Z Nation
Modern Family was doing a great job, although the writers seem to be phoning it in this season.
Most of the lighter style of dramas that I watch throw in a lot of silliness. Some that immediately come to mind include:
Royal Pains
Rizzoli & Isles
NCIS
The Closer has a lot of slapstick; its sequel *Major Crimes *leans a little darker.
Faking It is an MTV show that is primarily a farce, but also tackles a lot of serious issues. Oh, and how could I forget Glee, which was also a farce that dealt with serious issues.
The Steven Bochco dramas (Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, L.A. Law) did an excellent job of mixing comedy with the kind of superserious storylines you see in cop/medical/lawyer shows.
Bochco did prove, however, that you can’t mix police drama with music.
I thought “Blue Velvet” worked, mixing black, out-of-left-field humour with the macabre and violence.
Shaun of the Dead is one of my favorite movies, and I’d say it fits.
BTVS and Angel. Ally McBeal. In Plain Sight.
Roseanne (when Becky eloped, when Jackie realized her marriage was over - those were two serious moments), Desperate Housewives (amazing how you could laugh during the show and often at the end, they would twist the knife and bring you to tears), Northern Exposure (classic fish-out-of-water, dealing with the odd whimsical folk, and then there was the episode of Maurice looking for a minyan for Joel, I was crying buckets at the end of that episode).
Occasionally, Mad Men would also have hilarious moments. The fist fight between Lane and Pete! Don telling Sally over the phone about the Beatles tickets!
Scrubs did this well.
In books:
Catch-22
Slaughterhouse 5
Cat’s Cradle
The Sot-Weed Factor
Gravity’s Rainbow
Ah, that’s a good one. Apparently I’m the only person in the world who actually really likes that movie.
Someone mentioned Breaking Bad, but the current spinoff Better Call Saul mixes a lot of humor with the drama.
For a goofy comedy cartoon, Futurama had some legit and effective moments of drama.
The series Scrubs is exactly silly and heavy drama at the same time.
Gosenzou-sama Ban-Banzai!
…though rather obscure.
Is there any good serious drama that doesn’t have a few moments of comic relief? I doubt it’s possible.
The Frighteners was scary and funny, strange combination and difficult to pull off.
Rick and Morty
I’m not sure I’d call it “farcical” comedy, but the TV show Lucifer does a good job of mixing comedy with some pretty heavy dramatic stuff.
Bojack Horseman come across on its face as a wacky animated comedy about an anthropomorphic horse who is a washed up 1990s sitcom star.
But the show has a pitch-black undertone and covers a lot of very serious issues, including depression, failure, imposter syndrome, being denied closure, and realisng you can’t always fix the mistakes of your past.
It’s well worth watching, in other words.
It really did have some unexpectedly tender moments- like Bill Night’s dying words.