---
title: "Community"
year: 2009
kind: "series"
canonical: "https://film.one/tv/community"
fi1m_score: 83
critics_score: 67
critics_reviews: 6
published: "2026-09-17T01:06:04.458652+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-17T01:06:21.489525+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Community (2009)

Created by Dan Harmon · MPA TV-14 · Comedy

**Fi1m score: 83** · Critics 67 from 6 reviews

*In a sentence:* A community college where every week is a different genre and nobody ever learns any Spanish

> Dan Harmon’s sitcom starts as a snarky ensemble comedy and turns, within a season, into a series about everything television can do. It is inventive, kind and frequently hilarious, with one season we would happily lose and a lead it never quite solves.

## Synopsis

Jeff Winger (Joel McHale), a fast-talking lawyer struck off when his degree turns out to be a fake, enrols at Greendale Community College in Colorado to get a real one with as little effort as possible. To get close to Britta Perry (Gillian Jacobs), he invents a Spanish study group in the library. To his irritation, people turn up: Annie Edison (Alison Brie), a high-achiever fresh from a stint in rehab; Troy Barnes (Donald Glover), a former high-school quarterback; Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi), who talks about everything as if it were television; Shirley Bennett (Yvette Nicole Brown), a divorced mother; and Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase), an elderly moist-towelette heir. Their Spanish teacher is Ben Chang (Ken Jeong). Jeff leans on an old acquaintance, Professor Ian Duncan (John Oliver), for the answers.

## Review

Dan Harmon’s *Community* was first shown on 17 September 2009 and ran for six seasons and 110 episodes, and for most of that time it was the most restless comedy on television. The premise is small: a disgraced lawyer joins a study group at a bad college. What Harmon and his writers do with it is not small. Within a season the study room has become a stage on which the programme can be a heist film, a war film, a documentary, a zombie picture, a Western, whatever the week demands. It is a good sitcom about people and a better one about television, and it is at its best when it manages to be both in the same half hour.

The cast is the reason it works, and Danny Pudi’s Abed is the reason the cast works. He plays a young man who can only understand people by comparing them to characters, and Pudi keeps the voice flat and the eyes busy, so that Abed is never a joke about autism and often the only person in the group who knows what is going on. Donald Glover’s Troy, an ex-quarterback who becomes a boy again the moment Abed lets him, is the warmest thing in the programme, and their handshake and their end-of-episode nonsense in front of a cardboard set are worth more than most shows’ plots. Alison Brie’s Annie and Gillian Jacobs’s Britta are both written against type over time, Annie growing harder and Britta being demoted from love interest to the group’s designated failure, and both actors take it gamely. Jim Rash’s Dean Craig Pelton, forever in costume and forever in love with Jeff, is the finest recurring joke on the campus.

The genre episodes are the programme’s calling card, and the craft behind them is real. The paintball episode, *Modern Warfare*, directed by Justin Lin, turns the cafeteria and the corridors into a John Woo film, and Gary Hatfield lights the same flat, bright set as if it had never held a sitcom. Ludwig Göransson scores it straight, brass and drums, without a wink. Denise Pizzini’s Greendale is a place built to be redressed: the study table, the library stacks, the cafeteria, the quad, all of them ready to be a bunker or a saloon by Thursday. The editors, Garret Elkins and Jeff Groth among them, cut each pastiche in the rhythm of the thing being parodied, which is why the parodies hold.

Here is where it got us. Duke Johnson directs an episode in stop-motion animation, Abed having woken one December to find the world made of felt and the others humouring him. We expected a stunt and settled in to admire it. Then, near the end, Abed says in one plain sentence why he needs the world to look like that, and we found ourselves moved by a felt puppet in a way we had not been by most live actors that year. The programme does this more than we would expect: the joke is a disguise for the feeling, and the feeling is nearly always about loneliness.

Not all of it works. Joel McHale’s Jeff is a fine deliverer of speeches and a thin man to build a series around, and the writers know it, which is why the speeches become a joke about speeches. Chevy Chase’s Pierce is the sore point: a bigot the programme cannot decide whether to punish or pity, and the actor’s evident boredom leaks through. The fourth season, thirteen episodes made without Harmon as showrunner, has the tone right and the jokes wrong; it imitates the programme’s habits without understanding why they were there. Harmon came back for the fifth, and Jonathan Banks arrives as Professor Buzz Hickey, whose weary contempt for the study group is a useful corrective. By the sixth the study table is emptier and the programme knows it.

Most critics scored it around 67, and they were reviewing the pilot, which is a smug ensemble comedy with a smirking lead and a set-up borrowed from a dozen others. They were not wrong about the pilot. They were reviewing a different programme from the one it became within ten episodes, and the later seasons have not been widely re-marked.

Start at the beginning, skip nothing, and take the fourth season at speed. It carries a 12 certificate, and it is a comedy that expects us to have seen a lot of television and rewards us if we have.

*Fi1m score 83, published 17 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

Most critics like Community, and they like it for the same reasons: a brisk pace, jokes that land more often than not, and a cast that makes stock sitcom types feel less stock. The praise clusters on the ensemble at Greendale, with Danny Pudi’s Abed singled out, and on writing that knows its sitcom conventions well enough to play with them. Several reviewers rate it among the better new comedies of its season, and those returning after the first year find it uneven but often funny, with the ‘Modern Warfare’ episode named as a high point.

The reservations concern the set-up rather than the execution. More than one critic notes that the college setting barely matters and the characters arrive as familiar types. The spread is narrow apart from one clear dissent: Variety finds the show too pleased with its own awareness of sitcom clichés, its satire soft and Joel McHale the weakest link. /Film, by contrast, counts McHale’s charming but shady lead as a reason to watch.

