12 Shows Like Community That You Really Need To Watch

Dean-dong! Attention fans of Greendale Community College. After a seven-year silence, lovers of Dan Harmon's heartfelt and beautifully meta series "Community" finally got the news they'd been waiting for ever since the phrase "six seasons and a movie" was first uttered way back in the show's second season. That's right. Earlier this year, Harmon officially sent the internet into a tizzy — well, the part that was already obsessed with his flight-of-fancy-loving study group — by revealing that a "Community" movie is officially on the way.

For those unaware of why this is such a big deal, do yourself a favor and revisit the "Rick and Morty" co-creator's much-loved 2009 series. In it, he introduced us to a classic sitcom formula (six strangers are thrown together by circumstance and eventually become unlikely BFFs) before swiftly skewering this familiar format and audience expectations. Instead, Harmon whisks us away on ingeniously written adventures that were frequently packed with pop-culture homages. Full of smart humor, smarter narratives, great characters, and memorable guest stars, "Community" quickly became many people's favorite show.

While news of a movie is undoubtedly a reason to celebrate, we still have a while before its stars and creator deliver the goods. So if you're looking for shows like "Community" to keep you busy until Greendale reopens its doors, here are a few that'll scratch that itch.

Is there a smarter or more tightly-written show than "30 Rock?" This series surely has the most impressive joke-per-minute ratio of any comedy show going. Created by former "Saturday Night Live" head writer, Tina Fey, and produced by her old boss, Lorne Michaels, this show-about-a-show follows the day-to-day chaos of producing a weekly live television program named "The Girlie Show" ("TGS" for short). Fey stars as Liz Lemon, its constantly stressed showrunner who's always left to pick up the pieces whenever her two stars, Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) and Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski), have a meltdown, a ridiculous star moment or frequently, both.

However, the real star of the series is Lemon's suave, slick, and suspiciously right-wing new boss, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), who's installed by the NBC big-wigs to try and make "TGS" more successful, regardless of the repercussions that has on its creative, artistic, or moral output. Toeing the line between being just sensible enough to believe while displaying more than a few outlandishly weird character traits, Donaghy is arguably the best thing Baldwin's done in the past few years. Throw him together with Lemon and her group of scruffy writers' room faces, and the end product makes for one of the most enjoyable viewing experiences ever that, like "Community," delivers razor-sharp humor and deftly-packaged gags.

Throughout the noughties, TV didn't get any better than "Scrubs." Created by future "Ted Lasso" mastermind Bill Lawrence and starring a then-unknown Zach Braff, the series focused on life in a busy hospital and provided a nice dose of levity to a medical world that, up until that point, had largely only been seen via the starkly real "E.R." Braff stars as day-dreaming manchild J.D, a newbie medical student who arrives at Sacred Heart Hospital; befriends fellow staffers Turk (Donald Faison), Elliot (Sarah Chalke), and Carla (Judy Reyes); and spends the majority of the show's lifespan trying to please his boss, Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley), and avoid an annoying Janitor (Neil Flynn) who may or may not be a figment of his imagination.

Like "Community," "Scrubs" didn't shy away from escaping into fictional or heightened-reality worlds whenever the notion took hold. Through his constant voice-over narration, almost every episode saw J.D transform into a living cartoon in cut-aways that underpinned the ridiculousness and sometimes down-right heartbreaking nature of his days working in a busy under-funded hospital. It even had its own themed episodes, with Season 6's all-singing "My Musical" echoing the far-fetched concepts frequently used within Harmon's own show.

Harmon even went on to use the vocal talents of one of Lawrence's "Scrubs" stars in the project he worked on after "Community," with Sarah Chalke appearing as the daughter of a mad, binge-drinking scientist in "Rick and Morty."

Throughout all of its paintball fights, Quentin Tarantino parodies, and pillow fort wars, "Community" has one thing at its core that underpins all of its out-there episodes: heart. Despite starting the series as a disgraced lawyer who's begrudgingly forced to re-do community college to rebuild his life, series lead Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) soon comes to not only like but truly care for his study group colleagues, proving that he's not the cynical and untouchable human island that he so eagerly wants people to think he is.

