'South Side' (Comedy Central and Max, 2019-2022)

Comedies like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Great News and Girls5eva are the obvious legacies of 30 Rock. But there’s no show in the post-30 Rock epoch that quite captures its absurdist, Easter egg-y, frenetic-joke-machine brilliance more than the criminally under-discussed gem South Side, the funniest sitcom you’ve probably never heard of. Across three outstanding seasons and one network shift — from Comedy Central to Max — the show zeroes in on the lovable hustlers who work at and frequent a dinky rent-to-own business in inner-city South Chicago. Boasting a pitch-perfect ensemble, South Side showcases a Chicago microculture so specific that not all viewers — not even all Chicagoans — will understand every layer and nuance. And yet each laugh feels like a private in-joke between the writers and the audience. Behind the fun and weirdness, creators Diallo Riddle, Bashir Salahuddin and Michael Blieden audaciously chronicle issues like police brutality, gentrification and political corruption.