Best sitcom of all time, according to Metacritic

How can any of us define what is the best of all time? For some people, thinking about the best TV show or movie of all time is like asking them what their favorite medium is. But saying something is your favorite movie or TV show doesn’t automatically mean it’s the best. For some, being the best means you have to be influential or that the end result has to make some sort of grand statement. And more importantly, when the question “What is the best of all time?” ask, do we ask ourselves or rely on outside sources?

The critic’s voice is important, but it can also be ignored if the critic doesn’t like the show or movie as much as we do, or if they just hate what we love. But when we accept that critics’ voices are worth listening to (and they are), then it comes down to Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes in terms of the best options for aggregating dozens (and sometimes, in the case of big-budget films, hundreds) of reviews from around the web and the world , to determine what might be best. Metacritic is probably the best option for two reasons. First, Metacritic doesn’t pull information from hundreds of random sources. Often the reviews he compiles, even for the biggest new movie, are 50 or so essays or articles from the most popular on the web. And second, because its numbers are directly correlated to the ratings a critic actually assigns (as opposed to the main competition, whose scores simply reflect a positive or negative review), the composite scores are more accurate for whether a show is performing. actually good.

So with all of that out of the way, we’re left with the following question: What does Metacritic think is the best sitcom of all time? The image above may have given you a clue, but if not, let’s clarify that the answer is the UK version of The Office with 97 points. When it comes to influence, few shows can claim to have had as much influence (without even realizing it) than The Office, created and written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. For a show with such a deliberately small premise—a documentary film crew follows the daily lives of people who work at a paper company in the English town of Slough—The Office is a show that quickly spread across the pond in the United States, and continues to have a big impact.

Leaving aside the fact that Gervais and his co-star Martin Freeman became world-famous for playing, respectively, the arrogant and clownish office manager David Brent and the capable and lovelorn paper salesman Tim. You can even leave aside the fact that the series inspired the widely acclaimed American remake helped Steve Carell and John Krasinski become major stars (for playing American counterparts David and Tim). Think how many modern sitcoms from Abbott Elementary to “St. Denis Medical” essentially come from the same mockumentary style. The Office is among the few (at best) other sitcoms that have truly shaped the genre over the decades.