Television series

Will & Grace

Name: Will & Grace
Genre: Comedy
Released: 1998
Cast: Eric McCormack, Sean Hayes, Megan Mullally, Debra Messing, Shelley Morrison

Four impossible people, one apartment building, and a laugh track that never once takes a breath. Will & Grace is farce dressed as sitcom — a gay lawyer, his best friend, and the two lunatics who crash every scene, all firing one-liners at a speed most shows reserve for their finale. It's for anyone who wants comfort food with a poison dart in it, and who remembers when this was the boldest thing on NBC.

TVMaze rating

7.3

If you liked this

Frasier1993

If you love the joke-per-minute rate of Will & Grace, Frasier is the same laugh-machine engineering pointed at a different set of neuroses — verbal, high-society, gloriously silly.

But No queer characters at its centre, and it takes longer to reveal how warm it actually is underneath the wit.

Sex and the City1998

Same era, same fabulous Manhattan energy, same appetite for a gay best friend and outrageous guest stars — just traded the laugh track for cocktails and cable-TV nerve.

But Its politics around gender and sexuality have aged rockier than Will & Grace's, and the humour runs drier.

Friends1994

NBC's other Thursday-night comfort blanket from the same decade — six friends, one couch, an avalanche of quotable lines, and a comparable grip on the culture.

But Straighter, whiter, and far less interested in anything resembling a challenging idea.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Celluloid Closet1996

Will & Grace didn't appear from nowhere — this film shows the decades of cowardice and code it was pushing against, and makes the sitcom feel like a punchline that took seventy years to land.

A documentary tracing a century of how Hollywood hid, mocked, and slowly began to humanise gay characters — the exact history Will & Grace was quietly rewriting the ending of, one Thursday at a time.

But It's a talking-heads clip show, not a comedy, and some of the older footage is genuinely painful to watch.

The Golden Girls1985

Karen Walker's spiritual grandmother is Blanche Devereaux — filthy one-liners, four women refusing to behave themselves, and a studio audience that's earned every cackle.

But Slower and more sentimental, with sitcom rhythms that feel distinctly of their decade.

Schitt's Creek2015

Takes the fabulous-misfit-finds-family idea Will & Grace popularised and gives it real stakes, with a pansexual lead couple played for tenderness rather than punchlines.

But Much gentler and slower to build — the first season asks for patience before it clicks.

30 Rock2006

Tina Fey's absurdist workplace farce shares the density of jokes and the total lack of shame about chasing the dumbest possible gag.

But More surreal and reference-heavy, with less character warmth and more pure joke velocity.

Seinfeld1989

The other must-see-TV sitcom of the era, proof that four self-absorbed New Yorkers doing very little can still become immortal television.

But Colder and more cynical — nobody here loves anybody the way Will and Grace clearly do.

Cheers1982

The blueprint for the will-they-won't-they-plus-a-chorus-of-oddballs structure Will & Grace runs on, decades earlier and every bit as sharp.

But Set almost entirely in one bar, and its gender politics are firmly of their moment.

Modern Family2009

Picks up the gay-couple-as-sitcom-fixture torch a decade on, mockumentary style, with Cam and Mitchell doing the visibility work Will and Jack started.

But The talking-heads format is a different rhythm entirely, and the family sentimentality can tip into schmaltz.

La Cage aux Folles1978

It's Jack and Karen's ancestor: broad, proud, unapologetically camp comedy built around a gay couple decades before American sitcoms dared try it.

A French farce about a gay nightclub owner, his flamboyant partner, and a fiancée's horrified parents — the same door-slamming, wig-adjusting chaos energy as Jack and Karen, forty years earlier and in subtitles.

But Older pacing, dated gender jokes by today's standards, and you'll be reading dialogue instead of just laughing at it.

The Boys in the Band1970no page yet

Same friend-group DNA and same questions about closets, self-image, and performing for straight approval — but drained of every laugh, so you see the ache underneath the sitcom's jokes.

A birthday party among a group of gay men in 1968 New York curdles into confession and cruelty — sharp, sad, and far more serious than anything Will & Grace ever let itself be.

But Bleak, claustrophobic, and emotionally rough — this is closeted self-loathing played completely straight, no punchline to soften it.