The 21 best Adult Swim shows

Produced by none other than Conaco, Conan O’Brien’s production company, is a sendup of cop shows. Starring Chris Elliott as U.S. Marshal Chris Monsanto, Brett Gelman as his dimwitted partner, and Maria Thayer as the smart one, the show offers plenty of silliness to go around. An example: an old man in a creepy van offers a young boy a ride somewhere, setting off some obvious red flags in us reasonable viewers, and yet it goes fine. Ultimately, it is the old man, accepting a ride from a trucker, van and all, who winds up the victim. That’s good stuff. [Meredith Hobbs Coons]

A sadistic Willy Wonka-esque warden (voiced by David Wain) who has “never let an inmate die of boredom” heads up , and it’s real weird. Created by certified sickos Christy Karacas, Stephen Warbrick and Ben Gruber, the vibe of it is a little bit Yellow Submarine meets Celebrity Deathmatch, and the gruesome scenarios it depicts, like the complex murder sequences that ended each episode of seasons 1, 3, and 4, can be a bit hard to watch, earning it a TV-MA-V rating. [Meredith Hobbs Coons]

Brought to life by co-creators actor Seth Green and writer Matthew Senreich, is sketch comedy done stop-motion style, often featuring popular toys and/or action figures—like the Star Wars characters in their popular . This gives the whole thing a familiar, playful air, a lot like those childhood days of acting out ridiculous, sometimes risqué scenes with anyone from the Care Bears to G.I. Joe, and it really is fun to watch. [Meredith Hobbs Coons]

Before there was Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, we had , a about a guy (Tom, played by Tim Heidecker) bringing ideas to his mayor (Eric Wareheim), who seems to just make everything worse. That it began as a web series comes as no surprise, as it had a rudimentary animation style, rendered in blue and white still images of the actors making different facial expressions, with occasional live segments mixed in. Many characters used in their later work debuted here, including Jan and Wayne Skylar, “the only married news team in the Tri-County area.” [Meredith Hobbs Coons]

If this one feels a little niche, that’s because it is. But haven’t we all met a few metalheads in our day—or at least seen This Is Spinal Tap or heard Tenacious D? satirizes the grandiosity of metal, to the extent that the band Dethklok itself, the act central to the show, has the seventh largest economy in the world by the second season’s end and even commands its own police force. Though the show ended in 2015, a final film was released to Blu-ray in August 2023 to give the guys a proper sendoff. [Meredith Hobbs Coons]

The history and lore of Superman is so deep that every creator who gets a shot at making their version of the iconic superhero can pick up whatever threads they want for the story they want to tell. In , the newest Adult Swim title on this list, the story is one of hope and optimism. (Remember that Superman?) Its anime-inspired visual design reinforces that tone with bright colors and the sunlit cityscapes of a Metropolis worth protecting. This Clark Kent (charmingly voiced by Jack Quaid) is just as worried about screwing things up with Lois Lane (Alice Lee) as he is about potentially being an alien weapon sent to conquer humanity. His often overlooked best friend Jimmy Olsen (Ishmel Sahid) completes the winning trio of Daily Planet interns at the heart of the show. There are some clever canon tweaks, like making Jimmy a conspiracy influencer on social media to suit the times, but nothing so drastic that it takes away from the warm feeling of being reunited with long-lost friends. [Cindy White]

Host (and madman) Eric Andre goes after every aspect of the late-night show format with this manic take. Each episode of begins with the energetic Andre flinging himself through his backdrop, destroying his set, and tackling his drummer, before it all reassembles around him as he collapses, panting, into his chair. He’s most savage, however, in his treatment of his guests, testing the absolute limits of what they can take, jabbing them with insults, prodding them with pranks, and generally weirding them out as they suffer through their … can we really call them “interviews?” [Meredith Hobbs Coons]

A spinoff from Space Ghost Coast To Coast, answers a question we didn’t know we had: what if classic Hanna Barbera superheroes from the ’60s and ’70s prosecuting or defending other beloved cartoon characters from that era, like Fred Flintstone or Yogi Bear? With the voice talents of Stephen Colbert, Gary Cole, Paget Brewster, John Michael Higgins, Mary Birdsong, and more, we get to see this question playfully answered to hilarious effect. [Meredith Hobbs Coons]

