The 25 greatest cult TV shows

Joel Hodgson captured the hearts of smarty-pants geeks the world over in 1991 when Comedy Central acquired the rights to his weekly saga of a marooned-in-space test subject forced by a pair of mad scientists to watch lousy movies. With the sanity-preserving aid of his robot friends Crow and Tom Servo, Hodgson turned film heckling (aka riffing) into high art. The non-stop dropping of obscure pop culture references — Shakespeare to prog rock to William S. Burroughs within the course of minutes — flattered well-read viewers and scared off normies, making it the ultimate cult television sensation.

“She’s dead. Wrapped in plastic.” In 1990, those opening lines from the late, great Jack Nance hooked an entire nation of television viewers on David Lynch and Mark Frost’s groundbreaking ABC mystery centered on the murder of prom queen Laura Palmer. The show quickly alienated viewers with its surreal, dreamlike indulgences, but a devoted fan base stuck with it through every bizarro twist. Twenty-six years after its cancellation, Showtime gave “Twin Peaks” its long-awaited third season, which doubled down on the Lynchian weirdness and ended with the most terrifying cliffhanger in TV history.

Dan Curtis’ 1960s daytime drama became a cult sensation midway through its first season with the introduction of lovelorn vampire Barnabas Collins. Genre fans starved for supernatural tales on the telly quickly embraced the saga of the Collins family and, once the series ended its six-season run, their unflagging enthusiasm spurred two revivals and a big-budget Tim Burton film starring Johnny Depp as the bloodsucking protagonist.

This uproarious, convention-shattering BBC comedy about four college students sharing a flat in early 1980s London did for the sitcom what the Sex Pistols did for rock-and-roll. The caustic irreverence and gratuitous cartoon violence, interspersed with guest musical appearances from alternative and metal acts like The Damned and Motörhead, alienated older viewers but enthralled younger couch potatoes of a particularly rebellious mindset. The show ran for only 12 episodes (common for British television), but its rambunctious, non-sequitur laden influence can be felt today in shows like “The Simpsons," “Family Guy” and “Community."

This lovingly crafted 1980s high school comedy from Paul Feig and Judd Apatow was dogged by poor ratings throughout its first and, alas, only season. But the show has endured thanks to its deeply devoted fans and spot-on casting that launched the careers of Seth Rogen, James Franco, Linda Cardellini and Jason Segel among many  others. Apatow’s college-set follow-up, “Undeclared," suffered an equally abrupt cancellation, but his subsequent big-screen blockbusters (e.g. “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up”) stand as a rebuke to the risk-averse network thinking that stymied him for a decade in television. (Don’t forget 1992’s “The Ben Stiller Show.")

Writer-producer Bryan Fuller is the Steven Spielberg of short-lived cult series. But at the risk of infuriating diehard fans of “Dead Like Me," “Wonderfalls” and “Hannibal," it’s impossible to top the dizzying, how-did-this-air-on-network-TV whimsy of Fuller's “Pushing Daisies." This hour-long mystery series starred Lee Child as an expert piemaker gifted/cursed with the ability to bring the dead back to life, Anna Friel as his one true love whom he may never touch again (there are rules, folks), Chi McBride as a private dick in the market for a man who can elicit postmortem testimony and Kristin Chenoweth as a love-struck waitress in Child’s employ.

Can a franchise that’s spawned five television spin-offs and three film series over 52 years actually qualify as “cult?" Absolutely. Aside from the de-nerded, action-heavy J.J. Abrams movies, “Star Trek” has always leaned on its serious sci-fi fan base to keep itself commercially viable — dating back to the unprecedented letter campaign that saved the original series from cancellation in 1967. The whole world may know these characters and their catchphrases, but when it comes to the continuing televised voyages of the Starships Enterprise, Discovery, et al, the franchise remains a niche endeavor. 

On the surface, it’s a sitcom about a motley, age-diverse group of community college students who forge an unlikely friendship via their study group. But it didn’t take long for creator Dan Harmon to turn this into one of the most aggressively meta network shows to ever reach the vaunted 100-episode threshold. Constantly on the verge of cancellation, the show survived thanks to a rabid fan base that grooved on the same particular strain of pop culture that fired Harmon’s imagination. We got our six seasons. Where’s the movie, guys?

