Jim Gaffigan

Of all the sitcoms to feature a shlubby goofball husband and his mismatched, highly capable wife, The Jim Gaffigan Show is probably one of the most realistic because Gaffigan’s real-life wife Jeannie served as a writer on the show — which told a fictionalized version of the Gaffigans’ actual lives raising their five children in a Manhattan apartment for two seasons before the couple decided to stop and spend more time with their own kids. With the exception of Gaffigan’s dramatic roles, such as in the recently released Chappaquiddick, what you see is typically what you get, which is how his once flippantly food-heavy act (all together now: “Hot Pocket!”) has evolved over the years to include heavier material about parenting, aging and Jeannie’s recent brain-tumor-removal surgery, but Gaffigan has remained the same blindsided everyman throughout, confused by the world around him and self-deprecatingly guessing at how the audience is judging him and finding him lacking. In reality, his casually delivered act (also co-written with his wife) is razor-sharp, even if he’s typically safe enough to make your mom laugh, or as he did in 2015, open for the freaking pope.