Fresh from his time as a Daily Show correspondent, Rob Corddry came up with this little number, which took the conventions of medical dramas like Grey’s Anatomy and turned out something truly absurd. is at its best when it’s silliest, with Corddry’s character Dr. Blake Downs acting as a deranged Patch Adams type, in frightening clown makeup, taking the oft-used maxim “laughter is the best medicine” literally. And with Megan Mullally, Rob Huebel, Henry Winkler, Lake Bell, and others on call, this cast is stacked. [Meredith Hobbs Coons]

Creators Matt Thompson and Adam Reed took a short-lived animated series called Sealab 2020 from the 1970s, wrote some replacement dialogue, and got wild, satirizing children’s shows, cultural mores, and commonly held stereotypes from that time period. has the kind of edgy humor we saw a lot in the early aughts, with everyone being creepy to the women on the crew and racist in casual ways, but in its absurd moments, such as when Captain Murphy imagines himself with chainsaw hands and keeps making revving noises to himself, you can see the seeds of future Adult Swim weirdness to come. [Meredith Hobbs Coons]

One of the best TV comedies of this century (), is the finest showcase to date of Jon Glaser’s unique and apparently undying fascination with creating and playing all-caps DICKS. His “Jon,” a reality star in the Witness Protection Program who wears a ski mask and has had his voice altered to hide his identity, is so fame hungry, dumb, juvenile, irksome, and selfish that he has blood on his hands for the deaths of—spoiler alert—his son, his ex-wife, his parents, his brother, Paul Rudd, and a , among many others. It’s the sort of weird, bursting-with-creativity-and-originality show, the kind in which a silly detour can become the driving plot of a whole episode, that could, during its three-season run, only have thrived on Adult Swim. [Tim Lowery]

Multidimensional shenanigans reliably ensue in the critically acclaimed, worldwide phenomenon . The show centers on the titular grandpa/grandson duo Rick and Morty, an arrogant mad scientist and an anxious boy, respectively, who set off on all kinds of “high concept, sci-fi rigamarole” (in the words of Morty’s dad Jerry)—even discovering versions of themselves from an alternate reality. delighting fans globally (and, perhaps, inter-dimensionally as well). [Meredith Hobbs Coons]

Based on his successful comic of the same name, Aaron MacGruder’s manga-influenced racked up fans and awards during its run, including a Peabody, and featured Regina King as the voice of two main characters. courted controversy at many a turn, coming for Oprah, Tyler Perry, and others with its quips. A reboot of the show had reportedly been ordered in 2019, with John Witherspoon having signed on to reprise his role before his passing later that year, but it . [Meredith Hobbs Coons]

Adam Reed and Matt Thompson’s animated TV middle child lacks the instant cult cred of their earlier Sealab 2021, or the mainstream success that would come a few years later with Archer over on FX. What does have is a near-perfect distillation of Reed and Thompson’s comedic obsessions: Dumb, violent, surprisingly vulnerable weirdos getting into constant comedic trainwrecks with each other, to frequently hilarious effect. Centered on a supervillain and superhero who are both equally bad at their jobs (and equally voiced by Reed, at the upper and lower ranges of his voice), Frisky Dingo is the rare early Adult Swim show that actually cares about its plot—if only so it can mine increasing absurdity out of a bad guy struggling to raise money to buy TV time so he can announce his plans to fly the planet into the sun. More focused than Sealab, less restrained than Archer, it’s a quick, powerful dose of pure comedy goodness. [William Hughes]

For all the wild id that has typically characterized adult swim’s offerings, provides a sort of counterpoint. What if a comedy could center on a mild-mannered choir teacher from the Upper Peninsula who just wants to chat about minerals, grow a nice bean arch, and talk you back to sleep after a big scary storm just woke you up? It’s a charming, wholesome watch that will make you think, chuckle, and, honestly, lull you back to sleep—which is not a bad thing these days. [Meredith Hobbs Coons]

