Television series

Alice

Name: Alice
Genre: Comedy
Released: 1976
Cast: Linda Lavin, Beth Howland, Vic Tayback, Philip McKeon, Alfred Lutter III

Other titles called Alice: the 1988 film.

Comedy
Light-hearted

A single mom and her son wash up in Phoenix, her car dies outside a diner, and she never quite leaves. Alice traded the grim realism of the Scorsese film it sprang from for a laugh track, but kept the bones: a woman working a job she didn't plan on, surrounded by loud, funny, exhausted coworkers. Comfort food TV — broad, cozy, built for reruns.

TVMaze rating

3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love sitcoms built on a warm, sharp-tongued workplace ensemble, where the diner counter and the regulars carry the jokes more than any gimmick does.

Skip it if you want a fast, joke-a-minute sitcom; this one settles into long stretches of conversation and character, and its laughs come from personality rather than setup-punchline rhythm.

What it asks of you: Nine seasons and over two hundred half-hour episodes mean you can dip in anywhere, but it rewards steady viewing, with the same faces returning week after week.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Cheers1982

The gold standard for the workplace-as-family sitcom — a bar full of regulars bantering their way through years of will-they-won't-they and barroom philosophy. If you like Mel's Diner as an ensemble, this is the platonic version of that idea.

But Slower burn than Alice, more relationship-driven than gag-driven, and it takes a season or two to find its rhythm.

Taxi1978

Same era, same blue-collar dead-end-job setup, but funnier and sadder — a garage full of people who all meant to be doing something else with their lives. Danny DeVito's dispatcher is Mel Sharples with better writers.

But Melancholy runs closer to the surface than in Alice; it's a comedy that's genuinely willing to break your heart.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show1970

The template for the single-woman-starting-over sitcom, newsroom instead of diner, but the same warmth and the same sense of a found family clocking in every day. Sharper and more quietly radical than it looks now.

But Gentler pace and more character-study than punchline-a-minute; it rewards patience Alice doesn't ask for.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Alice

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore1974

It's literally Alice's own origin story: same character, same premise, told straight instead of broad. Watching it after the show is like meeting the woman before she learned to get laughs.

This is the film the show was spun off from — Ellen Burstyn's Oscar-winning performance as the same widowed mother heading to Phoenix, except here the jokes are load-bearing walls holding up real grief and real fear about money and men.

But Martin Scorsese directing a character study, not a sitcom pilot — slow, sad, and far more interested in dread than in punchlines.

One Day at a Time2017

A newly single mother raising two kids on her own, Norman Lear's version of exactly Alice's premise, minus the diner. Funnier and franker about money and men than you'd expect.

But More issue-driven and less zany than Alice — this one wants to have a conversation, not just get a laugh.

Grace Under Fire1993

A single mom starting over after a rough marriage, working a job she didn't choose, surrounded by coworkers who become her real support system. Brenda Vaccaro-adjacent warmth with a harder edge underneath.

But Ninety-degree tonal turns — genuinely dark material about addiction and abuse pokes through the sitcom gloss.

Roseanne1988

If you liked Alice's blue-collar bluntness, this is the same world dialed up — a working mother who says the quiet part loud, with a family instead of a diner crew backing her up.

But Meaner and more confrontational than Alice ever gets; the comfort here comes with real teeth.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia2005

A bar instead of a diner, and every character is somehow worse than Mel, but the DNA is recognizable — a cramped workplace full of people who can't leave and won't stop bickering.

But Deliberately, aggressively tasteless; the warmth of Alice has been replaced entirely with cringe and cruelty.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia poster

Waitress2007

A diner waitress with a dream she keeps deferring, trapped in a job and a marriage, baking her feelings into pies. Alice's premise stripped of the laugh track and given a modern, bittersweet finish.

But It's a two-hour film, not an ongoing hangout — no returning ensemble, no long game, just one woman's turning point.

Vagabond1985

Same engine as Alice — a woman severed from her old life, forced onto the road — but run without a safety net. It's the version of Alice's premise where nobody's waiting with a booth and a punchline.

Agnès Varda's portrait of a homeless drifter moving through rural France with nothing — no diner job, no found family, no laugh track, just a woman refusing to be saved by anyone.

But Bleak, wordless stretches, subtitled, and deliberately offers none of the comfort or resolution a sitcom promises.

Alice in the Cities1974

Same name, same theme of displacement and improvised parenthood on the move, but reimagined as European art cinema instead of CBS comfort food — proof the premise can hold up in a totally different key.

Wim Wenders' quiet, black-and-white road movie about a man and a young girl drifting across America, all empty motels and highway boredom shot like poetry. A completely different Alice, wandering for entirely different reasons.

But Glacially paced arthouse cinema in German and English — nothing resembling a joke, and it asks for patience the sitcom never does.