"It's the End Of the World As We Know It." Vol. 3

Maybe we need to laugh to keep from crying? More things to look at instead of reality. An ongoing series of lists.

Since I’ve abandoned my New York Times app and have just been pleasantly reading books and listening to music and watching TV and eating tons of food in Portland during this minor vacation thing, I rely completely on my partner to tell me if, say, the world is about to crack open like an egg. Mostly she just says nothing, knowing me well enough to ration the Xanax accordingly.

Periodically I get a brief — very brief — update and it’s always bad, as expected, just the same as it was when I was completely dialed in and mainlining the news.

So, it appears to me, via smoke signals of a sort, that nothing has really changed and it’s still the end of the world or democracy as we know it and thus I keep making these lists. They will continue, I would assume, all summer and into the fall.

Save your sanity; keep the lighthouse in sight. Let’s watch some shows together.

If you’ve been following these lists, you know that they are not definitive, hefty, endlessly scrollable, enumerations meant to fade blankly from No. 13 to No. 233 and have you fall asleep. They are regular doses of suggestions, mostly for you to re-watch, because re-watching is a glorious thing, or to watch for the first time — what a gift that is for so many of you who haven’t ever seen these gems for whatever reason.

In this volume, I’m shifting to comedy. Once again, in the interest of my frail sanity, I will mention that I am not “forgetting” anything. Nothing is in order of importance. These are just the recommendations that come to mind in the moment. More lists will follow. Series you are excited about will undoubtedly appear there.

OK, let’s do this.

Five Comedies That Are Brilliant And Arguably Not Just Comedies.

• “30 Rock.” NBC. This is the OG of modern day brilliant comedies, in the network style. So much of network television for so many years — even in our current and ongoing Platinum Age — was just mediocre, but mostly those were dramas. Broadcast television was really good at getting the sitcom just right. In “30 Rock,” the goddess Tina Fey leads a stellar cast in a hyper-real show about a show that somehow gets funnier on each repeated watch. One of the most quotable, ridiculously funny sitcoms of the modern era and perfect for our current times, or, more accurately, surviving our current times.

• “Arrested Development.” Fox. I’ve made a huge mistake!

It’s true — maybe “Arrested Development” is the OG of modern day brilliant comedies? How about we say they both are, which would not in any way be wrong. They were slightly different wavelengths connected to the same comedy signal, which was capacious headed intelligent writers and note-perfect actors making magic out of absurdity.

• “Fleabag.” (BBC). A couple of things are non-negotiable here. 1) Phoebe Waller-Bridge is brilliant. 2) This is one of the best series ever at breaking the fourth wall. Maybe the best. 3) Bleak-funny and mere sad-funny have rarely been done so well. OK, great, we got those out of the way. They are mandatory acceptances. Moving on, I would also suggest, as I do of ALL series, to put the subtitles on. For “Fleabag,” it’s to capture every exquisitely detailed line, the nuance and pain, the searing part matched with the tossed-off ultra-clever part that you might have otherwise missed without reading the lines and hearing them simultaneously.

• “Catastrophe.” (Channel 4; Amazon Prime). If I was pressed — and these days I try never to be pressed because the world is already too heavy — I would say that “Catastrophe” is arguably the best example of a series expertly mixing comedy and drama in a way that creates debate not about what it is, fundamentally, but what it does best, ultimately. “Catastrophe” was brilliantly funny and phenomenally astute at portraying the quiet catastrophes of the human condition. One day we can all sit in a room and debate our favorites in this very limited field, but today I’m right about this.

• “The Thick Of It.” (BBC). Before “Succession,” before “Veep,” before pretty much fucking everything, there was “The Thick Of It” (and yes, the writers on that made both of those two now-iconic shows). Was this the first black comedy? No. Was this the first political satire? No. But was it the first searing political comedy? Uh, maybe? Anyway, never mind, because here’s all that matters: “The Thick Of It” was the best at everything. And to this day there is not a better bitter comedy and there’s not a series that has ever had one character beat the life out of so many other characters so effectively and with an almighty original dose of piss and vinegar, like this one. Politics makes you cry now. This makes you cry laughing, still.

Yes, of course there will be more comedy lists. Just start here. You’re running out of time before there is a law against laughing before dying. Go.