Unknown, Forgotten or Underrated TV

This aired on Cinemax back in 1986 (or '87) and it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Chris Elliot plays FDR in a very inaccurate one man show. Marv Albert co-stars as the play's announcer who also keeps people updated about the high school basketball game going on next door.

Incredibly complex HBO show set during the Depression. A young man with strange powers is laying low with a traveling carnival. At the same time, a preacher is discovering his own powers.

The show moves very slowly and only lasted two seasons so there's not a lot of answers or explanations of the show's deep mythology. But if you have the patience it's very rewarding.

Powerhouse Cast: Nick Stahl, Michael J. Anderson (best known as the backwards talking dwarf from Twin Peaks), Adrienne Barbeau, Toby Huss, Clancy Brown and Clea DuVall.

An almost perfect show. Hilarious screwball workplace comedy that blends high and low comedy masterfully. Few shows have been this clever.

The cast is amazing too: Dave Foley, the amazing Phil Hartman (until he was murdered, in the 5th season he was replaced by Jon Lovitz), Stephen Root, Maura Tierney, Vicki Lewis, Joe Rogan, Andy Dick (maybe the only good thing Andy Dick has ever done) and amazingly sexy Khandi Alexander (until she left the show).

Best episodes: Complaint Box, The Cane, President, Catherine Moves On

Somewhere, out of time and space, there is a room unlocked with a special key. If you leave something in this room and leave, it'll disappear. Unfortunately, this happens to a policeman's daughter. He wants to get her back and the solution might lie in the powerful objects that once decorated the room.

Three-part mini-series.

One of the few good things MTV has ever done. Animated show about a high school populated entirely by teenaged clones of historical figures and run buy a maniacal principal and his robot butler. Created by Bill Lawrence (Scrubs) and featuring the voices of Will Forte, Christa Miller, Michael McDonald and Donald Faison.

A great parody of the teen dramas of the late '90s. Every episode is a "very special episode." Lots of celebrity cameos, lots of completely absurd jokes and a few high concept episodes including a rock opera about raisins. Some of the references don't age well, but mostly a tremendous, creative show.

Best Episodes: Film Fest: Tears of a Clone, Sleep of Faith: La Rue D'Awakening, Raising The Stakes: A Rock Opera in Three Acts, Makeover Makeover Makeover: The makeover Episode

From the creator of Veronica Mars. Stars Adam Scott, Ken Marino, Lizzy Caplan and in the first season Jane Lynch.

A show about the caterers of a Hollywood catering company. Each episode is a different party and nothing outside of work is ever shown. Just a great character driven, occasionally raunchy sitcom with a bunch of cameos. The best of which is Steve Guttenberg inviting the crew to celebrate his birthday with him. Jane Lynch is especially great as a spacy, twisted former B-movie queen.

Best episodes: Taylor Stiltskin's Sweet 16, Sin Say Shun Awards After Party, Steve Guttenberg's Birthday, Constance Carmell Wedding,

A mostly improvised animated show from HBO that's a little like Curb Your Enthusiasm, but goofier. Tim basically goes around screwing things up for himself and others. Hilarious show that really benefits from all the voice actors being in the same room and riffing off of each other.



Best episodes: Mugger/Cin City, Nagging Blonde/Tim & The Elephant, Debbie's Mom/The Escape Artist, The Caddy Shack/The Sausage Salesman

A great detective drama with some comedic undertones. Stars Donal Logue has an ex-cop working as an unlicensed private investigator along with his ex-con best friend. Gritty, superbly written, well acted and critically acclaimed, I don't know why this didn't find an audience. Especially on FX which has a pretty good success rate.

Talk about a show that was before its time. Get a Life came at a time when the world wasn't used to the kind of relentless absurdity that the show was delivering. Get a Life starred Chris Elliot as a 30-year-old paperboy, living with his parents and just generally being an idiot man-child. Some have compared to to a life-action Simpsons. There are multiple episodes where Chris dies. Co-stars Brian Doyle-Murray and Bob Elliot. Charlie Kaufman and Bob Odenkirk wrote for the show.

