There’s no show quite like Tina Fey’s creation. But here are 14 others that come close enough.
This article is part of 20 Years of 30 Rock, Slate’s celebration of the iconic sitcom two decades after its premiere.
There is no television series quite like 30 Rock. But—dry your tears—there are a surprising number of shows that share some of the NBC sitcom’s DNA, whether it’s the acerbic humor, the sheer density of jokes, the insider’s knowledge of pop culture and media, the delightful strain of surrealism, or the stock characters fleshed into so much more. Here to help you slake your 30 Rock thirst are Slate staffers’ recommendations for other series that are close enough, arranged in ascending order according to the somewhat arbitrary metric of “30 Rock-ish-ness.”
The Good Wife
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OK, hear me out: What if Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) were actually just an uptight lawyer and Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) her philandering husband, and what if Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) were actually a bisexual Punjabi investigator, and what if Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) were Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston)? I know this CBS legal political drama technically has nothing to do with 30 Rock, and it isn’t even funny, and there’s virtually no crossover in either themes or characters. But can’t you kind of see it anyway? Besides, there are so many episodes of The Good Wife, and so many spinoffs—much like with the 30 Rock universe—that watching this series somehow presses on the same pleasure center. Plus, both shows somehow feature John Lutz, forever tying them together in infamy. —Scaachi Koul
30 Rock-ish-ness: 4/10
Succession
I fully acknowledge that Succession and 30 Rock are pretty far apart on paper: One revolves around a workplace overseen by a conservative mogul who worked his way up from nothing, and who alternately terrorizes and coddles his flailing underlings, with whom he is personally entangled—oh, wait. But seriously, while these two series are doing vastly different things, there are flashes of I-can’t-believe-this-is-real-life absurdity in the HBO tragidramedy that certainly feel like something out of 30 Rock. Dubbing a sex pest “Mo Lester” and then trying not to let this fact slip while delivering a eulogy at said sex pest’s funeral? Youngest failson Roman (Kieran Culkin) watching from his phone with increasing dread as his very expensive rocket launch ends in an explosion? Eldest boy Kendall (Jeremy Strong) breaking out into a rehearsed rap performance as a birthday gift for his father, Jenna Maroney style? Yep, we here for you. —Jenny G. Zhang
30 Rock-ish-ness: 5/10
Strangers With Candy
If your favorite 30 Rock episodes are the spoofs and satires, get closer to the source with Comedy Central’s Strangers With Candy, the Amy Sedaris–led cult classic from the late ’90s. In a send-up of after-school specials of the ’70s and ’80s, Sedaris plays Jerri Blank, a self-described “boozer, user, and loser” who’s returning to high school after decades as a teenage runaway. Strangers With Candy is deeply weird, and can be a hard sell if you’re speaking to a normal person. But hey, where do you think Steve Buscemi’s “How do you do, fellow kids?” even came from, conceptually? That’s pure Jerri Blank, baby. You gotta respect your elders. —S.K.
30 Rock-ish-ness: 6/10
The Comeback
Just one year before 30 Rock made it to air, another sitcom star put together a little-viewed showbiz comedy about how to make it in American TV—and how brutal that slog can be, especially for women. In HBO’s The Comeback, Lisa Kudrow, fresh off her iconic run as Phoebe in Friends, plays Valerie Cherish, a washed-up ’90s TV actress who finally gets a shot at a … comeback … as an older ensemble member in a new network sitcom titled Room and Bored. Her contract also entails that she agree to film a TV documentary about her return to Hollywood, providing the literal lens through which we view the inevitable. It’s a tough, smart, charming comedy that was perhaps a little too real for its moment, canceled after only one season thanks to low viewership. Appropriately, The Comeback earned a cult following and a second season in 2014—right after 30 Rock went off the air—which follows Valerie as she attempts to break into reality TV. A third and final season blessed viewers this year, forcing Valerie to navigate the disruptions introduced by generative A.I. —Nitish Pahwa
30 Rock-ish-ness: 6/10
Arrested Development
Is there, materially, a difference between Devon Banks (Will Arnett), the former vice president of West Coast news, web content, and theme park talent relations for NBC in 30 Rock, or GOB Bluth (Will Arnett), the eldest son of the Bluth family patriarch in Fox’s Arrested Development? Well, Devon is gay, and only GOB would try to return a dead dove to the pet store, but otherwise, they scratch a similar itch, and they even share an actor.
Arrested and 30 Rock have plenty of crossover when it comes to plotlines (high-achieving man with a mother who seems to hate him) and cast, and both shows are brutal and funny while finding room for periodical sincerity. In both series, family is the only thing worth anything, be it your real family or the people you see every day at work. And, finally, both seem to kind of hate the British, rightfully so. —S.K.