The single finest long-form narrative in Adult Swim’s catalogue is about a million times smarter, funnier, and sadder than its “What if Johnny Quest grew up to be an asshole?” premise might initially suggest. As written by Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer, is a testament to the power of taking silly things seriously, and vice versa: Rusty Venture and his nemesis The Monarch might spend their days play-acting with laser cannons and flying cocoons, but their real wounds all come from a lifetime of failure and neglect. And yet, TVB is also one of Adult Swim’s warmest shows, propelled in large part by Publick and Hammer’s gleeful (if subversive) celebrations of all their many shared interests: Weird superheroes, ’70s rock stars, and the strange, beautiful minutiae of the superscience life. [William Hughes]

Call it what you like (Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1, Aqua Something You Know Whatever, etc.): Dave Willis and Matt Maiellero’s is, in some respects, the prototypical Adult Swim show. Spun out from the legendary Space Ghost Coast To Coast, ATHF is chaotic, violently amoral, and still, more than 20 years later, nearly always the funniest thing on TV at any given moment it’s airing—in other words, textbook early Adult Swim. Following the “adventures” of three sentient food products (Willis, Carey Means, and the incredible Dana Snyder) and their even-shittier neighbor (Willis again), the series established the Adult Swim/Williams Street style with brutal quickness: Fuck story, fuck character growth, just bring on the strangest, funniest idea you’ve got and play it to the rafters. Theme song kicks ass, too. [William Hughes]

was originally produced by Ghost Planet Industries, which later became Williams Street, which would go on to launch Adult Swim for Cartoon Network. So this is really the one that started it all. The show originally ran from 1994 to 1999, then was revived for Adult Swim in 2001. It’s impossible to describe in a way that makes sense to someone who hasn’t seen it, and even watching it might not clear things up much. Creator Mike Lazzo took a Hanna-Barbera character from the 1960s (with new dialogue provided by voice actor George Lowe) and created a talk show around him using old animations and pre-recorded, heavily edited video interviews of real guests. Some were more game than others, but most seemed completely baffled as to where they were and what was supposed to be happening. The rest of the crew was filled out with Space Ghost’s arch enemies—including bandleader Zorak and director Moltar (both voiced by the late C. Martin Croker)—who were forced to participate against their will. The resulting show was positively surreal, often very funny, and thoroughly absorbing. [Cindy White]

Like a lot of people of my generation, the first time I discovered Adult Swim was late at night in a college dorm. I can’t remember who turned on the TV, or whether they did so to intentionally watch Adult Swim—which, back in the early aughts, aired on Cartoon Network—but I do remember blocking out the conversations in the room to pay attention to this very cooly, funny, crudely animated show called , as it seemed like it was basically made for me. It followed Brendon Small (voiced by Brendon Small, who co-created the show with Bob’s Burgers’ Loren Bouchard), a character with more than a bit of ’s ambition and wobbly delusions of grandeur, and his friends, Jason (H. Jon Benjamin) and Melissa (Melissa Bardin Galsky), trying to make movies—poorly—and casually referencing filmmakers like Altman and Scorsese in ways that no eight year olds should. The dialogue sparkled, with characters talking over each other, with interruptive hmms and awkward hesitations and cut-off thoughts. And even decades on, and well after the adult-animation boom it helped inspire, the chemistry in those interactions still stands out. Plus, having a comedic ringer like Coach McGuirk (Benjamin, pulling double duty and concocting one of the funniest losers of all time, in any medium) doesn’t hurt either. [Tim Lowery]

Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim have crafted us a fever dream with their take on a public access style show, complete with commercials, like , featuring a whinnying Will Forte. also birthed some iconically strange recurring characters that we were always happy to see, from John C. Reilly’s Dr. Steve Brule, the slurring sometime field correspondent and host of the informative to Zach Galifianakis’ , who contends that the nose is the actor’s most useful instrument, because you can hold it to do funny voices. It’s the essence of Adult Swim, distilled to its purest form. [Meredith Hobbs Coons]