Did woke culture really kill the sitcom?
Spare a thought for the humble sitcom, a much-loved format that everyone seems determined to kill off. Despite decades of providing comfort in the form of canned laughter, the sitcom has suffered the indignity of witnessing its own demise time and time again.
In 1983, Warren Littlefield, the former NBC president of entertainment, declared that “the half-hour comedy was dead”. Months later, The Cosby Show – a show Littlefield green-lit – premiered and, lo and behold, the sitcom was alive once more.
Jerry Seinfeld claims that the “extreme left” is to blame for the death of comedy on TV - but is he right?
Sadly, its return was shortlived because in 1999, hot off the back of Seinfeld’s departure from screens, it was Entertainment Tonight’s turn to be the bearer of bad news. “The sitcom is dead,” said ET, citing Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond as the only true iterations of the genre left.
The next death came in 2005; British comedian Victoria Wood blamed the rise of “ironic, self-aware comedies” like The Office for killing the format.
Pop culture website Decider killed off sitcoms again in 2018 (“Are network comedies dead?”) before The New Yorker gave them a lifeline in 2022, claiming that Emmy-winning comedy Abbott Elementary was “reviving the sitcom”.
This time round, it’s Jerry Seinfeld’s turn.
Earlier this week, in an interview with The New Yorker, he pointed to a rise of “extreme left and PC crap” and “people worrying so much about offending other people” as the reason sitcoms couldn’t find a home in the modern TV landscape.
An elder statesman comedian blaming woke culture for the demise of comedy is nothing new, but does he have a point? Let’s unpack the claims.
“There were no sitcoms picked up on the fall season of all four networks. Not one. No new sitcoms.”
This may be true, but discussing TV in terms of what lives and dies on free-to-air networks only serves to vindicate those who see Seinfeld as out of touch.
In Seinfeld’s heyday, if you didn’t exist on Fox, CBS, ABC or NBC, you didn’t exist at all. But the rise of streaming has changed the game, and instead of a handful of dominant free-to-air networks, audiences can access many streaming services.
Both here and in America, free-to-air networks increasingly opt for cheap-to-make reality TV, while original comedy and drama are commissioned by streamers.
The teachers of Abbott Elementary are (from left) Gregory (Tyler James William), Jacob (Chris Perfetti), Janine (Quinta Brunson), Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph) and Melissa (Lisa Ann Walter).
It’s also worth noting that while there were no new sitcoms in America’s autumn schedule, Abbott Elementary and Ghosts, two popular mainstream hits, are both in their third seasons, while Young Sheldon remains one of the most watched shows on network TV in its final season.
“We did an episode of Seinfeld where Kramer decides to start a business of having homeless people pull rickshaws. Do you think I could get that episode on the air today?”
Anyone who watched Seinfeld knows it was far from the riskiest comedy on TV, and commentators were quick to point out that much edgier sitcoms have thrived in its absence.
A viral post on X cited Curb Your Enthusiasm, Veep, South Park and Family Guy as examples of long-running series that eschew political correctness in favour of pushing boundaries.
Meanwhile, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia creator Rob McElhenney addressed Seinfeld’s very specific claim that homeless jokes wouldn’t fly by tweeting a photo of the character Matthew “Rickety Cricket” Mara, a homeless drug addict.
Admittedly, Seinfeld does make the point that for someone like Larry David, the rules are different.
“He’s old enough so that – ‘I don’t have to observe those rules because I started before you made those rules.’ If Larry was thirty-five, he couldn’t get away with the watermelon stuff and Palestinian chicken.”
Finally, Seinfeld is starting to make some sense. There’s no denying that David’s age and experience gave him more leeway when it came to Curb’s comedy, while shows like It’s Always Sunny (2005), Veep (2012), and South Park (1997) benefit from being born in a different era.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars in Veep, a famously politically incorrect comedy.
In the past decade, social and cultural attitudes have changed drastically, and with that comes an altered understanding of what makes something funny. An increased level of awareness means concepts born in 2024 will look inherently different to those that premiered 10 or 20 years ago.
“I see a slight movement.”
This is Seinfeld on the idea that our perceived obsession with political correctness is coming to an end. The sitcom is dead! Long live the sitcom!
Ultimately, it will always be easier for comedians “grandfathered in”, as Seinfeld puts it, to get away with the most risqué jokes – there’s an inbuilt trust with audiences. But that doesn’t necessarily mean edgy TV comedy is gone. Shows like Dave and Atlanta prove that a new generation of comedy writers are pushing boundaries in new ways.
The best way to ensure audiences can enjoy everything a good sitcom can deliver – relatable, risky, thought-provoking comedy – is to back and support new comedians rather than harking back half a century to programs that probably mean nothing to people under 50.
If we’ve learnt anything from the sitcom’s refusal to die, it’s that the format will constantly evolve and change to survive.
While this might be bad news for older comedians who commandeered the zeitgeist decades ago, Seinfeld summed it up best when reflecting on the curious position veterans occupy in the landscape: “If you want to hang around, fine, but we’re moving on to younger people. I’m with you up to about thirty-eight, then I’m moving on.”
Find more of the author’s work here. Email him at thomas.mitchell@smh.com.au or follow him on Instagram at @thomasalexandermitchell and on Twitter @_thmitchell.
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