All the Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy winners, ranked

The Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy has been around almost as long as the Emmys themselves. Since 1952, there have been 34 different winners of the statue, and looking back at them illustrates how TV has evolved, from variety programs to multicam sitcoms to the single-cam documentary style that dominated recently. While they all have their merits, this is the internet, which means they must be ranked. So please enjoy some of the greatest shows, most syndicated shows and occasionally most forgettable shows to win television's highest honor. Unless that's the Peabody Award — or ending up on TV Land. 

Art Carney won five Emmys for playing Ed Norton on "The Honeymooners" and the two incarnations of "The Jackie Gleason Show." While none of those shows ever won Best Comedy Series, Carney's own variety show took the prize in 1960. It's unclear how this variety show stood out, but awards voters just loved honoring Carney, and it happened again in 1975 when he won the Best Actor Oscar for "Harry and Tonto."

"My World And Welcome To It" was an attempt to turn the stories and cartoons of James Thurber into a sitcom. William Windom played the Thurber stand-in, who worked for the fictional Manhattanite magazine, which was similar to Thurber's New Yorker. The show blended animation with conventional sitcom settings, adapting and riffing on Thurber's short stories. And while it lasted only a year, Windom would go on to play Thurber on stage for years.

Not to be confused with the MTM 1970s sitcom in which Newhart played a psychiatrist, this was a variety show starring Newhart in an era when variety shows dominated the Comedy Emmys. Two years earlier, Newhart had been a copywriter who had a surprise monster hit with his first comedy album, "The Button-Mind Of Bob Newhart." The album went to No. 1 on the charts — the overall charts, not the comedy charts — despite the album recording being Newhart's first nightclub performance. Two years into his career, Newhart had already won two Grammys and an Emmy purely on the strength of his wit and ability to hold one-sided phone conversations.

"Ally McBeal" is the only Comedy Series winner where a computer-animated baby made a huge difference in the awards race. Creator David E. Kelley had won a lot for "Picket Fences" earlier, and Emmy voters have loved his style, even all the way through "Big Little Lies." But aspects of "Ally McBeal" don't age that well, from the wackiness to Ally's musical muse. Still, it's Calista Flockhart's finest work, except when she pretends that Harrison Ford's earring looks good.

Just four months after its premiere, "The Red Skelton Show" won the first-ever Emmy for Best Comedy Show. It ran for 19 more years and never took the big prize again, though it did win for Writing Achievement in Comedy in 1961, edging out "Make Room For Daddy" and something called "Hennesey," which was about a Navy doctor. It was a variety show built around Skelton and his collection of characters, but it also notably employed Johnny Carson and Sherwood Schwartz (creator of "Gilligan's Island") and hosted the Rolling Stones' American TV debut.

"The Monkees" was a fairly innovative, highly improvisational sitcom about four unsuccessful musicians who aspired to be like The Beatles. Of course, the fake band ended up selling over 75 million records despite only Peter Tork being able to play an instrument. The show only lasted two seasons but featured avant-garde editing and surreal storytelling, and it arguably invented the music video with the musical interludes in each episode. After the show ended, The Monkees released the cult classic "Head," which was developed with the aid of a great deal of marijuana, with the screenplay written by a prefame, high-on-LSD Jack Nicholson.

A cop show that never actually left the police station, "Barney Miller" dealt with the foibles of a police department in Greenwich Village. The sitcom wasn't as much about crime solving as it was about dealing with paperwork and frustration. Overall, it had a stage play feel, almost like a Beckett play with its fundamental, inherent inaction.

Caesar's Hour was the follow-up to Sid Caesar's wildly successful "Your Show of Shows," a 90-minute variety show with musical guests, production numbers, monologues and Caesar's sketches and parodies. "Caesar's Hour" was notable for being performed live each week, which included the commercials and having sophisticated "smart" sketches. Of course, the sketches would also run as long as 15 minutes, which might not age well — that's almost 100 Instagram stories! The sheer talent associated with Sid Caesar seems unreal, as collaborators included Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, Bea Arthur, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Imogene Coca and Larry Gelbart ("M*A*S*H"). He also inadvertently named another legendary comedy ensemble: If a joke bombed, Caesar would blame the young writers, aka "the kids in the hall."

