60 best sitcoms of all time

43. Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist

Its squiggling animation style might have made you motion sick, but Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist was one of Comedy Central’s early victories and remains a series far funnier than it was ever given credit. It proved that one could mix comedy and therapy and make it funny before that idea became cool, and having stand-up comics bring their material to Dr. Katz’s couch gave the audience a chance to hear their work at the same time that it gave the show plenty of stuff to mine for its own humor.

The best part of Dr. Katz was the retroscripted interaction between the title character and his complete slacker of a son, Ben, who was voiced by a then-relatively unknown H. Jon Benjamin. Benjamin is now known as one of the funniest voice actors in comedy, and he truly came into his own playing Ben, who wouldn’t know ambition if it hit him over the head. He and Jonathan Katz worked with loose outlines of what their scenes were supposed to be about, but their actual dialogue was improvised, making it even more impressive.

This series was on Comedy Central when the network was focused on stand-up comedy, and as such, there was a lot of stand-up talent on this show. Patients included Ray Romano, Larry Miller, Jim Gaffigan, Louis C.K., Garry Shandling, Janeane Garofalo, Jon Stewart and Conan O’Brien. You could watch any episode and you’d get at least a half-dozen good laughs out of it. It was the best therapy you didn’t have to pay through the nose for.

Next: 42. Coupling