### Reviews we read (6)

- **The AV Club**, Emily St. James (B+): The pilot is one of the stronger ones of a weak fall season thanks to its strong cast and well-written jokes that elevate familiar sitcom tropes. It effectively sets up the premise of the study group at Greendale while hinting at deeper character work beneath the humor. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/community-pilot-1798206983)
- **The Guardian**, Cable Girl (80/100, inferred): The critic praises the series as fast and funny despite a slightly uneven start, highlighting the oddball study group at Greendale Community College and standout performances like Danny Pudi's Abed. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2010/nov/02/cable-girl-community)
- **The Hollywood Reporter**, Barry Garron (70/100, inferred): The critic notes that while the community-college setting is mostly irrelevant and the characters are stock sitcom types, the brisk pace, clever writing, and strong casting give the show the ingredients to build an audience. It owes more to classic quirky ensemble comedies than campus-specific ones. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/thr-review-nbcs-community-52231/)
- **Variety**, Brian Lowry (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the show too self-conscious about sitcom clichés, with satirical elements that lack crispness and a lead actor who is its weakest link despite some witty banter. It embraces the idea of found family but may struggle to deliver reliable laughs or stand out on NBC's schedule. [Read](https://variety.com/2009/tv/reviews/community-1200476260/)
- **Collider**, Keith Demko (70/100, inferred): The first season of Community is uneven but often hilarious, successfully capturing the silliness of college life through its ensemble at Greendale. The critic singles out the 'Modern Warfare' episode for its sharp skewering of sci-fi and action movie clichés. [Read](https://collider.com/community-season-one-dvd-review/)
- **/Film** (70/100, inferred): Based on the pilot, Community shows promise as a sweet-hearted sitcom with politically incorrect irreverence, led by Joel McHale's charming yet morally murky protagonist. The critic notes its potential to fit well in NBC's strong Thursday comedy block alongside shows like The Office and 30 Rock. [Read](http://www.slashfilm.com/is-nbcs-community-worthy-of-the-best-comedy-block-on-tv/)

## Details

- **Created by:** Dan Harmon
- **Creator:** Dan Harmon
- **Director:** Tristram Shapeero, Joe Russo, Anthony Russo, Rob Schrab, Jay Chandrasekhar, Adam Davidson, Justin Lin, Nat Faxon, Kyle Newacheck, Jim Rash, Steven Tsuchida, Victor Nelli, Jr., Steven Sprung, Tricia Brock, Anthony Hemingway, Beth McCarthy-Miller, Dan Eckman, Duke Johnson, Fred Goss, Richard Ayoade, Michael Patrick Jann, Gail Mancuso, Jeff Melman, Ken Whittingham, Bobcat Goldthwait, Seth Gordon
- **Writer:** Chris McKenna, Andy Bobrow, Dan Harmon, Hilary Winston, Megan Ganz, Andrew Guest, Karey Dornetto, Tim Hobert, Annie Mebane, Steve Basilone, Adam Countee, Emily Cutler, Maggie Bandur, Tim Saccardo, Matt Roller, Jon Pollack, Carol Kolb, Zach Paez, Monica Padrick, Lauren Pomerantz, Matt Murray, Liz Cackowski, Dan Guterman, Alex Rubens, Dino Stamatopoulos, Ryan Ridley, Sona Panos, Donald Diego, Parker Deay, Gene Hong, Mark Stegemann, Chris Kula, Dean Young, Matt Warburton, Jordan Blum, Jack Kukoda, Hunter Covington, Matt Lawton, Jim Rash, Ben Wexler, Matt Fusfeld, Alex Cuthbertson, Alex Cooley, Briggs Hatton, Neil Goldman, Jessie Miller, Clay Lapari, Erik Sommers, Garrett Donovan, Vera Santamaria
- **Cinematography:** Gary Hatfield
- **Editor:** John Peter Bernardo, Jeff Groth, Garret Elkins, Jeff Hall, Christian Kinnard
- **Music:** Ludwig Göransson
- **Production design:** Denise Pizzini
- **Producer:** Dan Harmon, Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
- **Cast:** Joel McHale as Jeff Winger; Gillian Jacobs as Britta Perry; Alison Brie as Annie Edison; Donald Glover as Troy Barnes; Yvette Nicole Brown as Shirley Bennett; Jim Rash as Dean Craig Pelton; Danny Pudi as Abed Nadir; Chevy Chase as Pierce Hawthorne
- **Certificate (MPA):** TV-14
- **Release (the US):** 17 September 2009
- **Genres:** Comedy
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4W4L9TLJa8

## Where to watch in the US

- Hulu: streaming, hd
- Peacock: streaming, uhd
- Amazon Prime Video: add-on, uhd
- The Roku Channel: add-on, hd
- Apple TV: buy, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy, sd

*Checked 2026-09-17.*

Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, AZ, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, SK, TH, TR, UA, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Spaced* (1999), Fi1m 86: Two flatmates in north London see their lives through films; the British ancestor of Abed. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/spaced.md)
- *Arrested Development* (2003), Fi1m 87: A rich family collapses in jokes that pay off three episodes later; same density, drier heart. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/arrested-development.md)
- *The Good Place* (2016): Another ensemble of misfits improving each other, with the afterlife as the campus.
- *Detectorists* (2014), Fi1m 87: Two men in a field with metal detectors; the quiet friendship Troy and Abed grow into. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/detectorists.md)
- *Rick and Morty* (2013): Harmon again, with the genre games and the loneliness turned up to animated extremes.

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/community