In the tradition of comedians stretching as little as possible as actors, Danny Thomas played a comedian named Danny Williams in "Make Room For Daddy," later "The Danny Thomas Show." The show made history when Jean Hagen, Thomas' on-screen wife, left the show after three seasons. The producers decided to have her die off-screen, a move that "Kevin Can Wait" recently imitated. Thomas' daughter Marlo was also a TV legend, starring in "That Girl" and playing Jennifer Aniston's mother on "Friends" — because that's the circle of Emmy life.

Jack Benny's multiple Emmy winner was perhaps the seminal example of radio shows transitioning to television. Benny was a radio star as early as 1933 and began doing his TV version for CBS in 1950 with the same actors, style and even scripts. It ran for 15 years, meaning Benny had a staggering 32 straight years of the show, during all of which he maintained his character — cheap, playing the violin terribly, constantly remaining 39 years old and delivering some of the best comedic pauses in TV history.

"Everybody Loves Raymond" won 15 Emmys, including two for Best Comedy Series, and inspired two decades' worth of "Everybody Loves ______" jokes. It was a ratings hit, launched Ray Romano into an unexpected dramatic acting career and defined a whole era of family-oriented, slightly boring sitcoms on CBS.

Low-rated but critically acclaimed, "Taxi" was James L. Brooks' first show after leaving MTM productions, and it helped launch many long careers, including that of Christopher Lloyd who was in "Back To The Future" and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?," Danny DeVito, who became a movie director and actor and is still on a sitcom today and Tony Danza, who played a character named "Tony" on roughly 39 subsequent TV shows. There may never be an ensemble like this again, mainly because there's no reason for a bunch of Lyft drivers to hang out together.

Dan Quayle's least favorite entry on this list is "Murphy Brown," which like "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," was a newsroom sitcom featuring a strong, smart female protagonist — though Mary's show didn't have a new secretary working every week. Smart and political, the show drew weird controversy when Vice President Quayle started to make Murphy's fictional single motherhood a campaign issue. The controversy feels anachronistic by now, which may be why Diane English and Candice Bergen rebooted the show last year.

While we can't have a narrator for this gallery, please imagine that this is all being read in Daniel Stern's voice. "The Wonder Years" was one of the most dramatic winners in the Best Comedy category, falling just on the comedy side of the dramedy line. It was essentially a period sitcom — one that would have ended up on premium cable these days — and retained a sweetness (overall, it's the story of Winnie Cooper and Kevin Arnold) and sadness (Winnie's brother dies in Vietnam) that are rarely seen on TV. For the record, Marilyn Manson is NOT in the cast.

Another recent reboot, Will & Grace" was a groundbreaking show — the first sitcom with a gay lead character. Of course, that also allowed Sean Hayes to cut loose as network television's first flamboyant, hilarious gay regular character. It also introduced America to the genius of Megan Mullally, and it might run another six years in its new incarnation if the actors don't get bored.

An adaptation of the Robert Altman film of the same name (and the novel it was based on), "M*A*S*H" was a dark comedy about the Korean War, premiering at the tail end of the Vietnam War, which it was secretly really about. We don't have to explain this "M*A*S*H" — it had 260 episodes, it's always on TV somewhere and it's one of the most popular shows of all time. It also has perhaps the most distracting laugh track in TV history — it's weird getting canned laughter during emergency field surgery.

"Sex & The City" may not have been the most ha-ha funny show on the list of Emmy winners, but few shows have this kind of cultural impact. Everyone in America, of any gender, could probably tell you if they're a Carrie, a Samantha, a Miranda or a Charlotte. It's the first cable show to win Best Comedy Series and definitely the first one with nudity and vibrators. It was successful enough to lead to two feature films and possibly the governorship of New York. 

Another Emmy juggernaut, "Modern Family" takes the faux-documentary approach of "The Office" and its ilk and softens it, retaining the talking head shots to camera but mostly acting like the cameras aren't there. It's impressive how they manage the giant ensemble and, until recently, manage to have funny child actors who aren't saccharine and cloying. The show might run forever if it can justify introducing more and smaller kids indefinitely.

