While How I Met Your Mother is a beloved sitcom about friends hanging out, these other shows do a better job with this premise. The series begins with Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) and Marshall Eriksen (Jason Segel) living together and spending time with Marshall’s fiancée, Lily Aldrin (Alyson Hannigan), their friend Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris), and, now, Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders).
How I Met Your Mother followed several other ’90s and 2000s series focused on close characters who are a big part of each other’s lives, whether they’re roommates or just see each other every day. But whether these other sitcoms are set at a school or also in New York City, they tell more compelling stories about close-knit friendships.
Community captures the special experience of attending college and becoming close with a group of people who become like family. Since the characters pass the time in the study room when they’re not in class, the show has a more memorable main hangout place than How I Met Your Mother.
We’ve all spent time in a classroom or common area at school, and the study room has a comforting feeling because of it.
But the Community characters are also active participants at Greendale, which helps them connect more. They attend school events and even try to get the school to order more chicken fingers in “Contemporary American Poultry.”
It’s also more powerful watching Troy Barnes (Donald Glover) and Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi) bond and inspire each other than the friend group on How I Met Your Mother since Ted, Barney, Lily, and Marshall already knew each other before the story started. This allows Community to explore how exciting a new friendship can be.
New Girl (2011-2018)
Since Jess Day (Zooey Deschanel) and the others on New Girl are roommates, they have a special and relatable dynamic that shines through in every episode. They might bother each other sometimes, but they always appreciate having each other in their lives, which makes the popular sitcom so heartwarming.
Since How I Met Your Mother is so focused on Ted explaining his love story with The Mother and his various dating adventures, New Girl does a better job of showing the characters having fun together. They love to play pranks and approach life in a childlike manner, which gives the sitcom a particularly cheerful tone.
The Big Bang Theory (2007-2019)
Ted, Marshall, Lily, Robin, and Barney all change and grow up by the end of How I Met Your Mother, but The Big Bang Theory characters arguably have a bigger impact on each other’s lives.
After all, Penny (Kaley Cuoco) doesn’t even know the others at the start of the sitcom, and by the finale, she has several best friends and is settling down with Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki), the love of her life. The others have also found love and advanced even more in their already impressive scientific careers.
The group on The Big Bang Theory has a positive impact on each other and inspires one another to be brave and confident, and we can see how each character is much more self-assured and proud of who they are by the end. This makes it a more meaningful story than HIMYM at the end of the day.
Cheers (1982-1993)
With 11 seasons compared to How I Met Your Mother‘s nine, Cheers has a more unforgettable main setting since everyone spends time at Sam Malone’s (Ted Danson) bar. Since this setting is such a big part of the show, Cheers is a more comforting story about friends sharing their exciting moments as well as their struggles.
Cheers also stands out because some of the characters get jobs at Sam’s bar, from his long-time love interest Diane Chambers (Shelley Long) to Norm Peterson (George Wendt), who becomes the accountant. This allows the characters to have a more interesting dynamic than Ted and his friends. They love hanging out, but frustrate and upset each other at work.
Happy Endings (2011-2013)
Whether going to a big event like a wedding or Halloween party, or spending time with each other’s families who have come to Chicago, Happy Endings is a solid, memorable sitcom about friends who enjoy being around each other.
More so than HIMYM, the 2010s series is about people having fun together and giving each other logical and helpful advice about their life choices. Every time a member of the friend group has a new love interest, the others genuinely care about their happiness.
The Happy Endings characters also have more fun than the HIMYM group. It becomes tiresome to continually watch Barney and Ted’s obsession with dating and being each other’s wingman.
A good portion of the story is also about the main characters’ romantic pursuits, from Ted’s many dates to Lily and Marshall’s journey toward marriage. Those plotlines are interesting to watch, but they make the show less of a friendship sitcom and more of a love-focused one.
Living Single (1993-1998)
Since Living Single premiered several years before HIMYM, it covered several topics first, from close friends who have opinions about each other’s love lives to how to balance personal lives and careers. Unlike HIMYM, all the main characters live in the same building, which is a fun premise that allows them to become deeply involved in each other’s daily lives.
Living Single also does a better job with episodes focused on the friend group spending time together, like Overton Jones (John Henton) hoping for a fun Christmas party in season 3’s “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow… Dammit.” You really get the feeling that they all love being together.
In contrast, sometimes the group hangouts on How I Met Your Mother are overshadowed by Ted’s desperate hope to find love. Even his regular Halloween party is less about him and the others enjoying time together and more about his mission to find the “Slutty Pumpkin.”
Friends (1994-2004)
Most sitcoms since Friends get compared to the iconic ’90s series, and it’s easy to see why. Whether Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston) and the others are grabbing coffee and chatting at Central Perk or at Rachel and Monica Geller’s (Courteney Cox) famous, beautiful, and huge apartment, they’re always a meaningful part of each other’s lives.
Like How I Met Your Mother, the main apartment and the unit where Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc) and Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry) live are the setting for big changes and major life events. These characters find love and settle down, and their lives look very different in the finale than they did in the pilot.
But more so than the show that came after it, the two main apartments on Friends are the settings for some hilarious and memorable storylines. From Chandler and Joey’s pet chick and duck to the neighbor called “Ugly Naked Guy,” it’s hard to think of a humorous moment on the sitcom that didn’t happen in one of these two locations.
Seinfeld (1989-1998)
Considering the number of episodes featuring Jerry’s friends at his apartment on Seinfeld, there’s no denying it’s a fantastic show about a group of friends hanging out. The characters socialize together at dinner parties and go out to eat regularly, whether at Monk’s Café or in the infamous “The Chinese Restaurant” episode.
They also hang out more casually when they’re bored and passing the time, like an authentic friend group. Although Ted and his pals see each other a lot on How I Met Your Mother, Seinfeld‘s most famous episodes are about typical, relatable social experiences like going to the movies or the mall, which makes it the superior sitcom.
- Release Date
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2005 – 2014-00-00
- Showrunner
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Craig Thomas
