30 Rock, The Comeback & 6 Other Must-See Sitcoms Created By Women
Far from a recent phenomenon, female led sitcoms have been a staple of American television since Lucille Ball and her then-husband, Desi Arnaz, brought I Love Lucy into the world 75 years ago.
Compared to the history of female directors in Hollywood — who enjoyed an early flourish during the noir years before more or less being cast aside by the studios until only recently — the female-created sitcom has continued to grow and prosper over the decades, resulting in some of the most beloved shows of their eras.
One of the more recent and perhaps most underrated is Lisa Kudrow’s The Comeback — the former Friends star’s inventive and hilarious meta-sitcom about a TV veteran attempting to navigate life after her long-running series ends — that has just reached the end of its hotly-anticipated third season, a full 21 years after the first batch of episodes aired, and 12 years since the second.
To celebrate this long overdue return, I’ve rounded up a selection of some of the greatest sitcoms created by women in the last 25 years. Read on to learn a bit more about each of them and use the guide to find out where to stream them on services like AppleTV, Netflix, Prime Video and elsewhere.
If there is a queen of the 21st century sitcom, it is — with respect to her friend Amy Poehler — Tina Fey. Along with giving us Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and so much more, Fey’s greatest gift to television will always be 30 Rock, a show that condensed her experiences as a writer and cast member on SNL into 139 episodes of non-stop laughs.
Aside from a 2020 special, the show ran seven seasons from 2006-2013, and while some of the material feels a little era-specific, 99% of the humour has aged like fine wine. Whether you need something for a quick, lunchtime watch or you are looking to spend a full day on the couch, sitcoms simply don’t come much better than this one.
If the UK has an answer to Tina Fey, it has to be Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The generationally talented writer and comedian has so far (among other things) given the world Killing Eve, starred in an Indiana Jones movie, chipped in on the script for a James Bond film, and entered the Star Wars universe, and still none of those achievements compare to what she did with Fleabag.
This brutally honest, and brutally funny, fourth-wall breaking show about life as a single millennial living in London at the tail end of the 2010s has every right to be considered one of the most influential shows of the last decade. There are 12 half-hour episodes and each one is a gem.
Taking things back to the States, Broad City is a show about two best friends which was created by two real-life best friends: comedians Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson — who started the show as a webseries before taking it to Comedy Central, where it ran for five seasons.
As that journey might suggest, the show has the scrappy, DIY charm of early YouTube comedy shows, so if you’re in any way nostalgic for that time you should feel right at home with this one. In terms of vibe, Glazer and Jacobson definitely come from the same generation as Waller-Bridge but their show has the added comedic cringe factor of late hipster-era Brooklyn. IYKYK.
Having starred as Kelly Kapoor on The US Office, Mindy Kaling was a sitcom legend long before she got to write and direct her own shows. The fact that she’s been able to outgrow Kapoor to become one of the most celebrated sitcom writers of her generation speaks volumes to the quality of the many series she’s created so far.
Of Kaling’s more recent work, Never Have I Ever is more than worth checking out — but I recommend going back to her first show as sole creator, The Mindy Project. This six-season workplace classic stars Kaling as an OB/GYN and Chriss Messina as her “will they/won’t they” best friend. It’s the kind of comfort show you can watch at any time and in any mood.
Set during the last years of “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland (or the North of Ireland, if you so please), Derry Girls is the kind of sitcom that approaches delicate issues with an energising blend of good faith and bad taste — for an even more recent example of this, check out the movie Kneecap from 2024.
The show manages to pull this off (somehow, it is basically universally adored) thanks to series creator Lisa McGee’s hilarious writing and the charisma of its cast — which includes Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan and House of Guinness actor Anthony Boyle.
Michaela Coel is naturally best known for her landmark BBC miniseries I May Destroy You and for her remarkable turns in movies like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and the recent Ian McKellen flick The Christophers — but before all that, Coel made her name as the writer, creator and star of Chewing Gum, a two-season sitcom about a sexually inexperienced shop assistant attempting to navigate life in a council estate in East London.
Coel developed the script from a play she wrote in her early twenties and she brings all of that humour and vulnerability to a role that would later earn her a deserved Bafta for Best Female Comedy Performance. If you’re interested to see the debut project of one of the most exciting screenwriting talents of her generation, make sure to seek it out.
Last but not least, we come to one of the most influential shows of the century — pretty much hands down. Lena Dunham’s Girls might have felt like a send-up of Sex and the City at the time of its release, but it basically did for 2010s Brooklyn what that show had done for Manhattan a decade earlier — and knowingly so.
Girls takes place in what were perhaps the more innocent years of the life in America that Broad City would start to satirize just a couple of years later — which is to say, it now offers a fascinating time capsule of a very particular, very indie sleaze, and very Millennial era. That might sound cringe, but Dunham’s writing (if you’re a fan, her new memoir is incredible) is so honest and funny that it’s difficult not to find her character, Hannah Horvath, at least somewhat endearing and relatable.
