Comedy is so back. Not that it literally went anywhere, but in recent years, as television has moved on from its eclectic Peak TV era, into an age of binge-friendly thrillers, the genre has languished a bit. Well, not in February 2026. Along with two true sitcoms—one of which reunites Tracy Morgan with the team behind 30 Rock—the month’s highlights include a frequently hilarious Irish mystery and a horror comedy that’s heavily weighted toward humor. Once you’re all chuckled out, turn to PBS for Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s latest perceptive docuseries.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History (PBS)
Too many historical documentaries feel like audiovisual textbooks, slogging blandly through sepia-tone photos and letters of the “Dearest Abigail, I write to you with a heavy heart” variety. There’s a place for that kind of thing, don’t get me wrong, but its predominance makes it all the more exciting when a documentarian approaches history from a unique, analytical perspective that feels tailored to the present. Which is precisely what Henry Louis Gates Jr.—the Harvard professor, author, and driving force behind PBS docuseries including The Black Church and Great Migrations—is doing in Black and Jewish America, a four-part exploration of the complicated relationship between two inextricably connected minority communities.
Gates’ roughly chronological account weaves together major moments in each group’s history, from the Spanish Inquisition and American slavery to World War II, the Civil Rights Movement, and beyond. It highlights such intersectional triumph as the founding of the NAACP by a Black-Jewish coalition and the anti-lynching anthem “Strange Fruit,” written by the Jewish poet Abel Meeropol and indelibly recorded by Billie Holiday. But the series doesn’t evade thorny topics, bringing particular empathy to its examination of rifts between and within Black and Jewish communities over an Israeli-Palestinian conflict that began long before Oct. 7, 2023. Throughout the doc, Gates ties history to today by staging conversations—a joint interview with theater icons Anna Deavere Smith and Tony Kushner; a Black, Jewish Passover Seder attended by Jamaica Kincaid and Koshersoul author Michael W. Twitty—that illuminate how insightful Black and Jewish Americans continue to think about identity and solidarity.
The ’Burbs (Peacock)
When a new mother moves out of the city to the suburban cul-de-sac where her husband grew up, her first encounters with the neighbors call to mind a contemporary horror-comedy classic. “It’s giving Get Out,” says Samira, played by the effervescent Keke Palmer. A tenacious lawyer on maternity leave, Samira is Black. The man she hastily married, Rob (Jack Whitehall), is a self-deprecating, white, British-born book editor. And the mostly white residents of Hinkley Hills are the kind of people who peer into newborn Miles’ baby carriage and coo: “What a cute little mocha munchkin!” You almost expect them to channel Daniel Kaluuya’s prospective Get Out inlaws and announce that they would’ve voted for Obama a third time if they could have.
This is the setup for a new Peacock series, streaming in full on Feb. 8, that takes its title, backdrop, and relatively little else from a very different horror comedy: The ‘Burbs. Styled like a B movie but led by A actor Tom Hanks, the 1989 original put a self-consciously silly spin on the Hollywood cliché that picket fences and manicured lawns conceal all manner of private suffering (see: All That Heaven Allows, Revolutionary Road, American Beauty, The Stepford Wives, and many more). The new ‘Burbs, expanded to eight episodes by creator Celeste Hughey, seems at first to be a stale, simplistic fusion of its namesake and the more recent wave of racially attuned social thrillers popularized by Get Out director Jordan Peele. (Palmer also starred in Peele’s latest movie, 2022’s Nope.) But the show finds a unique voice fast, revealing a sense of humor that is gentler than that of its influences and unusually nuanced in its take on suburban secrets. [Read the full review.]
Can You Keep a Secret? (Paramount+)
True fans of British comedy know that there are few people funnier than Dawn French, who won over global audiences as The Vicar of Dibley’s eponymous earthy cleric and as half of a legendary sketch duo with AbFab’s Jennifer Saunders. The BBC One import Can You Keep a Secret? puts her at the center of a six-episode sitcom that manages to be both dark and cozy, as a retired grandmother, Debbie Fendon, whose husband, William (Mark Heap), is mistakenly pronounced dead. Instead of correcting the error, the scheming matriarch hides him in the attic and collects a life insurance payout. (“I was impressed by how much we got for him!” she crows.) That the Fendons don’t think to immediately tell their devastated adult son, Harry (Craig Roberts), that his dad is still alive is only the first delightfully absurd wrinkle in this mischievous black comedy.
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins (NBC)
The best way to spend a Thursday night circa 2010 was to park yourself in front of an NBC comedy lineup that featured The Office, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, and Community. All four shows have since become classics. But some have had more influence on the network-sitcom landscape—one that has never been the same since they ended—than others. The Office and its direct descendant Parks and Rec gave rise to a generation of sweet, faintly progressive mockumentaries: Modern Family, Abbott Elementary, St. Denis Medical. Last year, Peacock unveiled a confoundingly dated Office spinoff, The Paper.
Having always preferred the darker, more manic and referential humor of 30 Rock and Community, I’ve found the relative scarcity of that style disappointing. So I’m extra delighted to report that The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins—an NBC sitcom that stars Tracy Morgan and is co-created by Robert Carlock, a longtime collaborator of executive producer Tina Fey—is network TV’s first worthy heir to 30 Rock. What that show was to SNL, this one is to the NFL. The surprise is that it also smartly cribs from The Office’s playbook. [Read the full review.]
How to Get to Heaven From Belfast (Netflix)
Lisa McGee broke through with a sui generis comedy that mined aspects of her own experience to find authentic humor in a harrowing situation. Derry Girls, which followed teens in McGee’s native Derry in the years preceding 1998’s Good Friday Agreement, was a raucous, joke-dense show that juxtaposed mundane adolescent rites of passage with the daily horrors of life in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Now McGee is back with a crime drama—one bound to earn comparisons to Sharon Horgan’s post-Catastrophe murder romp, Bad Sisters. Combining the latter show’s core of complicated relationships between women (and its fondness for outfitting those women in enviable knitwear) with the sidesplittingly verbose, extremely Irish sensibility of Derry Girls, her new Netflix series How to Get to Heaven From Belfast lands as both an example of the pivot to crime drama and a commentary on it. The plot gets a bit woolly towards the end, the mix of tones doesn’t always work, and I sometimes wished I could watch its central girlfriends do anything besides play amateur detective. Still, even if you’re over whodunits, McGee’s cleverly meta spin on an overdone genre and her genius for comedy, dialogue, and character development make for an altogether good craic. [Read the full review.]
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