TV’s Comedy Crisis: A Tragedy in 3 Acts Unfolding

Want to get a comedy made in Hollywood today? It helps if your name is Tina Fey, Mike Schur, Bill Lawrence or Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Otherwise, good luck.

Consider the numbers: In 2018, the year after HBO’s Girls ended its six-season run, comedies represented 37 percent of the U.S.-produced scripted series on the air. Now, that share has plunged nearly 30 percent since 2021, and the raw numbers have dropped even more dramatically, with 210 comedies in 2021 to just 122 in 2025.

So nearly a decade later, as Lena Dunham rounds up most of the Girls cast and creatives for a five-episode return to a suddenly very active HBO, Hollywood’s comedy business is a shadow of its former self.

It isn’t just that Hollywood has simply stopped making as many comedies. It’s actually dismantled the system that once made great comedies possible. Now even executives are questioning whether their retreat from comedy has gone too far.

“I’m heartened by the fact that someone as thoughtful and incisive about television as John Landgraf is, is still investing in original comedies,” Adults co-creator Rebecca Shaw tells me of the FX chairman, who doubled down on the comedy that has since bucked the sophomore slump. “It’s the best harbinger I’ve seen so far for the idea that people will continue to make them.”

But Landgraf is increasingly the exception.

Here’s how Hollywood’s comedy crisis became a tragedy in three acts — and what it might take to turn things around:

• Act I: Nobody Gets Fired for Hiring Tina Fey. The surprisingly short list of people who can still get a comedy greenlit — and the executives daring to bet on everyone else.
• Act II: Who Killed the Comedy Farm System? (And what cable has to do with it)
• Act III: Streaming Is No Laughing Matter. Why even a good comedy can be doomed before it has a chance to become a hit — and the surprising advice agents are giving their writers.

Plus, why one unlikely Emmy juggernaut offers a tantalizing clue about how Hollywood might write a happier ending, and the chart everyone needs to see in hard black-and-white numbers.

For today’s column, I spoke with executives, agents, managers and showrunners — including Hacks co-creator Jen Statsky — about how the comedy business got here, who’s still willing to gamble on something original and whether Hollywood can reverse its own mistakes.