Taxi

Taxi is the kind of sitcom that makes modern half-hours feel overstuffed. Created by James L. Brooks, Stan Daniels, David Davis, and Ed Weinberger, it ran on ABC from 1978 to 1982 and then on NBC for one final season, and it's still a benchmark for ensemble comedy. The premise is simple: a group of drivers grinding it out at the Sunshine Cab Company in New York, each one nursing a bigger dream that probably isn't happening. What makes it hold up is the writing room. This is the show that gave us Christopher Lloyd's Reverend Jim, Danny DeVito's Louie De Palma, and Andy Kaufman doing Latka Gravas, which remains one of the strangest and most wonderful things ever put on network TV. The jokes land because the characters are written with real disappointment underneath them. If you only know Judd Hirsch from Numb3rs, watch the first two seasons and see why he was the anchor. For Comedy tv Canada viewers, this is a masterclass in pacing and ensemble work. Watch Taxi online and you'll notice how many later sitcoms borrowed its rhythm without matching it. Taxi live on Tvivu is the easy way in.