Did you finish Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and immediately wonder what to do until season 2? You’re not alone.
I attempted to fill the void by diving into Tommy Wiseau’s new series, The Neighbors, and it subsequently gave me nightmares. So… that’s a good sign? Here are seven comedy series (Wiseau’s included) that you can stream now.
1) Danger 5
This show from Australian creators David Ashby and Dario Russo follows five secret agents as they attempt to go back in time and kill Hitler, and it might be the sexiest revision of that particular chapter in history. There’s a Nazi dinosaur fight. Hitler has a talking dog. The show expertly parodies shoddily dubbed ’60s mod action series, as the spies stumble around the world like an opium-slurred version of Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?
When the action happens, Danger 5 really takes off: The fight scenes are gloriously bad, full of semi-erotic grunts and repeated gunshots to the mouth. In a scene between agent Claire (Amanda Simons) and a shady drug dealer in episode 3, he tells her she talks too much and forces flour into her mouth. She then proceeds to shoot him in the dick. The episode titles also double as punk songs (“Fresh Meat for Hitler’s Sex Kitchen,” “Lizard Soldiers of the Third Reich”). The second season began airing in January, but the first season’s on Netflix now, and it will suck you in.
2) The Neighbors
Tommy Wiseau’s The Room is a modern midnight classic, a text to be parodied, deconstructed, and held close to preserve its awfulness. The Neighbors—now streaming on Hulu—appears to be its long-rumored sequel. Be warned: You’ll probably only be able to handle two or three episodes in one sitting.
What is The Neighbors about? As with The Room, no one’s sure; it’s up to us to draw connections. Wiseau plays what appears to be the office manager of a generic apartment complex full of grifters, angry stoners, and possible porn stars (Wiseau also plays the apartment’s resident letterman jacket-wearing creep, Ricky Rick). In each episode we watch their trainwreck interactions, and in case you forget where all this insanity is taking place, you’re reminded roughly every 45 seconds with an exterior shot of a generic apartment building, accompanied by throbbing electronic music.
After a couple of episodes’ worth of screaming, racist and sexist stereotypes, and stunted dialogue, the brain sort of tunes these weirdos out. As with The Room, the apartment is a stand-in for Wiseau’s brain, and it’s a scary place. The “Can I borrow $20?” bit is pretty great, though.
3) No, You Shut Up!
Finally, a show that mocks cable news roundtables by pitting Paul F. Tompkins against a panel of puppets born of the Henson Company. The mission: to discuss “the issues of the day until we get too angry to discuss them further.” The issues of the day, of course, are much more tolerable when argued by a hot dog and a squirrel, and Tompkins is a natural puppet debate moderator. You can catch it on Fusion every Thursday, but season 1’s on YouTube now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mECcI19FbBA
4) F to 7th
Creator Ingrid Jungermann channels all Louis C.K.’s wary anxiety in F to 7th, a webseries about a “homoneurotic” lesbian living in New York City. In season 2, her character endures uncomfortable incest talks with her mom, subconscious-excavating dream sequences starring Olympia Dukakis, and Janeane Garofalo plays a doctor who’s breeding gay fruit flies. Jungermann is currently making a feature film called Women Who Kill, a “lesbian murder mystery based on F to 7th,” according to IMDb, which already sounds amazing. Watch seasons 1 and 2 here.
5) Cop Show
Colin Quinn is starring in a webseries now, and all is right with the world. Cop Show satirizes cop dramas, brand placement (it’s sponsored by Lexus), and the actors who take their roles way too seriously. Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Gaffigan, and Amy Schumer guest star; Schumer and Quinn also star in the upcoming movie Trainwreck as father and daughter, and there are quite a few parallels between the two performances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFgPeAPCR6w
6) Last Two People on Earth
Are you now completely invested in the Will Forte comedy Last Man on Earth? This UCB Comedy series jumps on the post-apocalypse trend and asks: What if the last two surviving members of civilization were literally the worst?
7) The Katering Show
Forget every cooking show you’ve ever seen. Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan are your new food gods.
Screengrab via Netflix
