10 Sitcoms With A Better Ensemble Cast Than Friends

Friends is the gold standard of sitcom ensembles. The alchemy between those six actors was strong enough to sustain 10 seasons, and timeless and endearing enough to still be one of the most popular shows on TV more than two decades later. The Friends ensemble was the envy of every casting director in Hollywood; shows like New Girl and How I Met Your Mother and Happy Endings and Rules of Engagement have all tried to replicate that success, but never got the magic quite right.

It’s a rare ensemble cast with no dead weight; everyone serves a crucial function. Jennifer Aniston is our leading everywoman, the voice of reason; Courteney Cox is her zany, high-maintenance counterpart; Lisa Kudrow is the eccentric wildcard; Matt LeBlanc is the lovable goofball; Matthew Perry is the sardonic quipster; and David Schwimmer is the nervous neurotic. Everyone had their own unique relationships: Monica and Ross were competitive siblings, Ross and Chandler were childhood best friends, Chandler and Joey were roommates.

Friends’ six-piece ensemble is the sitcom cast to beat. But, from Veep to Cheers to Parks and Recreation, some sitcoms have had an even more stacked cast, with even more well-rounded and well-matched characters.

Cheers

Without Cheers, Friends probably would’ve never existed. Cheers marked a tide change between gritty, old-school sitcoms like Taxi and slicker, lighter, more crowd-pleasing sitcoms like Friends. Cheers originated a lot of the tropes that Friends would capitalize on; Sam and Diane were the O.G. Ross and Rachel.

Friends had six heavy-hitters in its cast, but Cheers had 10. Ted Danson and Shelley Long anchored the series with fizzling romantic tension. The late, great Nicholas Colasanto provided a wise mentor in the early seasons; Woody Harrelson took his place as the lovably naive simpleton in the later seasons. Rhea Perlman, George Wendt, Kirstie Alley, Bebe Neuwirth, and John Ratzenberger all stood on the sidelines, throwing out witty one-liners, and Kelsey Grammer earned his own show (more on that later).

Throughout its six seasons (still waiting on that movie!), Community went through all kinds of behind-the-scenes chaos. Its creator, Dan Harmon, was fired and then brought back, and it switched networks from NBC to something called Yahoo Screen.

But amidst all the chaos, the chemistry between the cast remained just as electric. The ensemble changed a lot by the end, but the O.G. lineup was all bangers, all the time: Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Yvette Nicole Brown, Alison Brie, Donald Glover, and Chevy Chase, with Ken Jeong and Jim Rash in recurring roles.

The Dick Van Dyke Show

The titular star of The Dick Van Dyke Show is one of the greatest comic performers who ever lived — he has pitch-perfect comic timing, endearing everyman charm, and he’s a physical comedian on par with Stan Laurel — but Dick Van Dyke is just the tip of the Dick Van Dyke Show iceberg. Every week on his self-titled sitcom, his stacked supporting cast threatened to steal the spotlight.

Mary Tyler Moore showed off the full range of her talents as Laura Petrie; she could do it all, and The Dick Van Dyke Show was the perfect vehicle. Plus, Rose Marie and Morey Amsterdam had the studio audience wrapped around their little fingers with their rapid-fire quips as Sally and Buddy.

30 Rock

The writing in 30 Rock has one of the highest laugh quotients of any sitcom. There are jokes so subtle and layered that you won’t fully appreciate them until the 10th rewatch.

But Tina Fey had assembled such a great cast (led by herself) that they didn’t even need great material to be funny. Alec Baldwin, when he’s playing Jack Donaghy, doesn’t need to say anything to be hilarious — he can get a laugh with nothing more than a look — and Tracy Morgan is always hysterically funny, no matter what he’s doing.

The Golden Girls

The Golden Girls took four women of a certain age, who would’ve been relegated to playing the sassy grandma with one line an episode on any other sitcom, and made them the stars of the show. Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty showed an industry that had rejected them that they could be just as hilarious and magnetic as their younger counterparts.

They each brought their own unique comic energy to the table. Of course, White stole the show, but they were all fantastic.

Frasier

After becoming the breakout star of Cheers, Frasier Crane got his own spinoff show, and it became one of the rare TV spinoffs to surpass the original series. Frasier put Kelsey Grammer front and center in the spotlight, and he gave a comic performance for the ages — on the same level as John Cleese’s Basil Fawlty or Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge.

David Hyde Pierce came in as the Abbott to Grammer’s Costello, and they became one of the all-time most iconic comedic duos. John Mahoney’s turn as Martin was hilarious, heartbreaking, and painfully human.

The Office

There’s a wide range of personalities in the Friends cast, but they’re all from very similar demographics, because they’re a group of friends. The ensemble in The Office has a lot more variety, because none of those characters are choosing to hang out together; they all just happen to work at the same regional paper merchants.

Steve Carell anchors the show as Michael Scott, and his absence can really be felt in the last couple of seasons, but his supporting cast was an embarrassment of riches. From the vulnerability that Rainn Wilson brought to Dwight to the deep sadness that Jenna Fischer brought to Pam, The Office’s cast all turned their comedic archetypes into three-dimensional human beings, more so than the Friends cast.

Seinfeld

Seinfeld only has two-thirds the amount of actors as Friends’ cast, but they’re responsible for twice as many laughs. The central quartet from Seinfeld is essentially the Beatles of sitcom casts, except there’s no Ringo.

Everyone has their function in the four-piece dynamic, and everyone plays that part perfectly. Jerry Seinfeld is the wry voice of reason; Jason Alexander is the anxious wreck who overthinks everything; Julia Louis-Dreyfus is the ball-buster who more than earns her place as “one of the guys”; and Michael Richards is the wacky weirdo crashing into every scene with a show-stopping slapstick bit.

Veep

While her Seinfeld co-stars struggled to keep their careers going after the show ended, Julia Louis-Dreyfus broke the so-called Seinfeld curse when she starred as U.S. Vice President Selina Meyer in HBO’s Veep. Selina might be an even greater role than Elaine, and Louis-Dreyfus might give an even greater performance.

Selina’s useless staffers are made up of a murderers’ row of comic talent. Tony Hale plays her personal aide, Matt Walsh plays her bumbling press secretary, Gary Cole plays her deadpan senior strategist.

Parks & Recreation

The producers of Parks and Recreation famously reverse-engineered the casting process. Instead of creating a bunch of colorful characters and trying to find the right actors to play them, they found a bunch of actors who were already colorful characters, and built the characters around them.

Everyone in the ensemble of Parks and Rec has the star power and comic timing and depth and earnestness to carry an entire series of their own. Nick Offerman and Aubrey Plaza and Chris Pratt and Rashida Jones and Aziz Ansari and Adam Scott have all gone on to become massive stars in their own right, but they started out playing second fiddle to the incomparable Amy Poehler.