The best free comedy series to binge on The Roku Channel
The best free comedy series to binge on The Roku Channel
Great casts and tons of episodes make these four sitcoms seriously hard to turn off.
Picking a comedy to binge is very personal. You’re basically deciding which group of fictional weirdos you want hanging around your living room for the next few weeks. The show has to be funny, obviously, but it also needs enough episodes to keep you busy, characters you don’t get tired of, and stories that are easy to follow when you’re also eating dinner or messing around on your phone. The Roku Channel has a bunch of sitcoms that hit that sweet spot, and these four all give you a completely different kind of binge. Here are the best binge-worthy comedy shows streaming on The Roku Channel right now.
Best binge-worthy comedy shows streaming on The Roku Channel
Best fast binge: ‘2 Broke Girls’
Max and Caroline fail upward so often on “2 Broke Girls” that you almost have to respect it. Kat Dennings plays Max, a Brooklyn waitress who expects pretty much everything to go wrong. Beth Behrs plays Caroline, a former heiress who loses her money but definitely doesn’t lose her confidence. They meet at the Williamsburg Diner, move in together, and decide Max’s cupcakes could be their ticket out of being broke. It sounds simple… it never is.
This show moves. The jokes come fast, the money problems never stop, and every new business idea has at least a decent chance of ending in total humiliation. Dennings’ deadpan delivery and Behrs’ much bigger reactions make the friendship work, while Jennifer Coolidge, Garrett Morris, Jonathan Kite, and Matthew Moy keep the diner scenes loud and weird. Some of the jokes have aged better than others, so fair warning there. But with 138 episodes, a running savings total, and a new disaster waiting around every corner, there are plenty of reasons to give this one a go.
2 Broke Girls
Comedy about the unlikely friendship that develops between two very different young women who meet waitressing at a diner in trendy Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and form a bond over one day owning their own successful cupcake business. Only one thing stands in their way – they’re broke.
Best hangout binge: ‘The Neighborhood’
Calvin Butler would probably hate being called cozy, but “The Neighborhood” is a very cozy show. Cedric the Entertainer plays Calvin, a proud Los Angeles homeowner who isn’t exactly thrilled when the overly friendly Dave Johnson moves in next door. Max Greenfield plays Dave like a human golden retriever. He wants Calvin to like him so badly that he usually ends up making everything more awkward. Naturally, Calvin can’t get rid of him.
The show starts as a culture-clash comedy, but that setup slowly turns into something much warmer. Calvin and Dave become real friends, their wives Tina and Gemma build their own relationship, and the Butler and Johnson families basically become one big group that’s always in each other’s business. Cedric and Greenfield are great opposites, while Tichina Arnold and Beth Behrs make sure the guys don’t take over the whole thing. Eight seasons give all those relationships time to grow, but the episodes stay light enough that you can jump in without doing homework. It’s easy, friendly, and exactly the kind of sitcom you leave on until bedtime.
The Neighborhood
The nicest guy in the Midwest moves his family into a tough neighborhood in Los Angeles where not everyone appreciates his extreme neighborliness. That includes their new next-door neighbor Calvin.
Best romance binge: ‘Mike & Molly’
Sometimes a sitcom doesn’t need a wild premise. It just needs two people you really want to see make it. “Mike & Molly” follows Chicago police officer Mike Biggs and elementary school teacher Molly Flynn after they meet at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. Billy Gardell gives Mike this tired, gentle sweetness, while Melissa McCarthy makes Molly warm, impulsive, and just chaotic enough to keep their life from ever getting too comfortable.
The romance gives the binge a clear path. You get the awkward dates, family introductions, wedding, career changes, fights, reconciliations, and their long effort to become parents. Basically, you get the whole relationship instead of watching a show that ends halfway through it. The supporting cast is stacked too. Katy Mixon, Swoosie Kurtz, Reno Wilson, and Rondi Reed can all take over an episode without making Mike and Molly feel like background characters. The comedy gets broader in the later seasons, especially once McCarthy gets more room to go completely off the rails, but the affection never disappears. This is a great one when you want something funny, familiar, and genuinely sweet.
Mike & Molly
A comedy about a working class Chicago couple who find love at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting.
Best emotional binge: ‘Mom’
Quick warning: “Mom” can sneak up on you. It starts as a pretty broad comedy about Christy, a newly sober single mother played by Anna Faris, trying to rebuild her life while dealing with Bonnie, the mother who messed up a big chunk of it. Allison Janney plays Bonnie with absolutely no shame, which is exactly what the character needs. She’s selfish, dramatic, needy, and unbelievably funny, sometimes all in the same scene.
Then the show gets deeper. Christy and Bonnie’s recovery group grows into a full ensemble, with Mimi Kennedy, Jaime Pressly, Beth Hall, and Kristen Johnston playing women who’ve all made mistakes and are still trying to pull their lives together. The series talks about relapse, grief, relationships, illness, and addiction without suddenly forgetting it’s supposed to be funny. That balance is what makes it so hard to stop. You want the jokes, but you also start caring about whether these women are going to be okay. Eight seasons let the characters change in ways sitcom characters usually don’t, so the binge actually feels like it’s building toward something. You may start it as background TV, but it probably won’t stay that way.
Mom
Aan irreverent and outrageous take on true family love‐and dysfunction. Newly sober single mom Christy struggles to raise two children in a world full of temptations and pitfalls. Testing her sobriety is her formerly estranged mother, now back in Christy’s life and eager to share passive-aggressive insights into her daughter’s many mistakes.
More binge-worthy comedy TV shows on The Roku Channel:
‘Married… with Children’
Married… with Children
Al Bundy is an unsuccessful middle aged shoe salesman with a miserable life and an equally dysfunctional family. He hates his job, his wife is lazy, his son is dysfunctional (especially with women), and his daughter is dim-witted and promiscuous.
‘Frasier’
Frasier
After many years spent at the “Cheers” bar, Frasier moves back home to Seattle to work as a radio psychiatrist after his policeman father gets shot in the hip on duty.
‘The Drew Carey Show’
The Drew Carey Show
Drew is an assistant director of personnel in a Cleveland department store and he has been stuck there for ten years. Other than fighting with co-worker Mimi, his hobbies include drinking beer and not being able to get dates. To make a few extra bucks he has a micro-brewery going in his garage with his buddies.
‘Corner Gas’
Corner Gas
Following the adventures of a bunch of nobodies who get up to a whole lot of nothing in the fictional prairie town of Dog River, Saskatchewan, Corner Gas focuses on the life (or lack thereof) of Brent LeRoy, proprietor of a gas station that is the only stop for miles around and a hub of action on the Prairies.