Television MADtv, SNL, Kids in the Hall, SCTV, Chappelle's Show or In Living Color - Which is the best sketch comedy show?

Which is the best sketch comedy show?

  • Total voters
    86
Kids in the hall is my favorite sketch comedy show of all time. Easily some of the weirdest and funniest stuff I had seen at the time.
The show aged so/so, but late 80s early 90s that shit was my jam.

Chicken Lady


The Flying Pig.


Head Crusher.


Buddy Cole.


Brain Candy was great as well.
 
Your Salad said:
Kids in the hall is my favorite sketch comedy show of all time. Easily some of the weirdest and funniest stuff I had seen at the time.
The show aged so/so, but late 80s early 90s that shit was my jam.

Chicken Lady


The Flying Pig.


Head Crusher.


Buddy Cole.


Brain Candy was great as well.
Click to expand...

Have you watched Death Comes to Town?
 
What's funny is even in the Sandler/Farley years, everyone was saying SNL sucked and was nothing in comparison to the early years.

Chappelle show might have had the most popular run since the 90s of any sketch show. I don't remember as many people quoting and referencing any of the shows as they did when Chappelle was at his peak.

I never found his show to be all that funny. I was more of a fan of In Living Color.
 
SNL and Chappelle

I think Key and Peele should be up there too, didn't run for long but top tier sketches
 
I enjoyed In Living Color, The Kids in the Hall, and late 80's to early 90's SNL equally, but for the shows' entire lifetimes both ILC and KitH are more quality shows. The only weak part of In Living Color was like the last season which was still good, but only had five cast members left from the prime years. KitH stayed quality for its' entire run, it was like SCTV in that it often had weird conceptual sketches but I think KitH's translated better.

Mad TV's best years were when Sasso and Lois Griffin were on the show imo, but the show was hit or miss throughout its' lifetime like snl and the final couple of seasons were weak (I remember they changed to all pre-recorded skits and weren't doing any in front of live studio audiences and the cast and writers weren't great near the end).

SCTV was a lot like that for me, hit and miss stuff, amazing cast and a lot of interesting conceptual stuff but there was something about the direction of the sketches that didn't always translate.

SNL has been on so damn long it has a lot of off and on seasons/casts and sometimes they'd have a talented cast but the sketches were 50/50 (like the mid-90's crew that had Norm, Ferrell, Chris Elliot, Mark McKinney, Molly Shannon, Colin Quinn, David Spade, Jim Brewer, Sandler, Farley, etc. but the show was pretty middling).

Chappelle's Show was amazing but it also was a super short show with only three seasons and the third was all of three episodes. So you get two amazing seasons and super truncated weak one, difficult to compare to shows that ran for longer and had a lot more episodes (In Living Color with 5x the number of episodes and ILC is the second shortest running show on here).

I have to throw in both Upright Citizens Brigade and Monty Python's Flying Circus among the greats as well.
 
Darkavius said:
SNL
Most notable successes are Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallon, Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, Seth Myers, Leslie Jones, Robert Downey Jr. and Pete Davidson. The majority of the staff listed did not even start at SNL until well after In Living Color ended.

In Living Color
The show ended in 1994 before many of those notable SNL names were even on SNL and I can argue their influence lasted longer than those above post 2000. Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx, Damon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, David Allan Grier, Rosie Perez, Carrie Ann Inaba and Jennifer Lopez.
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Darkavius said:
Again, I am looking at post 90's because everyone was huge in the 90's.
Click to expand...
That's great an all except you left over half the names off SNL's list of successes outside SNL. And we can focus on "post-90's", but we need to include stars from the 90's on SNL because that's when In Living Color had its run, and from where are those stars listed came. In Living Color started in 1990, so any SNL star that started with the show after that date should count. Yes, this includes Farley and Spade, btw. Oh, I'm also striking Inaba from the list because LOL what has she done? Nearly every cast member in SNL history has a more impressive resume outside the show than her.

So let's try this again. I'll pick up where you left off.


SNL (1990-)
Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallon, Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, Seth Myers, Leslie Jones(?), Robert Downey Jr., Pete Davidson, Chris Farley, David Spade, Norm McDonald, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, Sarah Silverman, Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, Amy Poehler, Andy Samberg, Kristen Wiig, Fred Armisen, Will Forte, Chris Parnell, Tracy Morgan, Jim Breuer, Jay Mohr.

In Living Color (1990-1994)
Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx, Damon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, David Allan Grier, Rosie Perez, Carrie Ann Inaba and Jennifer Lopez.


Oh yeah, and don't forget that guys like Mark Mckinney of Kids in the Hall was also a cast member on SNL in the 90's. So if one praises that show, one is yet again praising an SNL comedian for work outside the show.
 
SNL fell on some hard times in the mid-eighties and in the past decade but the longevity and overall cultural impact makes it GOAT. In Living Color was revolutionary in terms of sketch shows. SNL was that for television.
 
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