‘It’s an inherent comfort zone’: why the American sitcom has endured

“More than jazz, or musical theater, or morbid obesity, television is the true American art form!” So goes the country wisdom of chipper NBC page Kenneth Ellen Parcell, a young man raised on the Bible and boob tube in equal measure, his religious devotion extended to TV as much as his organized faith. The supporting character from the cult favorite 30 Rock – the series informed by the lineage of small-screen comedy more than any other – would be the ideal viewer for the new CNN docuseries History of the Sitcom, which channels his affection and admiration for the format into a comprehensive survey of its evolution and impact. The eight episodes cover a broad swath of pop culture stretching from postwar prosperity to our scattered streaming present, tracing the national narrative through beloved, 22-minute time capsules.

John Ealer, the executive producer, was finalizing a similar project about late-night talkshows for CNN when the suits asked about any other ideas he might have. Though considering the breadth of the subject raised his blood pressure, the sitcom presented itself as the next logical step. “After the initial period of panic, you start to look at the fabric of the sitcom and what it’s meant,” he tells the Guardian over the phone. “You realize, one, it’s something we can all relate to, but also two, not everyone is going to be familiar with it. So you need to tell a story that draws a line through it all, which we can all identify with. The biggest line is the development of America, told through the sitcom screen. We can track cultural issues, whether that’s the evolution of the family unit or the workplace or race.”

Set to air consecutively this Sunday, the first two episodes construct such mini-chronologies intended to gauge the country’s changing sociopolitical temperature. A Family Matter charts the initial myth-making and consequent alteration of the nuclear family unit, from the wholesome 50s to the social upheavals spearheaded by Norman Lear in the 70s to the rise of conservatism in the 80s that brought about the Reaganite intergenerational culture clash of Family Ties. Sex and the Sitcom explores shifting mores of gender and sexuality, connecting the famed Maude abortion episode to the liberated antics of Carrie Bradshaw and pals. In the coming weeks, other episodes will delve into the group-of-friends subgenre, maturing perceptions of race and on-screen representation, and out-of-society premises from Gilligan’s Island to the Good Place.

A scene from Good Times

Photograph: CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images

Faced with a wide variety of running themes and key names, Ealer and his team kept their focus on the commonalities that brought the same ubiquity to such drastically different shows. “At its core, sitcoms are groups of people in a situation that is relatively cyclical and stable,” he explains. “They can have adventures or conflict or drama or humor within that situation, with us knowing we’ll generally end up where we started. It creates a safe space in which to laugh, somewhere we can go for a half-hour, an hour, two hours. You can have fun knowing there’s no threat of an ending. There’s a protective environment in the situation remaining the same. It’s an inherent comfort zone.”

Everyone has an innate understanding of that “inherent comfort”, and their own relationship with it. As a Gen Xer, Ealer remembers getting home from school by 3 in time for I Love Lucy reruns; his co-executive-producer, Lyle Gamm, cut his boyhood trick-or-treating short when Halloween landed on a Thursday, so that he’d be home to catch NBC’s Must-See TV lineup. Some part of the human brain has been hardwired to seek out and respond to the soothing reliability of the sitcom, even as viewing habits have mutated with the advent of online video. “A couple of the other executives in my department are younger than me, and they didn’t really grow up watching sitcoms,” Gamm says. “And yet they still have a close familiarity with them, and that comes from streaming.

“If you look at what people watch on streaming platforms, it’s all sitcoms,” Ealer adds. “What’re the most valuable properties out there? Friends, The Office and Seinfeld, things people can watch over and over again. The Office pretty much built Netflix.” Though interest in the sitcom hasn’t waned in the slightest, it has hit something of a fallow period in terms of new productions. Fewer pilots are breaking through to a season order, and even fewer demonstrate staying power, while the collapse of the appointment-watching weekly calendar in favor of on-demand binge-watching hasn’t helped. “I would agree that the sitcom is at a low point in its cycle, in terms of the shows being created – not in terms of quality, just the number getting made,” Ealer says.“The one thing history tells us is that the sitcom goes in cycles. It’s been declared dead many times. In the early 80s, it was conservatism rising, and then again in the early 00s, as reality TV was the new thing. Sitcoms responded with Modern Family and Black-ish.”

The cast of Family Ties.

Photograph: NBC/NBCUniversal/Getty Images

Gamm has no doubt that the the sitcom will re-adapt once again, this time by incorporating fresh viewpoints to break new grounds of storytelling. He singles out the remake of Lear’s classic One Day at a Time as an exemplar, its choice to reimagine its central family as Cuban-Americans offering audiences something they hadn’t seen before. “I think the sitcom is going to become more global,” Gamm says. “As the world gets smaller, and TV networks and streamers have more of a worldwide reach, we’re going to see sitcoms more inclusive not just in terms of race and gender, but in terms of global identity.”

Soon enough, everyone will be able to see themselves reflected in the screen, but the 184 interviews conducted for the upcoming miniseries illustrate how all the major architects of the sitcom made it part of their lives before joining its pantheon. “It’s the characters, more than anything,” Gamm says. “These are characters people identify with, feel comfortable with, and welcome into their home.” The great advantage of TV is its longevity, that the sheer number of hours logged with Frasier Crane or Samantha Stevens or Leslie Knope can make them seem as real and dear to us as our closest confidants. At a certain point, our favorite episodes cease to be entertainment so much as a way for us to spend time with people we care about. Through America’s upheavals and revolutions, we could always return to the apartment sets and laugh tracks that feel like home.

In summing it all up, Ealer echoes the reassuring theme songs of Friends, Gilmore Girls, Cheers and so many others: “Whatever is happening, they’re there for you.”

• History of the Sitcom starts on CNN on 11 July