Best episodes: The Prettiest Week of My Life, The Big City Neptune 2000, Chris Becomes a Male Escort, Chris' Brain Starts Working.

Another show that had the misfortune to come alone too early. Clerks: The Animated Series would have been right at home on Adult Swim.

Really, just the fact that there was a Clerks cartoon and that it aired on ABC is kind of insane. Oh, and Alec Baldwin was on it too. And they did a clip show for their second episode. And Charles Barkley was in 5 of the 6 episodes. It's a funny, goofy show. I wish it had lasted longer.

A very clever sitcom. It's about the employees of Veridian Dynamics, a company that seems to only make products that are horrifying or useless. There's a lot of corporate satire and one of the best elements of the show are the fake Veridian Dynamics commercials. Better Off Ted is a show like "Parks and Recreation" where generally the characters all like each other. It's always nice when writers can be funny without having characters who are supposed to be friends act terrible toward one another. And they do it really well.

Best episodes: Racial Sensitivity, Beating a Dead Workforce, The Impertence of Communicationizing

Loosely based on the very popular podcast, Comedy Bang! Bang! is a perfect absurdist parody of talk shows. Each episode features a celebrity guest and an onslaught of strange characters either as guests or weird disruptions. You'll see a lot of familiar faces. It's a very goofy show, but there's a lot of great stuff in it.

Drama. An HBO broadcast.

Stars Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones. Written by Cormac McCarthy, adapted from his play of the same name.

Two characters, one set. Sam Jackson saves Jones from killing himself. They discuss the value of life and the existence/importance of God and faith. Very philosophical, very heavy. The end is brutal.

Ryan (Elijah Wood) is lonely, drifting aimlessly and suicidal. Then, one morning he sees his neighbor's dog, Wilfred. Wilfred can talk and looks like a tall Australian man in a dog suit. Of course, only Ryan sees this, everyone else just sees a dog. Wilfred is extremely crass, drinks, smokes weed and enjoys getting Ryan into trouble.

Wilfred sounds like a dumb comedy and that's a part of it. But the best part of Wilfred is when the show asks the question, "Why is Ryan seeing Wilfred." It's a surreal, almost Lynchian show about an extremely broken man that can get very dark. I'm engaged more in the mysteries of Wilfred than I ever was with Lost.

Wilfred is adapted from an Australian show of the same name.

Possibly the best kid's show ever made. The people involved had a goal to make the show funny, weird, sad and beautiful and I say they did an amazing job.

Even as an adult, the jokes are still funny, the absurdity is still sharp, but now I'm more aware of the melancholy and poignancy that ran through the series. It never becomes overbearing, it just serves to make the show a little more complex. As an adult, I can also appreciate the insane celebrity cameos on the show. They include Steve Buscemi and IGGY POP. Iggy Pop, playing a straight-laced dad, was in several episodes of a children's show. That's amazing.

Best episodes: Apocalypse Pete, X=Why?, Farewell My Little Viking, Das Bus

Stars Amy Sedaris (sister of writer David Sedaris) and Stephen Colbert. Based on the educational film "The Trip Back" in which ex-prostitute Florrie Fisher talked about her life to high school students.

Jerri Blank is a 46-year-old ex-junkie and ex-prostitute who goes back to high school as a freshmen. Dark, wildly inappropriate humor mixed with general ridiculousness. Plot revolve around things like eating disorders, sexual harassment, racism, obscenity and other touchy topics. At the end of every episode Jerri learns the wrong lesson and every one dances.

A unique British show that presents itself as showing a long lost '80s series called Darkplace. Darkplace is ridiculous, cheesy horror series created by, written and starring fictional author Garth Marenghi. The shows takes great effort to make it seems like an authentic '80s show and to make everything as outlandish and poorly made as possible. Co-stars Richard Ayoade and Matt Berry.

By the creator of Burn Notice. Stars Colin Hanks and Bradley Whitford.

