Comedies

Comedies

82 Episodes

Laugh a little! Screwball, satire, gags, pratfalls, and pranks—we’ve got it all.

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Comedies
  • Cyrano de Bergerac

    Episode 1

    Directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau • 1990 • France
    Starring Gérard Depardieu, Anne Brochet, Vincent Perez

    Gérard Depardieu delivers a towering performance as the immortal hero of hopeless romantics everywhere—he of the legendary long schnoz who selflessly uses his verse to help a friend woo the wom...

  • Abigail’s Party

    Episode 2

    Directed by Mike Leigh • 1977 • United Kingdom
    Starring Alison Steadman, Tim Stern, Janine Duvitski

    Mike Leigh’s filmed version of his acclaimed stage play is a brilliantly biting comedy of manners that lays bare the bourgeois affectations and sexual frustrations of a young suburban couple. Abig...

  • Party Girl

    Episode 3

    Directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer • 1995 • United States
    Starring Parker Posey, Anthony DeSando, Guillermo Díaz

    Nineties indie queen Parker Posey is at her effortlessly cool best in this irresistible comedy, a time capsule of the era’s Manhattan club scene. She stars as Mary, a hard-partying ...

  • The Lady Eve

    Episode 4

    Directed by Preston Sturges • 1941 • United States
    Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn

    Barbara Stanwyck sizzles, Henry Fonda bumbles, and Preston Sturges runs riot in one of the all-time great screwballs, a pitch-perfect blend of comic zing and swoonworthy romance. Aboard a cr...

  • The Palm Beach Story

    Episode 5

    Directed by Preston Sturges • 1942 • United States
    Starring Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor

    This wild tale of wacky wedlock from Preston Sturges takes off like a rocket and never lets up. Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert play Tom and Gerry, a married New York couple on the skids, fin...

  • It Happened One Night

    Episode 6

    Directed by Frank Capra • 1934 • United States
    Starring Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly

    Opposites attract with magnetic force in this romantic road-trip delight from Frank Capra, about a spoiled runaway socialite (Claudette Colbert) and a roguish man-of-the-people reporter (Clark...

  • Bad Night for the Blues

    Episode 7

    Directed by Chris Shepherd • 2010 • United Kingdom

    It’s a holiday to remember—or not—when a young man joins his dotty elderly aunt for a Christmas party at her local Conservative Club, where the wine is flowing, the bingo is heated, and the cracks in the genteel facade start to show.

  • Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife

    Episode 8

    Directed by Ernst Lubitsch • 1938 • United States
    Starring Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Edward Everett Horton

    The great Ernst Lubitsch lends his famously sophisticated touch to this whimsical farce about a spoiled American millionaire who uses his wealth to lure an attractive French aristocra...

  • Midnight

    Episode 9

    Directed by Mitchell Leisen • 1939 • United States
    Starring Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore

    Arriving at Paris’s Gare de l’Est train station with only her gold lamé gown on her back, penniless American ex-showgirl Eve Peabody (Claudette Colbert) must use her wiles in order to work h...

  • Tampopo

    Episode 10

    Directed by Juzo Itami • 1985 • Japan
    Starring Tsutomu Yamazaki, Nobuko Miyamoto, Koji Yakusho

    The tale of an eccentric band of culinary ronin who guide the widow of a noodle-shop owner on her quest for the perfect recipe, this rapturous "ramen western" by Japanese director Juzo Itami is an ente...

  • The Daytrippers

    Episode 11

    Directed by Greg Mottola • 1996 • United States
    Starring Parker Posey, Hope Davis, Liev Schreiber

    With its droll humor and bittersweet emotional heft, the feature debut of writer-director Greg Mottola announced the arrival of an unassumingly sharp-witted new talent on the 1990s indie film scene....

  • Amarcord

    Episode 12

    Directed by Federico Fellini • 1973 • France, Italy

    This carnivalesque portrait of provincial Italy during the fascist period, the most personal film from Federico Fellini, satirizes the director's youth and turns daily life into a circus of social rituals, adolescent desires, male fantasies, an...