Also known as "Sergeant Bilko," "The Phil Silvers Show" featured Silvers as the aforementioned Bilko, the head of an army motor pool on a base in Kansas who spent most of his time running scams and avoiding work. The show ran for only four years, winning Best Comedy Series three times, along with five other Emmys. It was so memorable, Silvers managed to play Bilko-like scammers and con artists for the rest of his career, and the show remains wildly popular in England, where the Radio Times Guide To Comedy called it the best sitcom of all time.

So no one told you the Emmys were gonna be this way. You're dominating ratings, but "Frasier" is in the way. It's like you're always considered a lead-in to "Cheers." When it hasn't been your awards ceremony until your eighth year. Look, it's not a shock that this happens during the brief and wonderful Rachel-Joey relationship, with pregnant Rachel, a guest-starring Brad Pitt and an engagement attempt full of misunderstandings. Just this one time, the Emmy was there for them.

The first streaming program to win Outstanding Comedy Series, "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" is a dramatic comedy or perhaps a comedic drama about the travails of a housewife in 1958 New York who embarks on a career in standup comedy. It's also the only period piece to win this category, unless you count "M.A.S.H." The first season swept the writing, directing and acting categories, aside from the criminally snubbed Tony Shalhoub, and the crisp writing and zippy banter mean that, paradoxically, the standup is the least funny part of the show.

"The Golden Girls" was inspired by a sketch about old people living in Miami called "Miami Nice," which was presented at an NBC schedule event. It's such a perfect ensemble piece that all four actresses won an Emmy for their roles, and it inspired other four-woman ensemble shows like "Designing Women." The writing is tight, the chemistry among the leads is fantastic and you can still see it all the time in syndication.

Mel Brooks and Buck Henry (writer of "The Graduate") created "Get Smart" as a spoof of James Bond and Inspector Clouseau. It's a formula Brooks would utilize over and over in his career: Take an established genre and fill it with his particular wackiness and nonsense (see "Young Frankenstein," "Blazing Saddles," etc.). Maxwell Smart is an ingenious creation: a clumsy, seemingly incompetent version of Bond who nonetheless regularly saves the world. Thankfully he has Agent 99 — real name never given — to bail him out.

Like "Cheers," this was a low-rated critical darling that still took home the Best Comedy Emmy. Unlike "Cheers," it didn't get another few years to right the ship. As much as the weak Netflix continuations and the bad behavior of Jeffrey Tambor may have hurt its reputation, the first season is truly stellar and remains one of the most memed sitcoms in history. 

When he was developing "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," Aaron Sorkin was famously denied a request to visit the set of "Saturday Night Live." It's not a shock when you see the far superior "30 Rock," Tina Fey's show-behind-a-show effort about "The Girlie Show." The key is that Fey doesn't take sketch comedy seriously — they all know the show is dumb! The show has unique music, career-defining performances from Tracy Morgan and Alec Baldwin and constant, surreal turns. In addition, "30 Rock" probably has more jokes per minute than anything on the list with the exception of "Veep."

While Steve Carell was notoriously shut out of acting awards, the American version of "The Office" won in its second season. It's the year the show moves out of the shadow of its British predecessor, expanding the world of Dunder Mifflin, moving Jim and Pam's romance along and showing why Michael Scott wouldn't be fired immediately, like David Brent. The season finale, "Casino Night," is one of the sweetest, best-crafted season-enders you'll ever get from a sitcom. 

Groundbreaking and hilarious, "The Cosby Show" was an immediate smash hit, and it's somewhat shocking it won Best Comedy Series only once. It's so solid that even with Cosby's subsequent criminal charges and fall from grace, fans have redirected their love for the original show into its spinoff, "A Different World," to enjoy a Cosby-free Huxtable experience. (The original show was finally pulled from reruns, outside of rental on Amazon Prime, in the spring of 2018.) You could even argue that "Lip Sync Battle" owes Cosby royalties because no one did musical numbers like the Huxtables. And in the history of this award, it's the only Emmy that goes to a show with an African-American cast.