Rob Thomas’ mystery series about a teenage sleuth investigating the murder of her former friend launched Kristen Bell’s career despite never catching on with a wide audience. It’s a smart, witty and stylish neo-noir that expertly stretched its whodunit narrative over an entire season — and unlike its distant genre cousin “Twin Peaks," it satisfyingly answered all of its major dramatic questions in the first season finale. The only mystery that remains unsolved is why this show wasn’t a bigger hit.

This mutant sketch-comedy brainchild of Alex Winter (aka Bill S. Preston, Esq), Tom Stern and Tim Burns aired for a tantalizingly brief six episodes on MTV in the early 1990s (Kurt Cobain was evidently a fan) and is currently unavailable outside of crudely bootlegged videos on YouTube. Ostensibly an absurdist parody of hoary television tropes (the best being the tough-cop-steps-on-a-rusty-nail-and-doesn’t-get-a-tetanus-shot drama “Lockjaw”), the show also goofed on the day’s pop culture crazes. Aside from the too-easy Sinéad O’Connor burns, “The Idiot Box” boasted a shockingly favorable hit-to-miss ratio.

Comedic genius Robert Smigel expanded on his recurring “Saturday Night Live” animated segments with this demented parody of a locally televised kids show featuring a human host (Doug Dale) and a group of mischievous animal puppets (including occasional appearances by Smigel’s illustrious canine alter ego, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog). It’s essentially the dirtiest made-for-cable version of “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” you can imagine.

Two hard-up-for-housing twentysomethings (Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson) pose as a couple to obtain a reasonably priced London flat; when their ruse succeeds, they have to keep up appearances to keep from getting kicked out. Written by its then-unknown stars and directed by incipient auteur Edgar Wright, the series connected deeply with pop culture savvy Gen X-ers who grew up worshipping everything from “Star Wars” to Alan Parker’s “Bugsy Malone." The shows are so thick with references and homages that you can’t possibly catch them all in one viewing.

The weird, bespectacled kids in your middle school who seemed to be speaking a different language with their constant references to “ex-parrots," “Arthur ‘Two Sheds’ Jackson” and “the Spanish Inquisition” knew what was up. The six-member British comedy troupe transformed comedy with their naughtily irreverent BBC sketch series, and they’re still the go-to gateway drug for young, quick-on-the-uptake smartasses eager to graduate from crass schoolyard yuks to something completely different.

This ultra-absurdist Canadian comedy troupe arrived to television in 1988 with the backing of “Saturday Night Live” creator Lorne Michaels, but their off-center, character-based humor lacked the of-the-moment pop culture parody that broke “SNL” through to the mainstream. As a result, “The Kids in the Hall” flew under the radar for five seasons on HBO and introduced a new strain of idiosyncratic comedy that inspired collectives like “The State” and “Mr. Show."

“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.” Patrick McGoohan's surreal late-‘60s masterpiece isn’t easily defined: It’s one part Bond-ian spy yarn, one part paranoid thriller and a saucer full of swinging '60s swagger. It’s the weird television Rosetta Stone. Name a bizarre, short-lived series (many of which adorn this list), and you can trace it back to “The Prisoner." That there’s no definitive interpretation of the series given its abrupt ending makes it a kissing cousin of “Twin Peaks” (pre and postrevival).

Created by Rob Thomas, John Enbom, Dan Etheridge and Paul Rudd, this Starz-aired comedy series about a Los Angeles-based catering team comprised of entertainment industry aspirants struck a deeply resonant chord with everyone who has experienced that paycheck-chasing, cusp-of-stardom torture — and missed with just about everyone else. Ironically, the all-star comedy cast of Adam Scott, Lizzy Caplan, Ken Marino, Jane Lynch, Megan Mullally and Jennifer Coolidge only hung together for two seasons before finding their own bigger, better opportunities.

