Sketch Comedy

"And now for something completely different."

— Announcer (John Cleese), Monty Python's Flying Circus

A comedy show which is predominantly short sketches, often related. Also known as a Sketch Show, it's a descendant of the Variety Show.

They usually have a stable of comic stereotypes, used in a series of sketches, with no continuity. Each show will include a few sketches about each of the iconic characters interspersed with one-off sketches.

Particularly successful sketches may be spun-off into a Sitcom or a movie (such is the case of Saturday Night Live, The Kids in the Hall, and SCTV).

The show may include musical numbers or a stand-up act, but only as a minor element. Sometimes, when the various iconic characters are shown interacting, the show may border on being a plotless Sitcom. Conversely, a Negative Continuity Sitcom may be accused of being a sketch show.

Compare with Variety Show. See also Anthology Film, which might be this applied to the big screen. Can overlap with Gag Series, which also emphasizes jokes over plot and anything else.

---

Examples

• The 1491s, an indigenous sketch comedy group
• Aaagh! It's the Mr. Hell Show!
• Absolutely
• The Adam and Joe Show
• All That was a teenage sketch comedy show on Nickelodeon, and had a movie based on the "Good Burger" sketch (featuring Kel Mitchell and Kenan Thompson). One of the cast members (Kenan Thompson) would later be a cast member for Saturday Night Live (becoming the first Nickelodeon veteran to be an SNL cast member, and the first one to be born after SNL's premiere year, 1975). In 2019, it was revived with Thompson as executive producer.
• Almost Live!
• The Amanda Show, All That's Spinoff. Featured Taran Killam, who, like Kenan Thompson, was a Nickelodeon child star who is now a cast member on Saturday Night Live and was born after SNL premiered in 1975. Unlike Thompson, however, Killam was born in 1982 and appeared on SNL's rival sketch show, MADtv (1995) ^note  becoming the youngest cast member on that show at only 19 years old before moving on to SNL.
• The Andy Milonakis Show
• Alexei Sayles Stuff: as well as its follow-ups, The All New Alexei Sayles Show and Alexei Sayles Merry Go Round
• The Armando Iannucci Shows
• The Armstrong and Miller Show
• asdfmovie: Really short clips of minimally-drawn characters flavored with Surreal Humor and Black Comedy
• Astronomy Club: The Sketch Show
• At Last the 1948 Show
• Attack of the Show!
• Aunty Donna's Big 'Ol House of Fun
• The Aunty Jack Show
• Australia You're Standing In It
• BackDoor
• Becoming YouTube features egregious amounts of this in its Mockumentary segments.
• The Benny Hill Show
• The Ben Stiller Show
• The Big Gay Sketch Show: A sketch show on Logo that can best be described as Saturday Night Live + MADtv (1995) + a lot of jokes about the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning sexuality lifestyle (some of which are, according to critics, a little more well-written and not as reliant on stereotypes than what other sketch shows have done). Erica Ash and Kate McKinnon stand out as the only two cast members from this show who have moved on to others: Erica Ash was on "MADtv (1995)" during its last season on FOX (season 14; 2008-2009 season) while Kate McKinnon has been a cast member on SNL since the middle of season 37 and has become one of the show's breakout stars (as well as being the first openly lesbian cast member^note contrast with Denny Dillon and Danitra Vance, who were lesbian cast members and came before Kate, but their true sexualities weren't known until years after they left the show and the first LGBTQ+ cast member to last more than a season).
• Big Train
• A Bit of Fry and Laurie
• A Black Lady Sketch Show: A sketch show on HBO that is created by and for Black women produced by Issa Rae of Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl and Insecure fame.
• Blue Collar TV: Made by the same producers who created MADtv (1995)
• Bo' Selecta!
• Bruiser
• The Burkiss Way
• Burnistoun
• Buzz (2000)
• BYU Divine Comedy
• Caméra Café
• The Catherine Tate Show
• Chappelle's Show: One of Comedy Central's most popular sketch shows
• Characters Welcome
• The Chaser's War On Everything
• Cheech & Chong's Still Smokin and Get Out of My Room are non-television versions of this trope.
• Come Fly With Me
• Cowards
• Crank Yankers
• The D-Generation
• The Dana Carvey Show
• The Dangerous Brothers
• Didis Comedy Show German sketch show series starring comedian Dieter Hallervorden.
• Divertis
• Divertis (Tv Show)
