Zeit-bites: Comedy for the right... situation

Sitcom became kind of a dirty word for a little while there, didn’t it? Low-brow, lowest-common-denominator stuff like Two Men and Little Assault Charge, Kevin Can Go Straight To Hell Please, and the Big Bang Hypothesis ruled the roost.

Then along came the cable/streaming revolution to reclaim this portmanteau’s mana at least, and definitely the ‘‘com’’ part of the package.

If there’s one surefire way to know a genre’s having a comeback it’s when Oscar nominees and winners are having a go at it. Netflix’s The

Kominsky Method stars Alan Arkin and Michael Douglas (!!!) as a couple of curmudgeonly old Hollywood farts at the tail end of a 50-year friendship, who bicker, tease and care about each other. Sure, it’s about actors and the industry and whatnot, but it’s also about enduring male friendships, family, families of choice, facing mortality, and love. Lots and lots of love. Easily the most charming sitcom in decades, you’d be an absolute schmuck to miss it.

Netflix is all about sitcoms with unusual premises. There’s Lovesick, about a guy reliving past loves as he tries to track them down to tell them about his STI; Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, about a woman trying to make sense of the world after being locked in a bunker by a madman for most of her life, The Santa Clarita Diet, about a woman who becomes the world’s most adorable zombie, and absolute delight The Good Place, about a group of jerks who think they’ve died and gone to heaven, literally.

Then, proving the UK has really picked up its sitcom game, there’s Crashing and The

Detectorists, which blends gut laughs with pathos so seamlessly you’ll never be able to go back to laugh tracks and 2D characters again.

And if you still need a laugh, there are the classics – Netflix has Arrested Development, Lightbox has

Parks and Recreation, and TVNZ OnDemand has your friend-in-need: Friends.