30 Rock-ish-ness: 6/10
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins
Given that it’s co-created by 30 Rock co-showrunner Robert Carlock, the new-ish NBC sitcom about a disgraced football star (Tracy Morgan) trying to revive his career with the help of a struggling documentary filmmaker (Daniel Radcliffe) is a descendent of 30 Rock in the most literal sense. But even without the shared creative DNA, its lineage would be established in the first episode, when Radcliffe’s character gets a gig at the University of Maryland Center for Documentary, Anime, and Pornography. (The running gag about a TV procedural called FDNY: Chicago, about New York firemen who fight fires in Chicago, is also a dead giveaway.) Although The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins is the first show Carlock has created without Fey—Sam Means, a writer for Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Girls5eva, and Mr. Mayor fills her role—it’s such close spiritual kin to the adventures of Liz Lemon and Co. that it suggests Fey might have, over the years, gotten too much of both the credit and the blame. Although it doesn’t have the mother ship’s sustained zaniness, the series is a welcome return to Morgan’s wheelhouse, and perhaps the best showcase yet for Radcliffe’s substantial comedic skills. —Sam Adams
30 Rock-ish-ness: 7/10
Parks and Recreation
For a sitcom set mostly in a New York TV studio, 30 Rock bursts with inside-the-Beltway humor. Sometimes it’s a sly cameo or a knowing name-drop, but the show’s political jokes are rarely incidental. Its central relationship, after all, is between a career-oriented liberal feminist and a coiffed, George W. Bush–era Republican who spar over terrorism, Barack Obama, and other issues du jour—including in ways that now look prescient. (“Don’t get peer-pressured into invading Iran,” Liz sarcastically tells Jack before he leaves for a conservative confab in Season 2.)
Even so, some prefer their political satire with a few more bureaucratic bumblers, surrealist town halls, and send-ups of small-town pride. If that’s you, try Parks and Recreation, which overlapped with 30 Rock on NBC starting in 2009. The mockumentary-style series stars Amy Poehler as Leslie Knope, a sunny public servant in the titular city bureau of the fictional Pawnee, Indiana. Firmly a product of the Obama presidency, Parks and Rec softens 30 Rock’s bite to better showcase the optimistic possibilities of good governance. Its earnestness can sometimes turn cloying; in this case, the mentor–mentee relationship between liberal feminist Knope and her libertarian elder, Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman), changes him more than it changes her. But if you’re looking for a refuge from today’s headlines without leaving politics behind entirely, go visit Pawnee. When Parks and Rec does joke about Iran—also in Season 2—it seems content to leave things in the past. —Ian Prasad Philbrick
30 Rock-ish-ness: 7/10
The Larry Sanders Show
Before 30 Rock took us behind the scenes of a Saturday Night Live–style variety show, HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show gave viewers a peek behind the curtains of a network late-night talk show—the all-American, ubiquitous TV staple that stared down an existential crisis in the 1990s after Johnny Carson’s retirement. Comedian Garry Shandling, a Tonight Show regular, was offered his own late-night slot after Jay Leno was deemed Carson’s successor, but Shandling decided instead to produce a sitcom about making late-night television, where he’d portray the beleaguered, titular host. Despite its squarely ’90s setting, The Larry Sanders Show remains one of the most brilliant sitcoms in American history, a cynical yet heartfelt and painfully hilarious romp about the bullshit travails that go into America’s favorite nightly routines—one that, as a bonus, ropes in plenty of still-recognizable celebrities (Alec Baldwin, Henry Winkler) to portray bizarro doppelgangers of themselves. While nowhere near as joke-dense as 30 Rock, it was an undeniable influence on the NBC classic, and on countless other 21st-century comedies. —N.P.
30 Rock-ish-ness: 7/10
Girls5eva
The too-little-seen Girls 5eva is required viewing for any 30 Rock fan, especially anyone who counted themselves particularly captivated by “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah,” “Muffin Top,” and the NBC show’s many other musical-comedy highs throughout its seasons. After serving as a composer on 30 Rock, Jeff Richmond, who is, incidentally, Tina Fey’s husband, was given a bigger showcase for his talents on this three-season series about a bubblegum-pop-era girl group that tries to stage a comeback 20 years after their first run at fame.
(The show was created by Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt writer Meredith Scardino; Fey was an executive producer.) Richmond’s compositions, many with lyrics by Scardino, are hilarious, period-accurate, and genuinely catchy, especially as performed by cast members and actual singers Sara Bareilles and Renée Elise Goldsberry. Sadly, the show’s original home on a still-new Peacock made it hard for it to build the audience it deserved, and though Netflix swooped in and granted it a third season, it never caught on like it should have, and 5eva was cut tragically short. —Heather Schwedel
30 Rock-ish-ness: 8/10
Veep
If Parks and Rec dials down 30 Rock’s cynicism about politics, a more recent spiritual successor elevates it into nihilism ad absurdum. HBO’s Veep (2012) stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the grasping but inept Vice President Selina Meyer in an imagined Washington populated by sycophants, ladder-climbing buffoons, and insult artists far too foulmouthed for network TV.