• Donny And Marie: A late 1970s comedy/music variety show on ABC headlined by the Osmond family
• Do Not Adjust Your Set
• Drew Carey's Improv-A-Ganza
• The Edge, a 1992-1993 sketch show that lasted only one season. However, it is especially notable for having been created by David Mirkin of The Simpsons fame and having Julie Brown (not to be confused with "Downtown" Julie Brown) as the lead, along with a pre-Friends Jennifer Aniston, Tom Kenny, Jill Talley, Paul Feig, and Wayne Knight from Seinfeld. It also had cartoon bumpers created by Bill Plympton, plus the recurring gag of the entire cast getting violently killed during the opening.
• The Edge and Christian Show That Totally Reeks of Awesomeness, on the WWE Network.
• The Electric Company (1971) (the 1970s version featuring a young Morgan Freeman^note who considers the show an Old Shame that he only did to get his foot in the acting door, Bill Cosby^note who did the show as part of his college work for his doctorate, and Skip Hinnant^note better known as "the voice of Fritz the Cat")
• Exit 57
• Famalam
• Fast and Loose
• Fast Forward
• The Fast Show
• The work of Foil, Arms and Hog , an Irish Comedy trio
• Fist of Fun
• The Frantics
• Fridays, an early 1980s sketch show that aired on ABC on Friday nights at 11:30pm (later moved to midnight thanks to ABC giving "Nightline" an extra day). Played out like Saturday Night Live with stronger writing, more pointed sociopolitical satire, a louder studio audience, and longer sketches^note their magnum opus, The Ronnie Horror Picture Show, clocks in at 17 minutes. The show had Michael Richards ^note (yes, the same Michael Richards who played Kramer on Seinfeld...and later got in trouble for using the n-word during his stand-up act at the Laugh Factory), Larry David ^note (the creator of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm), Rich Hall ^note (an SNL cast member who was on the show during the tenth season and was the inspiration behind Simpsons character Moe Szyslak), and Melanie Chartoff ^note (the voice of Didi Pickles and her mom, Minka, on Rugrats and its Spinoff All Grown Up; on Fridays, she was the hot chick of the cast and the anchor for Friday Night News) as cast members. Despite being considered the Cracked to Saturday Night Live's MAD magazine, at one point, Fridays was considered better than Saturday Night Live (which, in the early 1980s, was floundering thanks to Jean Doumanian's ineptitude as show runner). Fridays lasted until 1982 after ABC failed at making Fridays a primetime sketch show instead of a late-night one, as it suffered a time change in 1981 when ABC wanted Nightline to air five days a week instead of four, due to the popularity of primetime soap opera Dallas. The sequence in the movie, Man on the Moon where Andy Kaufman (Jim Carrey) fights with Michael Richards (Norm Macdonald) over a sketch about covert marijuana smokers dining out at a restaurant (which turns out to be a trick cooked up by executives as a prank and to test the limits of live TV, as Fridays always did) was based on an actual moment from that show.
• French and Saunders
• Gabba Gabba
• The Gillies Report: Combining sketch comedy with political satire.
• Guaranteed* Video: Creators of New Kids on the Rock, an Affectionate Parody of 90s Kid Com tropes, as well as assorted other comedic shorts hosted on YouTube.
• Harry and Paul
• Harry Enfield and Chums
• Hee Haw: A long-running sketch show filled with American Southern/country humor. On the Simpsons episode where Homer becomes the manager to a struggling country singer who tries to seduce him, there was a parody of this show called Yahoo!
• Hello Cheeky
• History of the World Part II
• Homo Zapping
• Horrible Histories
• How To Irritate People — A pre-Monty Python's Flying Circus TV special, starring many of the eventual Monty Python team in educating the audience on how to be as irritating as possible.
• Human Giant
• Hype, a WB sketch comedy show featuring sketches that made fun of celebrities and pop culture. Lasted one season. Included then-future MADtv (1995) cast members Frank Caliendo and Daniele Gaither — and featured writing by former SNL writer and cast member Terry Sweeney ^note no relation to Julia Sweeney; Terry was a writer for Jean Doumanian's abysmal 1980-1981 season, was cast member during SNL's 11th season in 1985 [which almost got the show canceled due to falling ratings and audiences getting sick of the show], and is the first male SNL cast member who was openly gay (and had a gay lover who also worked with him as his comedy writing partner, Lanier Laney)