  • A Hard Day’s Night

    Episode 13

    Directed by Richard Lester • 1964 • United Kingdom

    Meet the Beatles! Just one month after they exploded onto the U.S. scene with their Ed Sullivan Show appearance, John, Paul, George, and Ringo began working on a project that would bring their revolutionary talent to the big screen. A HARD DAY’S...

  • Good Morning

    Episode 14

    Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1959 • Japan
    Starring Masahiko Shimazu, Koji Shidara, Kuniko Miyake

    A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of inter­generational relationships, GOOD MORNING tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after t...

  • Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

    Episode 15

    Directed by Pedro Almodóvar • 1990 • Spain
    Starring Antonio Banderas, Victoria Abril

    Pedro Almodóvar’s colorful and controversial tribute to the pleasures and perils of Stockholm syndrome, TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN! is a rambunctious dark comedy starring Antonio Banderas as an unbalanced but alluri...

  • Mon oncle

    Episode 16

    Directed by Jacques Tati • 1958 • France, Italy
    Starring Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne Servantie

    Slapstick prevails again when Jacques Tati’s eccentric, old-fashioned hero, Monsieur Hulot, is set loose in Villa Arpel, the geometric, oppressively ultramodern home of his brother-in-law,...

  • Withnail and I

    Episode 17

    Directed by Bruce Robinson • 1986 • United Kingdom
    Starring Paul McGann, Richard E. Grant, Richard Griffiths

    London. The 1960s. Two unemployed actors—acerbic, elegantly wasted Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and the anxiety-ridden “I” (Paul McGann)—drown their frustrations in booze, pills, and light...

  • Modern Times

    Episode 18

    Directed by Charles Chaplin • 1936 • United States
    Starring Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman

    MODERN TIMES, Charlie Chaplin’s last outing as the Little Tramp, puts the iconic character to work as a giddily inept factory employee who becomes smitten with a gorgeous gamine (Paulette...

  • Hopscotch

    Episode 19

    Directed by Ronald Neame • 1980 • United States
    Starring Walter Matthau, Glenda Jackson, Sam Waterston

    The inimitable comic team of Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson star in this nimble tale of international intrigue from master British filmmaker Ronald Neame. Based on Brian Garfield’s best-sell...

  • The Ruling Class

    Episode 20

    Directed by Peter Medak • 1972 • United Kingdom
    Starring Peter O'Toole, Alastair Sim, Arthur Lowe

    Peter O’Toole gives a tour-de-force performance as Jack, a man “cured” of believing he’s God—only to become Jack the Ripper incarnate. Based on Peter Barnes's irreverent play, this darkly comic indi...

  • Monsieur Hulot's Holiday

    Episode 21

    Directed by Jacques Tati • 1953 • France
    Starring Jacques Tati, Nathalie Pascaud

    Monsieur Hulot, Jacques Tati’s endearing clown, takes a holiday at a seaside resort, where his presence provokes one catastrophe after another. Tati’s masterpiece of gentle slapstick is a series of effortlessly well...

  • Zazie dans le métro

    Episode 22

    Directed by Louis Malle • 1960 • France
    Starring Catherine Demongeot, Philippe Noiret

    A brash and precocious ten-year-old (Catherine Demongeot) comes to Paris for a whirlwind weekend with her rakish uncle (Philippe Noiret); he and the viewer get more than they bargained for, however, in this ana...

  • Divorce Italian Style

    Episode 23

    Directed by Pietro Germi • 1961 • Italy
    Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Stefania Sandrelli, Daniela Rocca

    Baron Ferdinando Cefalù (Marcello Mastroianni) longs to marry his nubile young cousin Angela (Stefania Sandrelli), but one obstacle stands in his way: his fatuous and fawning wife, Rosalia (D...

  • A Taxing Woman

    Episode 24

    Directed by Juzo Itami • 1987 • Japan
    Starring Nobuko Miyamoto, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Masahiko Tsugawa

    Certainly the most exuberantly entertaining film ever made about the intricacies of the Japanese tax system, this delightful comedy stars Nobuko Miyamoto as a fiercely dedicated tax collector who g...