These shameless TV shows just don’t care if you’re offended. They include the superhero satire The Boys, which returns for its new season next week on Amazon Prime.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
This pretty-much always funny FX series about the idiot proprietors of a very unhygienic Irish pub has covered a gamut of topics that make people uncomfortable, from race to abuse to religion to child beauty pageants. What other sitcom staged a (fake) baby funeral?
Audiences can’t get enough: It’s the longest-running live-action sitcom on television, after recently surpassing The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet.
The Righteous Gemstones
The brilliant story of a televangelist family with a slew of secrets mixes sex, violence and very big characters in endlessly inventive and unexpected ways, taking direct shots at the hypocrisy of many who preach the prosperity gospel.
It also gets huge laughs out of gratuitous sequences like one last year that started with a home invasion, then turned to a guitarist spending some quality time with himself in bed, and escalated to a brutal brawl.
But the most unexpected thing about the show, starring co-creator Danny McBride and a stellar ensemble cast, is that it actually seems to believe in God — as when someone (we suspect the Lord) inflicted a plague of locusts on the Gemstones in Season 3.
Euphoria
Another HBO series, Euphoria has drawn shock from the start for its blunt (and some would say exploitative) portrayals of teenage drug use and sexuality.
In a 2022 story at the end of the show’s second season, The New York Times noted that many of the show’s young fans love the characters and plotlines, but not the man who created them, noting that Levinson “wrote all 18 hourlong episodes and directed all but three of them,” and that fans routinely go on social media “to criticize his visions of the characters.”
Levinson has said the show is very autobiographical: “I feel like I’m watching a version of myself navigating the world at a young age,” Levinson said in a clip promoting the show when it debuted in 2019.
All in the Family
Loudmouth Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor), an unrepentant bigot, was only really offensive to people who didn’t understand we were supposed to laugh at him, not with him.
But the show’s intentions were clear: All in the Family creator Norman Lear, who passed last year at 101, was one of Hollywood’s most outspoken liberals, and wanted Archie Bunker to speak freely to show how ignorant his closed-minded notions sounded. But All in the Family also had the grace to present him as vulnerable character, capable of change.
In one of its most famous episodes, 1972’s “Sammy’s Visit,” Archie gets to know Sammy Davis Jr., who, to Archie’s alarm, not only Black but Jewish. Davis highroads him by giving him a kiss on the cheek at the end of the episode, hilariously violating all kinds of bigoted taboos.
Married… With Children
The show was criticized for its countless dirty jokes and risque storylines, as well as for the piggish tendencies of Al Bundy (Ed O’Neill) and the portrayal of Peggy Bundy (Katey Segal) as lazy and selfish.
OK, but Married… With Children has aged very well as a sendup of saccharine-sweet sitcoms. It knew exactly what is was doing, and never endorsed or asked us to sympathize with the Bundys — who shared a name, after all, with a serial killer.
The Simpsons
The Simpsons debuted not long after Married… With Children on the then-fledgling Fox network. Yet it’s somehow still going. In fact, it’s the longest-running sitcom.
The Simpsons inspired debate with many topics — from guns to drugs to politics — and also took a stand by presenting gay characters in a sympathetic light long before the majority of TV shows did. It tends to offend people on the right more than people on the left, and has never shied away from mocking Fox News.
But we bet if offends random restaurant chains the most, with out-of-nowhere zingers like, “I’m so hungry I could eat at Arby’s!” (That joke is from Season 9’s “Das Bus,” above.)
We also love that The Simpsons even gives big moments to minor characters.
South Park
When South Park decides to take on a target — from Kanye West to Harry and Megan to religions to sex education in schools — everyone involved should prepare to be savaged.
The show’s animation process is so streamlined that creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone can quickly weigh in on divisive and hot-button issues before other shows can even begin to process them. It’s been going shamelessly strong since 1997.
Chappelle’s Show
Dave Chappelle left no stereotype unmocked in brilliant sketches like “The Racial Draft,” in which various races tried to claim people of mixed ethnicity. Every episode of Chappelle’s Show had something to offend you, from Rick James’ catchphrase to homeless crack addict Tyrone Biggums.
Even Chappelle wasn’t always sure people were laughing at the right things — he left while shooting the show’s third season after an incident in which a white spectator laughed at a sketch about stereotypes in the wrong way, and made Chappelle question whether his show was subverting stereotypes, or adding to them.