• Important Things with Demetri Martin
• Incredible Crew: Cartoon Network's last live-action original show. Features Jeremy Shada (the voice of Finn the Human on Adventure Time) as a cast member.
• In Living Color! — FOX's urban (read: black) answer to Saturday Night Live. Featured Jim Carrey (who originally was supposed to be a Saturday Night Live cast member), Jamie Foxx ^note  before he became famous for more dramatic roles, Jennifer Lopez ^note  as a member of the dance troupe, The Fly Girls, and Damon Wayans ^note  who was on SNL for a season in 1985, but got fired after playing a heterosexual character as a Camp Gay character, of which Lorne Michaels didn't approve..
• Inside Amy Schumer
• I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson — Tim Robinson, a former Saturday Night Live player, stars in an absurdist Netflix sketch comedy.
• Jam
• The Jews Are Coming
• John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme — (Season 1-8), Season 9's more of a cross between Sitcom and AnthologySeries prior to the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Kaamelott
• KaBlam!
• KDOC First Night — a one time sketch show meant to ring in the new year for a local independent TV station, but one which gained infamy for the wrong reasons
• The Kentucky Fried Movie — Written by the ZAZ team and directed by John Landis. Basically a sketch comedy movie rather than Anthology Film, with one long segment ("A Fistful of Yen", which runs a half-hour and takes up over a third of the film), and a whole bunch of other segments which aren't any longer than six minutes apiece.
• Key & Peele: Comedy Central's latest sketch show, featuring MADtv (1995)'s Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele. This show, along with the Cartoon Network's MAD, can be considered a Spiritual Successor of MADtv (1995).
• The Kids in the Hall — a Canadian sketch show produced by Lorne Michaels. Mark McKinney was a cast member for both this show and SNL.
• Kroll Show
• The Late Show (1992)
• The League of Gentlemen is somewhere between this and a Sitcom.
• Limmy's Show
• Loriot had a hugely successful sketch show in Germany during the late 70s, and is now widely considered one of the giants of German comedy. The humor revolves mostly around people getting in slightly embarassing situations, which quickly become worse as they attempt to maintain appearances in the hope that nobody will notice, mirroring and satirizing the Zeitgeist of the decade.
• La Caravana (The Caravan) from Mexico.
• Los Rayos Gamma (The Gamma Rays) Puerto Rican comedy TV show dedicated to social satire.
• Little Britain
• MADtv — Saturday Night Live's rival sketch show from 1995 to 2009 (with a short-lived and not very good revival in 2016). Is considered the longest-running sketch show on FOX and the longest-running dueling show to SNL. Has a Spiritual Successor in the form of the Cartoon Network sketch show MAD and Comedy Central's Key & Peele and two cast members who have jumped ship from MADtv (1995) to be on SNL (Jeff Richards — who lasted on SNL from 2001 to mid-2004 — and Taran Killam — who joined the SNL cast in 2010 and left in 2016). It should be noted that the premise of a sketch comedy show based on MAD Magazine (be it animated, like MAD, or live-action, like this show) is not exactly a new idea: in the early 1970s, a pilot was made for an animated sketch show based on MAD Magazine, using all the artwork for their movie and TV show parodies (the pilot had parodies of The Godfather and Columbo), along with their satirical pieces, like "The Parent Awards." The pilot has never aired on TV (as executives thought it wouldn't appeal to anyone) and now exists as a rare treasure that's somewhere out on the Internet.
• Man Stroke Woman is a British Sketch Comedy show starring Amanda Abbington, Ben Crompton, Daisy Haggard, Meredith MacNeill, Nicholas Burns and Nick Frost. Many of the sketches have to do with interactions with men and women, but that isn't all there is. There are many recurring characters throughout the show, such as a man who refuses to read instructions with terrible results, a father who keeps accidentally switching his baby son with objects, and a husband whose wife keeps bringing in bizarre objects she bought and is upset when he doesn't like them. "You can never just say I look nice, can you?"
• The Mary Whitehouse Experience
• The Micallef Program
• Mind of Mencia: The successor to Chappelle's Show. Achieved some controversy after Mencia was accused by several comics of stealing jokes in his stand-up act.
