"We don't necessarily recommend all of the shows below to today's audiences—if you don't have nostalgia for, say, number 20 on this list, you'll probably turn it off within a few minutes—but some of the comedies below are as funny now as they were 40 years ago. And on a quick logistical note, a couple of shows that debuted late in the decade but whose bulk aired in the '90s are ranked a little bit lower than they would be if we were considering their full histories, and not just the 1980s; I'm talking about Roseanne and Murphy Brown, two shows that made an instant impact upon the culture when they started in 1988, earning their spots on this list, but that, again, largely ran in the 1990s. Arbitrary? Sure, but then this whole damn list is."
