Television series

Community

Name: Community
Genre: Comedy
Released: 2009
Cast: Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Alison Brie, Yvette Nicole Brown

Comedy
Light-hearted

Community is anarchic, meta, and secretly tender — a sitcom about seven mismatched students at the worst community college in America that keeps blowing up its own format with paintball Westerns, stop-motion specials, and video-game homages. It's for viewers who want their comfort sitcom clever, fast, and a little unhinged, with real heart hiding under the gags.

TVMaze rating

4.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love sitcoms that build whole episodes around genre parody, pop-culture riffs and character quirks, and you don't mind a show that keeps abandoning its own format for a stylistic detour.

Skip it if you want a sitcom with a steady, realistic premise, since this one swaps its footing constantly and some gags land with a thud.

What it asks of you: Half-hour episodes that reward close attention, since jokes stack across lines and callbacks, and the tone can jump from sincere to absurd within a single scene.

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

If you liked this

Parks and Recreation2009

Same decade, same optimistic streak, same ensemble-of-oddballs structure — but swap the community college for a small-town parks department. Leslie Knope carries the same stubborn, sincere hopefulness that made the study group lovable underneath all the jokes.

But It's gentler and more earnest from the start — less genre-hopping chaos, less meta wink at the camera, more straightforward workplace sweetness.

Arrested Development2003

Denser than almost anything else on TV, packed with callbacks, running gags, and narration that rewards obsessive rewatching — a dysfunctional-family sitcom built with the same structural cleverness Community brought to its genre parodies.

But Later seasons are famously uneven, and the joke density can feel more like homework than comfort on a first watch.

30 Rock2006

Tina Fey's workplace comedy fires jokes at an absurd rate and never once takes itself seriously, matching Community's love of meta gags and characters who seem to know they're in a sitcom.

But It's colder and more cynical, with less interest in sincerity — the show mocks feelings more than it earns them.

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

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Police Squad!1982

Community's bottle episodes — paintball Westerns, heist capers, Ken Burns documentaries — descend directly from this show's method: commit to the genre's rules with total sincerity and let the absurdity do the work.

Long before Community built whole episodes around action-movie or heist-film parody, this short-lived cop-show spoof played every absurd gag completely straight-faced — six nearly perfect episodes of genre parody with real nerve.

But It's a relic of early-80s sketch-style comedy — deadpan, dated-looking, and gone almost as soon as it started.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine2013

A precinct instead of a campus, but the same found-family warmth, the same mix of dumb bits and real affection, and an ensemble that clearly enjoys being in a room together.

But It plays it straighter — no bottle episodes, no genre pastiche, just a very well-made traditional sitcom.

The Good Place2016

High-concept, twist-driven, and unexpectedly philosophical, this is what happens when sitcom silliness gets pointed at big questions about ethics and identity — Community's ambition taken even further out.

But The serialized plotting means you can't dip in and out episode to episode the way you can with Community.

Rick and Morty2013

Dan Harmon's other show, minus the classroom, plus a spaceship — same appetite for genre-hopping structure and formal tricks, but curdled into something much darker and more nihilistic.

But It's meaner and bleaker, with none of the study group's underlying tenderness — this one bites and doesn't apologize.

Scrubs2001

An earlier show doing Community's trick of smashing fantasy sequences and genre parody into an ensemble comedy, then landing a gut-punch of real feeling right before the credits roll.

But The hospital setting means genuine tragedy creeps in more often, and the tonal whiplash isn't for everyone.

New Girl2011

A loft full of oddballs instead of a study room, with the same delight in giving every character one weird specific thing and letting the ensemble chemistry do the rest.

But It leans harder into will-they-won't-they romance and less into structural experiments or genre parody.

The Office2005

The comfort-watch gold standard: a mockumentary ensemble that turns a mundane institution into something you want to live inside — the same trick Community pulled with a much weirder school.

But No meta jokes, no genre episodes — it's a straighter, calmer show than anything Community usually gives you.

Rescue Me2004

Community quietly ran addiction and loss through Pierce and Chang's arcs; Rescue Me takes that same found-family-processing-real-damage idea and plays it at full dramatic volume instead of as a subplot.

A firehouse crew instead of a study group, but the same found-family bickering — except here grief, addiction, and 9/11 trauma sit right alongside the jokes, with almost no comfort cushion.

But It's an FX drama first, comedy second — raw, R-rated, and far less interested in a happy ending.

The Class2008

Strip every gag and genre parody out of Community and you're left with its actual premise — mismatched people forced together by a struggling institution — which this film plays completely straight.

A French drama shot like a documentary, following one teacher and one classroom of wildly different students through a school year — verité, unresolved, and quietly devastating in its honesty about education.

But No jokes, no pastiche episodes, subtitled, and it ends without the tidy resolution a sitcom finale gives you.