This slow evolution of acceptance of a new reality is something that also runs through another popular series that has become a hugely bingeable word-of-mouth hit, "Schitt's Creek." Created by the father and son duo of Eugene and Dan Levy, this small-town tale takes a super-rich, one-percenter family, strips them of their wealth and stature, and dumps them in the middle of nowhere. When we find the Roses, they're up the creek — literally. Having been left with nothing after a dodgy business deal, the family is forced to relocate to their sole surviving asset, a one-horse town named Schitt's Creek, which was bought as a joke during brighter days.

Despite finding nothing but strife in their sudden change of circumstance, the Roses soon come to love and cherish their new reality, making for a wholly heartwarming viewing experience.

From one form of depravity to another, Will Forte's criminally short-lived comedy "The Last Man on Earth" should be on your must-watch list, regardless of its links to "Community." Thankfully, it does indeed share a bit of connective tissue that links it with Dan Harmon's hit series. Released in 2015, "The Last Man on Earth" sticks closely to its title to tell exactly the kind of story you might expect. After a mystery virus wipes out the majority of life on Earth, the apparent sole survivor, Phil Miller (Forte), spends his days doing exactly the type of thing any of us might do if we knew no one was around to watch or judge us.

With nothing but balls with faces drawn on them for company, Phil fills his home with priceless artworks, smashes expensive items, and fills paddling pools with margaritas before discovering that he may not be quite as alone as he once thought. Packed full of truly unexpected guest stars (no spoilers here, you'll have to watch for yourself) and full of smart and often weird humor, "The Last Man on Earth" once again puts the skills of former "Community" writer Megan Ganz to good work to churn out a show that's delightfully weird and frequently hilarious. Like "Community," it also slowly learns the importance of friendship, too, as the self-centered Phil is forced to reevaluate life after he's given an unexpected second chance.

From "Goodfellas" and "Die Hard" to Sergio Leone's "Dollars" trilogy and the iconic documentary work of filmmaker Ken Burns, Dan Harmon and his team of "Community" writers rarely missed an opportunity to get meta with pop-culture references. However, a decade earlier, British director Edgar Wright was doing the same thing in "Spaced." Released on Channel 4 in 1999, this heightened-reality show kickstarted the careers of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Jessica Hynes while laying the foundation for Wright to launch his big-screen directing career.

Pegg and Hynes star as Tim and Daisy, two 20-something slackers who live in a tiny, dingey London flat and spend their days trying to realize their creative pipe dreams. Spoilers: They rarely manage to actually achieve this goal. However, what they do get to do a lot of is escape into fantasy at almost every available moment.

From classics like "Scooby Doo," "The Matrix" and "Commando" to "Robocop," "Grease," and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," Wright's two seasons of "Spaced" provided him with the perfect chance to pay homage to the films and filmmakers that had influenced his career. If a recent "Community" deep dive has got you hankering for more shows with a soft spot for movie references, then this beloved British classic is sure to fit the bill.

America's take on Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's "The Office" may be the country's finest comedy offering. In a way, it's hard to write any list of U.S. comedy series and not reference it because it is universally loved and critically praised. Long-time writer and series star B.J Novak explained that no one really thought they could pull off a successful adaptation of the groundbreaking Slough-set original. "I was well aware that everyone considered it a bad idea," he told The Guardian in 2020. "It was either too slow, quiet, and offbeat to ever work on American television or too smart, stupid, and blasphemous for us to attempt."

The result was something aesthetically similar yet entirely different. In place of Gervais's David Brent was Steve Carrell's equally oblivious Michael Scott, a character so unbelievably obtuse, his very existence paved the way for countless enjoyable episodes across the show's nine seasons. However, the most critical character change that came with the translation process is exactly the element that links it so well to "Community." Essentially, they gave the show some added heart by making Scott something Brent never was— likable. "He thought of himself as Mel Gibson in Braveheart, but he was such a sensitive and vulnerable character," says series star and writer Mindy Kaling. "That made Michael approachable and made you root for him."