3 new broadcast comedies to watch in the 2024-2025 TV season

Right off the bat, you should know I am a drama connoisseur. I am more likely to turn on a show that's going to break my heart and put it back together than a series that's going to make me bust a gut. But the 2024-2025 TV season has me ready to change that. I'm going to be watching more comedies than Abbott Elementary and The Bear (which I'm told doesn't really count).

Why? Because there are three comedies coming to broadcast that have the kind of premises and stars that would pique even the most comedy-averse TV lover to tune in. Don’t believe me? Well, settle in, I’ll tell you all about them and then you can decide if you’ll be watching these shows right along with me. First up, Happy's Place.

Happy's Place

The minute I learned the Queen of Country was returning to broadcast in a brand new comedy series I knew it was going to become appointment television for me. Anyone who has seen Reba knows the multitalented star has perfect comedic timing that’ll leave you laughing so hard your stomach hurts. Pair Reba McEntire with Melissa Peterman and you have a winning combination that can’t be beat.

In Happy’s Place, McEntire plays Bobbie, a woman who recently inherited her father’s tavern and finds out that he kept a life changing secret from her. At some point, he had a child with a woman that wasn’t her mother. Enter Isabella, a 20something psychology student, who Bobbie’s just learned is her sister. Oh, and it gets better! Happy, their father, left the restaurant to both of them.

Isabella is played by Belissa Escobedo. The actress was a scene stealer in the short-lived ABC romantic dramedy The Baker and the Beauty. Peterman plays Gabby, the tavern’s dramatic and needy bartender who wishes Bobbie were her sister.

I am telling you, this is a comedy that needs to be on your watch list. It'll air Fridays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.

St. Denis Medical

I admit I’m watching St. Denis Medical because I love Abbott Elementary and therefore am going to give another workplace comedy a try. This subgenre typically hasn’t done it for me but even a picky comedy viewer like myself can see the potential in this show. Not to mention medical comedies are rare so that’s a feather in its cap already.

The series is set in Oregon at a hospital that is underfunded and understaffed. Despite this, the medical professionals at the facility do their utmost to care for their patients while holding onto their sanity. The Goldbergs’ Wendi McLendon-Covey leads the cast as Joyce, the Executive Director of the hospital who has big dreams for St. Denis Medical but very little means of achieving them. Doesn’t that sound like she’s in the same school of comedy characters as Janine Teagues and Leslie Knope? Or is that just me?

Comedy great David Alan Grier’s character Ron sounds like he’s going to be the rain cloud to Joyce’s sunshine since he’s an Emergency Department doctor who has become disillusioned after his divorce and has accepted the thrill of his work is gone. This series is bolstered by a cast that features an overworked but passionate supervising nurse, her homeopathy championing work wife, a cocky trauma surgeon, a veteran nurse, an out of his depth newbie nurse, and a hospital chaplain. 

If you're up for checking out the shenanigans in St. Denis Medical, the comedy will air Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.

Going Dutch

Last on this list is Going Dutch which, funnily enough, is another workplace comedy. Clearly, this TV season has me open to giving the subgenre more than one chance. That's Abbott Elementary’s impact, to be honest. It helps that like St. Denis Medical, this series takes place in a rare setting–a military base.

Since Going Dutch won’t premiere until 2025 on FOX, there’s not much to share but the premise is intriguing enough to put the show on your radar because it’s certainly on mine. Denis Leary will star as a U.S. Army Colonel who’s shipped off to the Netherlands as a punishment for going on an unfiltered rant. His new command position is at the least important army base in the world where the soldiers don’t have weapons and seem to have no tactical purpose.

It’s the colonel's intent to get his troops in shape and install in them the military discipline he’s known for his whole career. However, this will prove challenging as the soldiers are used to their comfortable living. I mean they have a Michelin star level commissary, a fromagerie, and a bowling alley. But he will have some help in the form of his estranged daughter, the former interim leader of the base.

I’m intrigued by what they could do with this series, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the show might work on patching up the relationship between the colonel and his daughter. Going Dutch will premiere during the midseason but a day and time have yet to be announced.