The Office is leaving Netflix, but at least there are still these sitcoms
After years of dominating the streaming charts, The Office will leave Netflix on Jan. 1, 2021 for its new home on Peacock. In the nine years that The Office was on Netflix, millions of fans discovered it and millions more rewatched it, sometimes dozens of times.
But don’t worry. If you’re scrolling through Netflix looking for sitcoms to fill the Dunder Mifflin-shaped hole in your heart, there are plenty of other great options (and a few less great ones) that are still on the service. Here are five sitcoms to binge watch on Netflix.
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
Arrested Development follows a wealthy family trying to adjust to a new life after its patriarch is dragged to prison for a litany of financial crimes. Arrested Development is also one of the funniest sitcoms ever made. It’s got an outstanding cast of characters, and dialog that often manages to pack two or three jokes into every single line. On top of that, half of its jokes wound up being foundational to online culture and a few of them remain popular memes to this day. Just do yourself a favor and stop after watching season 3. Netflix’s attempt to reboot the show couldn’t match the original run’s magic.
THE GOOD PLACE
Created by Michael Schur, who wrote for The Office, created Parks and Recreation, and played The Office’s Mose Schrute — The Good Place is a slightly more existential comedy than the rest of the shows on this list. Initially, The Good Place follows a woman named Eleanor who dies and is taken to The Good Place, a perfect heaven-like paradise. But Eleanor realizes she was taken there by mistake and has to hide her flaws and improve herself in order to fit in. The show blurs the lines between sitcoms and serialized TV shows, taking on heavy topics like death without ever sacrificing the fun and comedy that makes binge-watching 12 episodes a blast.
COMMUNITY
Community is such a good pairing with The Office that NBC originally aired them together on Thursday nights. Community follows a group of students who all, for one reason or another, attend Greendale, the world’s worst community college. Much like The Office, Community’s biggest strength is its huge and always-entertaining cast of characters and side characters, who sometimes form into surprising groups for their own adventures. But what makes Community extra special is just how strange these adventures tend to be. Whether it’s musical episodes, action movie parody episodes, or animated Christmas specials, Community has some of the best episode premises of any sitcom ever.
NEW GIRL
Of all the sitcoms on this list, New Girl is the most traditional and has the most similar rhythm to The Office. It’s another ensemble comedy, this time about a girl who moves into an apartment with a group of guys she barely knows. The show’s real highlight is the back-and-forth between all of the roommates as they toss out rapid fire one-off jokes or light and playful insults. Just like rewatching The Office for the zillionth time, the show becomes more about spending time with the characters you love than the things they’re doing episode to episode.
SCHITT’S CREEK
Following in the footsteps of Arrested Development, Schitt’s Creek is also a story about a rich family who loses everything … except, in this case, they get to keep the very small town of Schitt’s Creek, which the family purchased as a joke when they were still wealthy. After the family’s sudden bankruptcy, however, they’re forced to move into the town and live out of a motel. The series is created by its stars Eugene and Dan Levy, who started the show under the premise of taking a family like the Kardashians and taking away all of their money. While the concept may sound harsh, the show reveals itself to be both hilarious and surprisingly wholesome, as the family learns to love each other without all the wealth they used to enjoy.
