Hulu has a lot of great comedy series in its library, and Broad City ranks high among them. The original Hulu comedies include some fantastic series like PEN15 and The Great, but once the streamer acquired FX and Paramount titles, it jumped up a tier among the best streamers for comedy.
One of the great ripple effects of getting those titles is that a lot of forgotten Comedy Central and FX comedies have found entirely new audiences. This is a class of TV show that you may have seen commercials for but never got the chance to watch. Broad City falls in that category, and it’s well worth your time.
Broad City Is One Of The Best Shows You Can Watch On Hulu
Broad City is one of the best shows you can find on Hulu, and with five seasons and 50 episodes, there is plenty to watch. The series stars the show’s creators, Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson, who play Ilana Wexler and Abbi Abrams, two 20-somethings living in Astoria, Queens, experiencing all the strangeness of New York City.
The series has a classic Comedy Central feel. It’s big on jokes and not so big on dramatic moments. This isn’t Lena Dunham’s Girls; this is closer to Reno 911! than anything, but it is far more relatable than that. Ilana and Abbi are both completely self-possessed and also kind of big losers.
It makes for a wonderfully funny dynamic where they end up in terrible situations but somehow have the confidence and cleverness to get themselves out of those same situations. You will recognize yourself constantly in the show, particularly if you’ve ever lived in NYC or another large city, even as things get stretched to absurd dimensions.
Broad City Could Have Kept Going (But It’s Good It Ended)
Broad City ran from 2014 to 2019, and considering all the different corners of the five boroughs there are to explore, the series could have very easily kept going. Abbi and Ilana are timeless characters who you can still see wandering around Washington Square Park if you look hard enough.
Despite the great reviews, Glazer and Jacobson decided that they wanted to end the show after season 5 (via Newsweek). The pair recognized that the show was about being adrift in your 20s, and as they aged and found more success, they realized they were not struggling with that as much in real life.
As difficult a decision as that must have been, it was also clearly the right one. Too many showrunners try to squeeze as much as they can out of their series while it’s still popular, and you can’t always blame them. It’s incredibly difficult to get a show produced for more than even three seasons.
Time and time again, though, it’s proven that the shows that we remember fondly are the ones that end on their own terms. Broad City would have risked becoming a parody of itself. Instead, you can now watch Broad City knowing full well it’s exactly the story the creators wanted to tell.
- Release Date
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2014 – 2019-00-00
- Showrunner
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Ilana Glazer