A great popcorn procedural. Colin Hanks is an uptight, by the book cop who gets bumped down to property crimes and partnered with a drunk, erratic, womanizing former super cop played by Bradley Whitford. Every episode is essentially the same: It starts in media res, jumps back and towards the end there's an action scene set to a classic rock song. But the formula works and it's a really fun show.

Just a one-off, 15 minute special on Adult Swim. They didn't let any one know what it was going to be, but they had a counter running on-screen counting down until the premiere.

It turned out to be an inside look, hosted by Jeff Probst, at director Paul Rudd's efforts to recreate the opening title sequence to '80s detective show "Simon and Simon" using Jon Hamm and Adam Scott. Even if you've never seen Simon and Simon, this is hilarious.

Probably the most well-known entry on this list, Mr. Show is a gigantic cult favorite and one of the greatest sketch shows of all time. Not only did it launch the careers of David Cross, Bob Odenkirk, Paul F. Tompkins, Brian Posehn and others, but it really brought alternative comedy to the forefront. The material who run the gamut from smart to crass to absurd to subversive. Not every sketch was a winner, but Mr. Show had a really high success rate and the out-there quality of the writing made it always interesting to watch.

Best episodes: What to Think, Who Let You In, Now Who Wants Ice Cream?, Please Don't Kill Me, Return of the Curse of the Creature's Ghost, It's Insane This Guy's Taint

Stars Aziz Ansari, Paul Scheer, Rob Huebel

Human Giant is a sketch-show, so it's going to be hit-or-miss. It's especially weak in regard to some of the running sketches, but when it hits, it hits really hard. It's wonderfully weird and gets incredibly dark some times.

Best episodes: Lil 9/11, Ta Da!, I'm Gonna Live Forever!, Respect Honor Discipline

Stars Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Matt Walsh, Ian Roberts.

Another sketch show, this one even weirder than Human Giant. Unique in a few ways: Every episode would feature the four actors playing the same characters, kind of rogue agents who served as a framework for all the sketches and other characters. Episodes had a theme, usually with a story running through the episode. Little allusions and characters would wind up playing a part in each season finale.

Best episodes: Bomb Squad (guest starring the Wu-Tang Clan), Mogomra vs. the Fart Monster, Pro Thunderball,

Bad Ronald is a pretty nutso made-for-TV movie about a teenaged outcast who accidentally murders a little girl. His mother hides him in a hidden space between the walls so the police won't find him. His mother dies and a new family moves into the house with Ronald still tucked away.

Hijinks ensue.

There used to be a game show where the contestants would compete to win Ben Stein's money. You know, Ben Stein, from the eye drops commercials and Ferris Beuller. You know, the former speechwriter for Nixon and Ford. That Ben Stein. After the first round, Ben would begin competing against the contestants. It was co-hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and in the series' best episode, Jimmy and Ben switched places.

Not a great show, just one interesting enough to mention.

This is a gigantic cheat, because Community is decently well known. It's a massive cult success, critically acclaimed and a darling of the internet. I'm mostly just including it to raise awareness. Community is a hilarious and creative show with an amazing cast. You'll see Joel McHale, Chevy Chase, John Oliver, Donald Glover (AKA rapper Childish Gambino), Ken Jeong, the amazing beauty that is Alison Brie and Gillian Jacobs and others who you haven't heard of but will soon love.

Community has done amazing genre parody episodes that've taken on action movies, westerns, Law and Order, Ken Burns documentaries, Mafia movies, video games, heist movies mockumentary TV shows, claymation Christmas specials, and Glee. They've done an amazing fake clip show episode. Dan Harmon (the show's creator who was fired after last season) also does his best to infuse the show with a lot of heart. He wants you to care about the characters.

It's a truly amazing show. Along with Parks and Recreation it's one of the best sitcoms on television.

Best episodes: The Science of Illusion, Modern Warfare, Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas, Paradigms of Human Memory, Remedial Chaos Theory, Basic Lupine Urology