Sitcoms

Two couples and their single friend, all at different stages in their relationships, deal with the complications of dating, commitment, and marriage.

Leonard Hofstadter and Sheldon Cooper are both brilliant physicists working at Cal Tech in Pasadena, California. They are colleagues, best friends, and roommates, although in all capacities their relationship is always tested primarily by Sheldon's regimented, deeply eccentric, and non-conventional ways. They are also friends with their Cal Tech colleagues mechanical engineer Howard Wolowitz and astrophysicist Rajesh Koothrappali. The foursome spend their time working on their individual work projects, playing video games, watching science-fiction movies, or reading comic books. As they are self-professed nerds, all have little or no luck with women. When Penny, a pretty woman and an aspiring actress from Omaha, moves into the apartment across the hall from Leonard and Sheldon's, Leonard has another aspiration in life, namely to get Penny to be his girlfriend.

Sassy, streetwise Max works two jobs just to get by, one of which is waiting tables during the night shift at the retro-hip Williamsburg Diner. Sophisticated Caroline is an uptown trust fund princess who's having a run of bad luck that forces her to reluctantly give waitressing a shot. At first, Max sees Caroline as yet another in a long line of inept servers she must cover for, but she's surprised to find that Caroline has as much substance as she does style. When Caroline discovers Max's knack for baking amazing cupcakes, she sees a lucrative future for them, but they first need to raise the start-up money.

This sitcom is about the fairly ordinary daily lives of young newlywed New Yorkers, too-nice-for-his-own-good filmmaker Paul Buchman and his assertive partner Jamie Stemple Buchman, who are almost constantly (working up to) bickering and making up with each other and just about anybody else, notably his parents and siblings, her sister, their colleagues, friends, superintendent, and neighbors, psychotherapist, all kinds of staff, customers, officials, bystanders etc., even their dog Murray and his dog-walker.

Ray Barone seemingly has it all. A wonderful wife, a beautiful family, a great job, a nice house on Long Island. There's only one problem. His obnoxious parents (who live across the street) and his jealous brother are always getting in the way.

Christine is divorced from Richard but continues to see him as a best friend, even when he becomes involved with a woman, also named "Christine." Living in an apartment with her son Ritchie, her brother Matthew rents a separate room in an outbuilding and the two of them feed off the insecurities of the other implanted by their mother during their upbringing. "Old" Christine runs a gym with her best friend Barb, whose name describes her wit. Christine's insecurities are not helped by the other parents at a posh school she and Richard send their son to, one that is generally thought to be beyond the means of regular working people.

Four female New Yorkers gossip about their sex lives (or lack thereof) and find new ways to deal with being a woman in the late 1990s.

Meet the wildly dysfunctional Bluth family. This family was once at the height of real estate development in Orange County, California. But when the family business - the Bluth Company - goes bust, they're suddenly found penniless with their assets frozen. They move into their last remaining asset - the model home left over from their latest housing tract. Their luxury vehicles are replaced with a reminder of the family's former wealth: 'the stair car that accompanied their private jet'. The patriarch of the family is George Bluth - he's now in prison, and loving every minute of it. His wife Lucille and daughter Lindsay are spoiled socialites who can't handle getting kicked out of family restaurants. His son Buster is in his mid 30's and lives at home. His son George Oscar Bluth is a magician who started a group to get magicians to be taken seriously, and gets kicked out when his own tricks are revealed. Lindsay is married to a man named Tobias Funke, once a psychiatrist, who decides to become an actor. The only sane member of the family: Michael Bluth, along with his son George Michael, want nothing to do with the family business. But one bizarre circumstance after another keeps Michael and George Michael from leaving their eccentric family.

A raucous comedy about six dysfunctional thirty-something friends living in Chicago: shop owner Alex and her ex-fiance, Dave, who runs a food truck; crazy-in-love husband and wife duo Brad and Jane; Max, their perpetually unemployed friend, and singleton Penny, always in pursuit of the right guy.

Earl is a low-life who buys a winning lottery ticket, only to get hit by a car, losing the ticket in the process. He then realizes in the hospital that his bad luck is the result of karma in which fate punishes him for all the rotten things he's ever done in his life; therefore, he then decides to dedicate his life to making amends to all the people he has hurt in his life.

With a pay check that is lower than what the local beggar is earning, and with a wife and two children whose only interest is to rob him of his last cents, shoe-salesman Al Bundy is lucky if he can sit down in front of the TV with an ice-cold beer, or sneak out to the local Nudy bar every Tuesday night. Life isn't what it used to be when he was the star of the high-school football team, and when he scored four touch-downs in a single game.

Jess, a bubbly, off-beat teacher, who is known to burst into song, catches her boyfriend with another woman. Newly homeless, she moves into a loft with three single guys she's never met before. Nick, a jaded, law-school dropout isn't the best of company. Schmidt is a flashy, eccentric businessman who believes he is Yahweh's gift to women. Winston is a former athlete who doesn't know what to do, but really needs a win. Can this dysfunctional group handle the adorkable new girl?

Gay lawyer Will Truman (Eric McCormack) and straight interior designer Grace Adler (Debra Messing) are best friends living in New York City. Grace is engaged to a real jerk until the relationship falls apart and she moves in with Will. It's supposed to be temporary, until Grace finds her own place, but more and more it looks like a permanent arrangement. Grace's secretary and assistant is fun-loving wealthy socialite Karen Walker (Megan Mullally); Jack McFarland (Sean Hayes) is Will's flamboyant gay friend.

After his friends all go their separate ways, Joey Tribianni leaves New York for Hollywood to pursue his acting career full time. His sister Gina buys him a nice apartment, and he finds a new roommate in his 20-year old nephew Michael (Gina had him when she was 16), who is literally a rocket scientist. Michael's book smarts and Joey's people smarts allow them to help each other out whenever they can, and make them nice companions.

Mike, a Chicago police officer, meets fourth-grade teacher Molly one day when he speaks at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting and they fall in love, thanks in part to their mutual love of pie and the desire to resist it. Both face challenges in their quest to lose weight -- Molly from her slender sister and mother and Mike at the diner where he frequently eats. But having found each other, they will support each other as they try to achieve their goals, be it weight loss or Molly's decision to quit teaching and pursue her dream as a writer.

Single mom Christy has her hands full with two children, Violet and Roscoe, and maintaining newfound sobriety, when her passive-aggressive, recovering-alcoholic mother re-enters the picture, brimming with criticisms about Christy's life. As the daughter works to be the best mother she can and to overcome mistakes she made, she must also navigate dysfunctional relationships with romantic interests, and with her irresponsible ex-husband, Baxter. Despite the uphill battle, Christy tries to remain positive and stay on a path to help her reach her goals.

After a Jewish, high-voiced, woman from Flushing, New York gets fired from her job and dumped by her boyfriend, Fran Fine (Fran Drescher) is mistaken as applying for a nanny for widowed Maxwell Sheffield (Charles Shaughnessy), who has three children, Maggie (Nicholle Tom), Brighton (Benjamin Salisbury), and Grace (Madeline Zima), when she is stuck selling cosmetics in Manhattan. As she spends years there, she becomes great friends with the butler, Niles (Daniel Davis), and the three kids. She is good friends with the widowed man, and some romance sparks through the years.

In this popular African-American sitcom, Will Smith (played by