The saga of stuck-in-time physicist Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) and his friend/adviser Al Calavicci (Dean Stockwell) remains one of the most consistently entertaining sci-fi shows in television history. The episodic, largely self-contained format left viewers guessing as to which time period (and occasionally which historical figure) Beckett would leap into next to redress a past wrong. It appealed to sci-fi and history buffs — which meant it was always treading water in the Nielsen ratings.

Dissatisfied with the big-screen rendition of Buffy Summers’ vamp-killing exploits, screenwriter Joss Whedon turned to television for a second go-round and hit niche pay dirt with this whip-smart series that meant everything to its fans and absolutely nothing to anyone outside of the “Buffyverse." Their loss. Whedon’s greatest triumph — outside of casting Sarah Michelle Gellar as the most iconic hunter of the undead since Peter Cushing turned in his stake — was his ability to occasionally dial down the snarky tone and contend with the ever-present specter of death.

Adult Swim mastermind Mike Lazzo inexplicably resurrected the stiff-as-a-board Hanna-Barbera superhero in 1994 as an animated late-night talk show host, and the result — featuring live-action guests like Jim Carrey, David Byrne, Goldie Hawn and Beck — was just what the dealer ordered for a nation of stoners. Twenty-four years of cult-friendly Adult Swim madness flows forth from “Space Ghost: Coast to Coast” (including the even more entertaining Space Ghost spin-off, “Cartoon Planet;" long live, Brak and Zorak).

The members of this NYU-birthed comedy collective are probably best known for the shows and films they produced after their influential, yet little-seen, MTV series that ended in 1995. You know Thomas Lennon, Kerri Kenney-Silver and Robert Ben Garant as the creators of “Reno 911!," David Wain and Michael Showalter as the masterminds of “Wet Hot American Summer” and Joe Lo Truglio as Boyle on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine." But have you ever "dipped your balls" in “The State?" You should.

Who knew that a British sci-fi series built around a “time lord” who darts about the universe in a blue police box would appeal to anyone, let alone endure for 55 years? “Doctor Who” was a BBC- and PBS-aired oddity for decades until a new generation of youngish writers, including Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, injected the moribund franchise with a hipper, wittier sensibility. The series recently anointed Jodie Whittaker as the 13th and first female "Doctor."

Cult and Chris Elliott are practically synonymous. He became a cult scene-stealing hero in the 1980s on “Late Night with David Letterman" and has produced several specifically targeted television programs like “FDR: A One Man Show” and the wondrously silly Fox sitcom “Get a Life." There is also “Cabin Boy." But his peculiar mixture of whack-a-doodle absurdity and deep-pull pop culture homage has never found a more welcome home than “Eagleheart." Created by Michael Koman and Andrew Weinberg, this ostensible spoof of “Walker, Texas Ranger” would rather goof on Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil” at length. It’s either one of your favorite shows of the last decade or something you shut off a minute into the first episode. 

You know the call letters, but do you really know the show? Have you ever ventured into “Dr. Tongue’s Evil House of Pancakes?" Have you ever taken a trip to “Polynesiantown?" Do the names Johnny LaRue, Lola Heatherton, Bobby Bittman, Guy Caballero and Edith Prickley ring a bell? How about Bob and Doug McKenzie? If all you know is “Strange Brew” and the subsequent film work of John Candy, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara and Joe Flaherty, you have six seasons of arguably the greatest sketch comedy in television history waiting for you…somewhere. Sadly, it’s not readily available to stream at the moment.

An animated domestic sitcom starring a sentient a) milkshake, b) box of French fries and c) wad of beef: You can’t say Adult Swim doesn’t know its stoner audience. What sounds like it shouldn’t be funny for more than a few seconds actually worked surprisingly well for two whole seasons; that it ran for 11 shouldn’t be held against it any more than we ding the glory years of “The Simpsons” for a decade-plus of phoned-in drudgery. 

Before “Stranger Things," there was “Eerie, Indiana” — and it was so much better. The preciousness that persistently derails the Netflix favorite is delightfully absent from this of-the-Amblin-era kids show created by José Rivera and Karl Schaefer and creatively shepherded by “Gremlins” director Joe Dante. The show centers on the exploits of a teenage boy who comes to learn that the small town into which his family has moved is rife with all manners of supernatural strangeness.