TV shows with smart, funny dialogue often lend themselves to multiple rewatches more than most other shows. Witty dialogue can make a show immediately stand out from the crowd, especially if the actors are just as clever as the writers. Dialogue can be its own art form in these cases, with characters trading insults, competing for the upper hand or trying to outsmart one another.
Comedy usually benefits from a brisk pace, and snappy dialogue can keep things moving along smoothly while still packing in plenty of jokes. It’s important to have a cast with great chemistry, otherwise the dialogue won’t flow so easily, and it could come across awkwardly. This style of comedy also requires very intelligent writers, because if there are too many duds that land in among the fast-paced jokes, the entire show can fall flat.
Arrested Development mines a lot of humor out of its complex interwoven plots, with the different members of the Bluth family all getting caught up in the tangle of each other’s lives. Running gags and callbacks pile up on top of one another beautifully, and this usually leads to an incredible payoff at the end of each episode. Arrested Development‘s Netflix seasons are underwhelming given the show’s high standards, but the first three seasons are still just as enjoyable as ever.
The outstanding ensemble cast is one of the biggest reasons why Arrested Development can get more and more layered without ever getting too confusing. The show uses distinct and recognizable characterizations, often reducing characters to a handful of tropes for comedic effect. Arrested Development is packed full of brilliant comedic performers. Even recurring characters usually have great actors, like Henry Winkler, Ben Stiller and Judy Greer.
Armando Iannucci had already established his fast-paced style of political satire in Britain with The Thick of It before setting his sights on Washington. Veep carries on his good work, transitioning seamlessly to an entirely new political system and showing that legislators are just as greedy and self-interested on both sides of the Atlantic. Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars as the ruthlessly ambitious politician Selina Meyer, and she is surrounded by an outstanding cast.
Veep‘s best seasons tend to come when Selina and her team embark upon an election campaign. Elections create a highly charged atmosphere, and this means that Veep‘s chaotic, quick-witted style can get even wilder. Veep combines erudite wit and acute political satire with some of the most outrageous insults on TV. Characters like Dan Egan and Roger Furlong make an art form out of making people feel small.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is about a woman whose blissful domestic life is torn to pieces when her husband cheats on her, so she decides to start taking care of herself instead and becomes a comedian. For a show about comedians, and with a few characters inspired by real life comedy legends, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel had to be funny. Fortunately, Rachel Brosnahan and the rest of the cast deliver the goods.
Set primarily in the 1950s in New York City, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel imitates the hectic pace of the city and the rhythms of jazz music. Midge and her fellow comedians get to trade plenty of zingers, but some of the show’s wittiest characters are other people in her life, such as her father Abe and her manager Susie. When the show slows things down, it can create deeply emotional moments, just like the finale of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which brought five seasons to a close in style.
Gilmore Girls is about the intense bond between Lorelai and Rory, a mother-daughter duo living in the picturesque fictional town of Stars Hollow. Their relationship is the heart and soul of the show, but there are plenty of great supporting characters who also get their fair share of gags, like Lane Kim and Sookie St. James. Gilmore Girls is famous for its witty dialogue, and this is one of the main factors that makes the show so easy to rewatch multiple times.
The show has a few overarching story lines, but each episode tells a self-contained story that allows the Gilmores to interact with the quirky townsfolk in Stars Hollow. Lorelai is a particularly quick-witted character, although she has no shortage of competition in Gilmore Girls. A lot of the show’s best moments come when she is forced to spend time with her mother, and they constantly trade barbs with one another to try and gain the upper hand.
Not Going Out is an underrated British sitcom about a layabout named Lee who finds himself living in an apartment with a woman he quickly falls for. Lee Mack is a comedian well-known for his quick wits and his mastery of wordplay, and both of these translate perfectly to his sitcom. Not Going Out is one of Britain’s longest-running sitcoms, but the show’s peak happened when Lee could match wits with Tim Vine, another great comedian who can think on his feet.
Not Going Out seems fairly American in some sense, with a four-camera format and a laugh track that many British sitcoms wouldn’t use, but the humor is laced with wry British sarcasm. Lee Mack and Tim Vine are both among the best in the business in terms of laughs-per-minute, whether they are on stage or opposite each other on Not Going Out. Katy Wix is also outstanding as Tim’s airheaded girlfriend.
Archer may be a James Bond-style spy parody packed with action and adventure, but a lot of the show’s funniest moments come from creative wordplay. It’s a workplace sitcom, with the main caveat being that the workplace is intentionally hard to relate to. However, a lot of the petty squabbling and name-calling is funny without bearing any relevance to the espionage and intrigue.
Many of Archer‘s best episodes are as popular for their wordplay and witty banter as they are for their exciting plots. For example, season 1’s “Skytanic” sees Archer and his associates trying to foil a bomb plot on a zeppelin, but the twisty narrative isn’t as memorable as the way the episode cuts between two separate story lines that lean against each other, with Cyril agonizing over his future with Lana.
Ginny & Georgia is more of a drama series than the other shows on this list, but its comedic moments can be just as erudite and playful. The Netflix show stars Antonia Gentry as Ginny, a 15-year-old girl who endures a tumultuous relationship with her mother Georgia, played by Brianne Howey. Due to her unorthodox upbringing, Ginny sometimes has to act as the more mature one of the duo, especially since her 30-year-old mother is looking to make up for her lost youth.
Seasons 1 and 2 have helped the show become a huge hit for Netflix, and Ginny & Georgia season 3 is on the horizon, although it probably won’t arrive until early 2025. It could have been successful as a pure drama, with a twisty plot that keeps viewers hooked, but the enjoyable dialogue is one of the show’s biggest positives. The light and playful nature of the comedic exchanges also lends a sense of authenticity to Ginny and Georgia’s mother-daughter relationship.
Based on the movie directed by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, What We Do in the Shadows is a supernatural mockumentary following a group of vampires trying to live together in Staten Island, despite the differences in their backgrounds, personalities, and attitudes toward world domination. Although there are plenty of parodies of the horror genre and paranormal hijinks, the show’s bread and butter is intelligent, rapid-fire dialogue.
What We Do in the Shadows takes the conventions of an apartment-share sitcom to new extremes. The vampires are far more eccentric than the typical archetypes of other domestic sitcoms. One is a bloodthirsty warlord from a long forgotten empire. Another is a British cad with a theatrical personality and a cursed hat. What We Do in the Shadows season 6, coming later in 2024, will be the show’s last.
Black Books follows a misanthropic bookshop owner in London whose world is turned upside-down when his only friend convinces him to employ a laid-back and optimistic assistant. Bernard is content to read, drink wine and smoke his days away, but Manny and Fran try to coax him into having some fun every once in a while, despite his best wishes. Black Books is a delightful slice of British cynicism.
Dylan Moran, Bill Bailey and Tamsin Greig have a natural flow to their witty exchanges, and it helps that they are given scripts which so often play to their strengths as performers. The dysfunctional friendship between the trio allows Black Books to deliver a lot of entertaining put-downs, but the show is usually at its chaotic best when they team up on some zany scheme that gets them all equally flustered.