• Modern Toss
• Monty Python's Flying Circus - spawned two sketch movies: And Now For Something Completely Different (a collection of favorite sketches from the series) and Monty Python's Meaning Of Life. Is considered one of the most popular sketch shows listed here.
  • Live at the Hollywood Bowl is a cross between a sketch movie and a concert film.
• Mosquito: Of the more surreal variety.
• Mr. Show: based on the independent comedy scene of The '90s, headed by David Cross and Bob Odenkirk.
  • It received a revival in 2015 as With Bob And David, with much of the same cast, now 15 years older.
• The Muppet Show
• Muppets Tonight
• The Nick Cannon Show, the third spin-off from All That starring Nick Cannon.
• Nick Studio 10
• Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy
• Nogizaka Skits
• Not Only... But Also
• Not Necessarily the News
• Not the Nine O'Clock News
• Olde English Comedy
• The Onion Movie
• Only an Excuse?
• The Other Ones: All their material and shows, outside of some brief audience interaction, are based on sketch comedy.
• The Peter Serafinowicz Show
• Pop Team Epic - The anime adaptation.
• Portlandia: Features Fred Armisen from Saturday Night Live
• Puppet Power: Best described as KaBlam! with puppets.
• Pushing Up Daisies (Also known as Coming Up Next)
• Q, a series of anarchic freeform sketch comedy shows created by and starring Spike Milligan.
• The Red Green Show
• Right Now Kapow
• Robot Chicken, a stop-motion animated sketch show.
• Royal Canadian Air Farce
• Roundhouse: Before All That, Nickelodeon had this sketch show on their SNICK line-up.
• Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In — a chaotic late-1960s sketch show that, very much like SNL, aired on NBC and was considered edgy and shocking in its day (unlike SNL, however, Laugh-In didn't last as long). Lorne Michaels wrote for Laugh-In before he created Saturday Night Live. It had a one-episode Spinoff on ABC called Turn-On that was so bad, it got cancelled as quickly as it premiered on some affilates (other affiliates either didn't air the show at all or aired the entire thing before deciding to can it). A second episode of Turn-On was produced but never broadcast (though some museums dedicated to TV history have shown it, often as part of exhibits dedicated to TV shows that were either really bad/bizarre, very short-lived, or practically unknown to modern audiences). Here's a clip of the sketches that would have aired had the show continued.
• Rutland Weekend Television
• Saturday Night Live — longest-running sketch show on NBC and American television in general (is now in its 46th season and just surpassed its 900th episode); has survived everything from national crises to fluctuating pop culture trends to rival sketch shows seeking to take its place (with varying levels of success) to Seasonal Rot in the form of cast and crew turnover, threats of cancellation, criticism over not hiring more minority cast members and treating their minority cast members unfairly, and fickle audiences who embrace the show one minute, then trash it the next and is currently trying to survive a pandemic and America trying to rebuild after Donald Trump's notorious stint as U.S. President. Has been considered the place for young sketch and improv comedians and comedy writers to gain fame since 1975.
• The Savage Eye
• School of Comedy
• SCTV: A Canadian sketch show that was like Saturday Night Live in that it had cast members from the Second City improv company (some of which were originally from Canada) and aired on NBC. However, SCTV was more about making fun of television shows, movies, and the entertainment world at large^note the Canadian episodes have the series premise set up as a group of friends who loved watching TV, but didn't like what was on it, so they decided to create their own TV channel and wasn't into making fun of current events, politics, social issues, race, sex, or drugs (though references to those things were often intertwined with mocking popular media, the entertainment world, and its tropes and cliches), like SNL and Fridays did. Robin Duke, Tony Rosato, and Martin Short are the only cast members from SCTV to be hired as cast members for Saturday Night Live^note Catherine O'Hara, Harold Ramis, and John Candy were also asked to be cast members, but all of them declined the chance, and Andrea Martin auditioned for the show in the mid-1980s, but was rejected. SCTV cast members who have hosted SNL include: John Candy (season 8), Catherine O'Hara (seasons 16 and 17), Rick Moranis [both by himself (season 15) and with Dave Thomas (season 8)], Dave Thomas [Thomas only co-hosted with Moranis (season 8); he never hosted by himself], and Martin Short (seasons 12, 22, and 38) [with Martin Short being the only SCTV cast member who has hosted SNL more than once, and Catherine O'Hara being the only female cast member from SCTV to host and the only SNL cast member who never appeared in an episode to come back and host]. Eugene Levy almost hosted SNL in 1985 (with John Candy as co-host), but SNL's season 10 budget was cut due to a writer's strike and NBC planning on canceling Saturday Night Live, leading to a lot of scrapped episodes. The closest Levy got to appearing on SNL in any capacity was when his son, Dan, hosted in 2021.
• Seth Mac Farlanes Cavalcade Of Cartoon Comedy: A one-episode special that aired on FOX.
• Sherman's Showcase
• The Shivering Truth
• Short Ribbs, a 1989 sketch show broadcast only in Los Angeles, featured Billy Barty, Patty Maloney and three other male dwarfs. Notable also because two of the show's writers filed separate lawsuits against Barty in small claims court for unpaid wages. Barty lost both lawsuits.
• SMBC Theater, a sketch comedy series on YouTube by the makers of SMBC.
• So Random!: A retool of Sonny with a Chance after Demi Lovato left the show for rehab.
• Sorry, I've Got No Head
• The Sifl and Olly Show: A bizarre sketch show on MTV consisting of sock puppets and very low production values.
• The Sketch Show, both the British original and the American remake that aired on FOX (and got canceled).
• Smack the Pony
• The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer
• Spitting Image
• The Stan Freberg Show on radio in 1957 was an earlier example.
• Stankervision: Aired on MTV in 2005, then ended the same year despite high ratings. Was cancelled due to problems with sponsors.
• The State: An MTV sketch show/hidden camera prank show. Plays out like an early, more outrageous, yet less gross version of Jackass.
• The Steam Video Company
• Studio 3 is a children's example that airs between shows on the ABC3 channel in Australia.
• Studio C, a TV series on BYU tv featuring current and alumni members of BYU Divine Comedy.
• Stupid!
• Switch! (1997) — German show spoofing various other TV programs.
• La Télé des Inconnus
• Thank God You're Here
• That Mitchell and Webb Look
• Thompson
• Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! - Sketch comedy's worst nightmare.
  • Check It Out! With Dr. Steve Brule - Sketch comedy's worst nightmare's nightmare.
• The Tracey Ullman Show - best known for introducing the famous, long-running, animated sitcom The Simpsons.
• TripTank - A Comedy Central animated sketch show.
• Turkey Television - Another Canadian sketch comedy that ran on Nickelodeon from 1985 to 1986. It was made by the creators of You Can't Do That On Television and even starred some of the same cast!
• The Two Ronnies
• Uncle Grandpa is a cross between this and an animated sitcom.
• Upright Citizens Brigade
• Varan TV
• Vacanta Mare
• Vacanta Mare (TV show)
• Victoria Wood As Seen On TV
• Virtual San Looking was one featuring a number of popular Virtual YouTubers at the time.
• Viva La Dirt League
• Wacko — a short-lived Saturday daytime (noon EST) show on CBS in 1977, with hosts Bo Kaprall and Julie McWhirter.
• Was guckst du?! — could be roughly described as Chappelle's Show in Germany, only with Turkish and Central/East Asian minorities.
• The Warp Zone. A YouTube channel based around video game sketches.
• Wayne and Shuster
• The Weather
• The Wedge
• Welcome Freshmen: A Nickelodeon sketch show featuring jokes about high school and being a teenager. Became a Sitcom in its later years, which wasn't received well by its fans.
• The Whitest Kids U' Know — an independent comedy sketch show that aired on IFC and Fuse from 2007 to 2011. Plays out like Monty Python meets Mr. Show.
• Whose Line Is It Anyway?, an Improv sketch show.
• Wizards with Guns
• Die Wochenshow, a News Parody, was in Germany of the 1990s and early 2000s, the prime example for Sketch Comedy.
• Wonder Showzen, an adult parody of Sesame Street.
• World Peace
• The Wrong Door
• Yeralash
• You Can't Do That on Television, a Canadian kids' sketch show which Nickelodeon's American channel imported. It was heavily inspired by Laugh-In. Had three short-lived spinoffs - Whatever Turns You On, Don't Look Now and Turkey Television.
• You're Skitting Me
• Your Show of Shows: The televised sketch show that paved the way for such shows as Laugh-In, Monty Python and SNL, among others.
• ZZZap!

---