The Odd Couple

Series Similar to The Odd Couple

If you enjoyed The Odd Couple, these series share similar themes, tone, and quality. Each recommendation is scored on genre overlap, tonal match, and critical acclaim.

1. The Bob Newhart Show

   1972 · Comedy · ended

   Recommended for similar Comedy profile.

   Dr. Robert Hartley is a Chicago psychologist living with his schoolteacher wife Emily. Complicating life for the serene, stammering doc is his neighbor, Howard, a flighty navigator; and Bob's coworkers, dentist Jerry and flippant receptionist Carol.

2. Car 54, Where Are You?

   1961 · Comedy · ended

   Recommended for similar Comedy profile.

   Car 54, Where Are You? features the misadventures of two of New York's finest in the mythical 53rd precinct in the Bronx. Gunther Toody, a short, stocky and dim-witted henpecked husband, is partnered with Francis Muldoon, a tall, lanky and smart bachelor.

3. Newhart

   1982 · Comedy · ended

   Recommended for similar Comedy profile.

   Bob Newhart returns to the TV as Dick Loudon, as he and his wife Joanna decide to leave life in New York City and buy a little inn in Vermont. Dick is a how-to book writer, who eventually becomes a local TV celebrity as host of "Vermont Today."

4. Fawlty Towers

   1975 · Comedy · ended

   Recommended for similar Comedy profile, highly rated (8.5).

   Fawlty Towers is set in a fictional hotel in the seaside town of Torquay. The plots centre on tense, rude and put-upon owner Basil Fawlty, his bossy wife Sybil, comparatively normal chambermaid Polly, who is often the peacemaker and voice of reason, and hapless Spanish waiter Manuel, showing their attempts to run the hotel amidst farcical situations and an array of demanding and eccentric guests.

5. Better Off Ted

   2009 · Comedy · ended

   Recommended for similar Comedy profile, highly rated (8.2), also on ABC.

   Better Off Ted is a satirical office comedy about successful good guy, Ted Crisp, who runs research and development at Veridian Dynamics, a company with a morally questionable approach to its employees. Whether it's standing by a memo with a typo that encourages employees to now (as opposed to not) use offensive language with each other, to championing interoffice dating based on DNA matching to save money on health care, Veridian is a company that puts its bottom line first and employees last. Ted's a single dad to a seven year old girl, and he loves his job, but he's starting to take a closer look at the company's extremely dubious practices.

6. Soap

   1977 · Comedy · ended

   Recommended for similar Comedy profile, highly rated (8), also on ABC.

   Soap is an outrageous comedy saga serializing the hilarious exploits of the characters in two unusual families. Meet the Tates and the Campbells, two families who have relationships as complex as those in a Russian novel. But the fun is in the unraveling.The well-to-do Tate family is comprised of Chester Tate the father, and Jessica, the mother, the parents of three children. Their two daughters, Corinne and Eunice, have distinctly different personalities. Their son, Billy, compared to the rest of the family, is the only sane member of the group, according to Benson, their hired employee who knows everything about everyone. The witty Benson does his best to hold the family together. Living with the Tate family is Jessica's father, referred to as the Major -- who doesn't quite believe that World War II is over.On the other side of town lives Mary Dallas Campbell, Jessica Tate's younger sister. Mary is wed to Burt Campbell who is not as prosperous a breadwinner as Chester. Mary's former husband, Johnny Dallas, has passed on, leaving her with two sons, Danny and Jodie. The older son, Danny, does not quite see eye-to-eye with his stepfather, and while the rest of the family knows Jodie is gay, Danny just thinks Jodie has a wonderful sense of humor.

7. Bosom Buddies

   1980 · Comedy · ended

   Recommended for similar Comedy profile, also on ABC.

   Bosom Buddies follows the adventures of Kip Wilson and Henry Desmond, junior ad-men at Livingston Gentry and Mishkin Advertising Agency. Kip was an illustrator, but aspired to be a painter, and Henry, a copywriter and aspiring novelist. When their building is demolished, they dress as women to stay with co-worker Amy Cassidy in her apartment at the Susan B. Anthony Hotel, where men are forbidden anywhere above the lobby. Kip and Henry decide to invent alter egos Buffy and Hildegarde (their fictional sisters) to move into an empty (and cheap) apartment at the hotel; Henry, to write an expose about the experience, and Kip, to get closer to Amy's beautiful roommate, Sonny Lumet, nurse, and part-time dancer.

8. Police Squad!

   1982 · Comedy, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Comedy profile, highly rated (8), hidden gem, also on ABC.

   Police Squad! was a parody of the Quinn Martin Productions' police dramas of the 1960s and 1970s, hence the use of "In Color" by the narrator. The show's main staple of entertainment came from sight gags (such as a tow truck being a truck in the shape of a big toe) and misunderstandings in dialogue, mostly from people taking things extremely literally. Several great routines came from these misunderstandings that left characters in the scene very confused, but left the audience with loads of humor.

9. The Addams Family

   1964 · Comedy, Family, Horror · ended

   Recommended for similar Comedy profile, highly rated (8.2), also on ABC.

   The Addams Family is the creation of American cartoonist Charles Addams. A satirical inversion of the ideal of the perfect American nuclear family, they are an eccentric wealthy family who delight in everything grotesque and macabre, and are never really aware that people find them bizarre or frightening. In fact, they themselves are often terrified by "normal" people.

10. Barney Miller

    1975 · Drama, Comedy · ended

    Recommended for similar Comedy profile, highly rated (8), also on ABC.

    Barney Miller is the kind of cop we'd all like to run into. He is always sensible. He maintains order over a squad room of detectives who gamble for a hobby, get hit on by anything in skirts, go to renaissance philosophy conventions for fun, and would really prefer to be writing.