Like Parks and Rec before it, Veep shares more than comedic DNA with its predecessor. Louis-Dreyfus preceded Fey on SNL and even played Liz in some scene-stealing flashbacks on 30 Rock. But where Poehler’s Knope is dedicated and hypercompetent, Louis-Dreyfus’ Emmy-winning performance as Meyer mixes Liz’s sarcasm and Jack’s ambition with the cravenness of TGS writer J.D. Lutz. Veep insists that our politics are so morally void, nakedly transactional, and poorly planned that the dumbest possible explanation for any particular event is usually the correct one. That black heart made for excellent satire, even if it also sometimes created challenges for the show’s writers during Donald Trump’s first term. Yet, more than seven years after Veep ended, its irreverent gloss on the American government continues to hold up a much-needed funhouse mirror to a political era that has made some of us wonder whether the real thing is still OK to laugh at. —I.P.P.
30 Rock-ish-ness: 8/10
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia feels like what 30 Rock would have been if the writers didn’t get any craft services and instead were relegated to eating canned cat food and huffing glue. It’s Always Sunny, the longest-running American live-action sitcom, is much more arch than 30 Rock, and there are even fewer consequences in that South Philly universe than in Fey’s. But that same mean streak that the 30 Rock creator is famous for in all her work—Mean Girls remains indelible source material for understanding just how cruel and exacting teenage girls can be—is also present in Sunny, which follows the exploits of a group of friends running an Irish dive bar. This is a show that works best as an ensemble, much like 30 Rock did. Dennis (Glenn Howerton) is egotistical, Mac (Rob McElhenney) is weak, Charlie (Charlie Day) is stupid, Frank (Danny DeVito) is disgusting, and Dee (Kaitlin Olson) is ugly: All have their role, and it’s one of the best television troupes to continue on in 30 Rock’s shadow. —S.K.
30 Rock-ish-ness: 8/10
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
After 30 Rock ended its run and it was time for Tina Fey to make something new, Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt must have looked like quite a swerve: How do you make a sitcom about a woman who was kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years? Fey proved that she could take a premise like that and turn it into a show that managed to feel just as fun, zany, and joke-packed as its predecessor, despite occasionally wrestling with violence and trauma. (Trauma—pronounced in the Jamie Lee Curtis manner—blessedly didn’t feel quite as cliché back in 2015 as it does now.)
One of the main differences between 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt might be the absence of a Liz Lemon straight-man type in the latter; instead, Ellie Kemper brought Kenneth the Page energy to the lead role, and supporting performances from Titus Burgess, Carol Kane, and Jane Krakowski added further sparkle, though some 30 Rock viewers might miss a world that felt a little more grounded in reality. The show’s standing seems to have faltered in recent years, probably due to it petering out a bit as it went on. (It also ended, somewhat confusingly, with an interactive film that is no longer accessible on Netflix.) Nevertheless, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is still very much worth a watch. —H.S.
30 Rock-ish-ness: 9/10
The Other Two
Tina Fey and Robert Carlock’s own efforts notwithstanding, there might be no show that better embodies 30 Rock’s spirit than Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider’s showbiz satire, which debuted on Comedy Central and later migrated to HBO Max. Built around two thirtysomething siblings (Drew Tarver and Heléne Yorke) whose modest success becomes intolerable when their younger brother abruptly becomes a pop star, The Other Two skewers both the entertainment industry’s hypocrisy and the sweaty opportunism of the people desperate to maneuver their way to the top. The storyline where Tarver voices an animated green blob purported to be Disney’s first “unapologetically gay character” is a perfect send-up of both Hollywood’s meager stabs at representation and the actors who take endless victory laps for history’s smallest acts of bravery. The series ended abruptly and under a cloud in 2023, with Fey herself taking a public shot at its creators’ alleged toxicity. But that untimely demise just adds further weight to the show’s cautionary tales. —S.A.
30 Rock-ish-ness: 9/10
The Simpsons (Seasons 1–10)
The only television show that really gets close to 30 Rock’s joke-per-minute rate and slapstick visual goofiness would be, of course, a cartoon, and America’s longest-running cartoon, at that. Early seasons of The Simpsons are heavy on visual gags (“Nuts and gum: Together at last!”) and musical riffs, much like 30 Rock. To get to Jenna Maroney’s “Tennis Night in America,” we need “Canyonero,” The Simpsons’ fake jingle for a high-polluting SUV. To get to “Muffin Top,” we need every song performed by Phil Hartman’s Troy McClure in the Season 7 musical adaptation Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off! —S.K.
30 Rock-ish-ness: 10/10
Read the rest of 20 Years of 30 Rock.