entire episode in the first person point of view of Frank (Danny DeVito). You may not like what It’s Always Sunny has to say, but you have to applaud the inventive ways it’s mastered of saying it.

Next: 46. Black Books