"Cheers" won its first Emmy for Best Comedy Series when it was incredibly low-rated and on the brink of cancellation and it's second when it had become a total powerhouse, eventually spawning the spinoff "Frasier" and anchoring NBC's Thursday nights for over a decade. The show dealt with the departure of Shelley Long and the death of Coach without missing a beat and contains TV's warmest depiction of alcoholism. 

Carl Reiner created "The Dick Van Dyke Show," which was both a domestic comedy and a behind-the-scenes look at a TV show, featuring Reiner as the titular Alan Brady. It's inspired by Reiner's time working on Sid Caesar's show, and the genius of the backstage setting is that it allows comedians to rattle off jokes. They don't need a comical situation; it's their job, after all. Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore had great chemistry, and what really stands out is the sheer volume of jokes in any given episode. The show won three Best Comedy Emmys (15 overall), and could have won four in a row, but there was no award in 1965. 

The rare spinoff that arguably exceeds the original, "Frasier" started after "Cheers" ended. Most of the cast members guest-starred, aside from Kirstie Alley who declined for Scientology reasons. Every episode of "Frasier" is like a mini-farce, exemplified in "The Matchmaker," when Frasier tries to set up his gay co-worker with Daphne only to accidentally deliver him a wonderful romantic evening with himself. The chemistry between Frasier and Niles is incredible, the whole cast is stellar and there's a host of celebrity callers who Frasier tells "I'm listening," almost always uncredited. Honestly, Emmy voters stopped giving the show Best Comedy Series only because it was getting boring. And of course, Kelsey Grammer is not always comfortable on stage.

"Veep" brings together two of the greatest artists in television history: England's Armando Iannucci, the man behind "The Thick Of It" and the various Alan Partridge shows, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the Lucille Ball of her generation. It's profane, fast-paced and highly cynical about politics — and there's nothing sadder and more cynical than the office of the vice president. There's also an incredible cast, including Emmy-winner Tony Hale and Anna Chlumsky, who finally won't have strangers asking her questions about "My Girl."

Thank goodness Archie Bunker didn't have a Twitter account, or the groundbreaking Norman Lear sitcom would never have lasted, much less spun off three other successful shows: "The Jeffersons," "Maude" and "Archie Bunker's Place." Generally considered one of the finest television shows of all time, with the living room furniture preserved in the Smithsonian, "All in The Family" broke ground by actually discussing subjects like the Vietnam War, racism and cancer on a sitcom. It also set a successful precedent of buying a British TV show and adapting it for American audiences (the sitcom "Till Death Do Us Part").

Mary Tyler Moore could turn Emmy voters on with a smile. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" won Best Comedy Series three times and won 29 Emmys overall. It's an incredible collection of talent, from the cast — Moore, Valerie Harper, Ed Asner, Ted Knight, Betty White, Cloris Leachman — to the writers — James L. Brooks, Ed. Weinberger, Allan Burns. Perhaps the finest episode was about the death of the TV station's clown, "Chuckles Bites The Dust."

Often called the best sitcom of all time, "Seinfeld" won the Emmy only once, for perhaps its definitive season. This year, Jerry and George make their own "show about nothing," a meta-commentary on sitcoms and "Seinfeld" itself. The year also features classics like "The Contest," where Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine compete to deny themselves self-pleasure, "The Opera" featuring "Crazy" Joe Davola and "The Movie," where everyone fails to see a movie together and we are introduced to the erotic journey that is Rochelle, Rochelle. One Emmy? I'm freakin' out, Jerry!

Not only was "I Love Lucy" a wildly popular show — it was No. 1 in the ratings for four of its six seasons — but it also was incredibly influential. It was an ensemble show, it was filmed in front of a live audience and it was shot on 35 mm film, becoming the first "multicam" sitcom. Even now, 40 million people a year watch syndicated episodes of "Lucy." Lucille Ball is simply one of the greatest comedians of all time, and it's shocking how well gags like the candy factory and Vitameatavegamin hold up 65 years later — half a century before people started writing blogs about how women aren't funny.