‘The State’ and 7 Other ’90s Sketch Comedy Shows You Forgot You Loved

Apr 22, 2023

Hey ’90s kids, what was it about your favorite decade that made everyone so hungry to devour sketch comedy?

We’re not talking about Saturday Night Live, the venerable sketch factory that yukked it up in the ’90s with the likes of Chris Farley, Molly Shannon, Adam Sandler, Cheri Oteri, Will Ferrell and Norm Macdonald. Lose SNL and you’re still left with dozens of sketch shows, from In Living Color and MADtv to Kids in the Hall and the still influential Mr. Show. Up-and-coming networks like Comedy Central, MTV and Fox (which had only launched in 1986) couldn't get enough sketch. With talented but unknown comedians willing to work fast and cheap, TV execs ordered up shows as fast as they could cancel them. There was Exit 57, the sketch precursor to Strangers with Candy starring Stephen Colbert, Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello. There was Tompkins Square, Townsend Television, The Jenny McCarthy Show, The Tracey Ullman Show, The Weird Al Show, The Martin Short Show — you get the idea.

But by the 2000s, networks in search of cheap programming turned their attention to reality shows like COPS and The Real World, explains Jason Klamm, comedian, filmmaker and author of the upcoming book We’re Not Worthy: From In Living Color to Mr. Show, How 90s Sketch TV Changed the Face of Comedy. With MTV and Fox looking elsewhere, many young comics interested in sketch, like the guys in Lonely Island, turned their attention to YouTube.

Sketch comedy on television still exists in the 2020s, of course, but it's easy to make the argument that the 1990s were the genre's golden age, with seemingly every improv or sketch troupe in the country getting a shot at the spotlight. I recently revisited those halcyon days with Klamm, taking time to remember eight sketch shows that are worth another look today.