“When he laughed, it made me uncomfortable,” Chappelle told Time. “As a matter of fact, that was the last thing I shot before I told myself I gotta take f—ing time out after this. Because my head almost exploded.”
Chappelle, of course, is one of the most successful standup comedians of all time, and continues to offend people. He continues to not care.
The Boys
This magnificent Amazon Prime Video show is like an R-rated Avengers, where almost all the superheroes are in it for the fame and fortune, sexual harassment runs rampant, and some are outright racists.
The antiheroes known as The Boys are dead-set on stopping them, but even their leader, Billy (Karl Urban) is an antihero prone to saying offensive things and doing much more damage than he needs to. The mix of sex, violence, comedy and gore will be a huge turnoff to people who don’t love it. But not us: We love it.
The show returns soon for its latest season.
Family Guy
Over 25 years, Family Guy has made jokes aplenty about race, religion, gay panic and even… Star Wars. Along the way its been accused of racism, homophobia, and sexism.
It’s utterly ruthless in pursuit of laughs and audiences have rewarded it not only with one of the longest runs on television, but also three spinoffs.
24
The Kiefer Sutherland counterterrorism drama was criticized from the beginning for seeming to endorse and even encourage the use of torture to interrogate suspects. Many have argued that besides being reprehensible and inhumane, torture can in fact be counterproductive, and endanger Americans abroad.
It’s not just liberal critics making these arguments.
In fact, The New Yorker reported, in November 2006, military and FBI interrogators met with the 24 creative team to “to “voice their concern that the show’s central political premise—that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country’s security—was having a toxic effect. In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers.”
24 executive producer Joel Surnow shrugged it off, telling The New Yorker: ““We’ve had all of these torture experts come by recently, and they say, ‘You don’t realize how many people are affected by this. Be careful.’ They say torture doesn’t work. But I don’t believe that.”
More on 24
last year, 24 star Kiefer Sutherland defended the show again, telling the Independent:
“If the United States military can be derailed by a television show, we’ve got a much bigger problem than 24. … To use 24, a television show, as a scapegoat for the behavior of the United States military is just absolutely asinine.”
Saturday Night Live
Some of the most-debated moments in television history have aired on Saturday Night Live, and creator Lorne Michaels has made the show such an institution that it has weathered them all. In 1990, for example, the presence of host Andrew “Dice” Clay, known for a misogynistic in-character routine, led cast member Nora Dunn and scheduled musical guest Sinead O’Conner to sit out the show.
But Clay’s presence was nothing compared to the 1992 episode in which O’Connor delivered a stunning performance of Bob Marley’s “War” — before tearing up a picture of the Pope to protest abuse in the Catholic Church. (A decades later, an investigation by The Boston Globe would reveal that sexual abuse in the church had indeed been covered up.)
SNL has also drawn criticism for booking polarizing hosts from Donald Trump to Elon Musk, and provided plenty of envelope-pushing moments with guests from Sydney Sweeney to Katy Perry. We could do a whole gallery devoted to its controversies… So we did.
The Dukes of Hazzard
From cheesecake shots of Catherine Bach as Daisy Duke (wearing Daisy Dukes) to rampant stereotypes to the heroes driving around in a car emblazoned with a Confederate flag, the Dukes of Hazzard (1979 to 1985) is a case study in things that would not appear in a modern TV show.
John Schneider, who played Bo Duke, told The Hollywood Reporter in 2020, “I have never had an African-American come up to me and have any problem with it whatsoever.” He added that “the whole politically correct generation has gotten way out of hand.”
Tom Wopat, who played Luke Duke, noted that the country “has obviously changed in the last 40 years. I feel fortunate to be living in a time when we can address some of the injustices of the past.” But he added: “the car is innocent.”
The show’s creator, Gy Waldron, told THR he never intended for the Confederate flag to be associated with slavery, adding that he does “wholeheartedly support the Black Lives Matter movement and its quest to address racism around the world.”
More on The Dukes of Hazzard
Catherine Bach, meanwhile, made a strong case to EW in 1997 that Daisy Duke wasn’t just on the show because of her looks:
“Whatever she did, she could shoot better, drive better, do everything better than a guy. Whenever the guys were in trouble, she stepped in. She wasn’t acting tough, she just was,” she told the publication.
Liked This List of Shameless TV Shows That Don’t Care If You’re Offended?
You might also like this list of the Best Saturday Night Live sketches ever.
Main image: Catherine Back in a promotional image for The Dukes of Hazzard. CBS