The 9 best animated series for adults

While there are still some holdouts to the idea that animated entertainment can be perfectly suitable for adults, even hardened skeptics would be moved by opening their minds to these nine tremendous series. Though many fully-grown adults enjoy shows like “SpongeBob SquarePants,” our list includes strictly shows explicitly designed for them.

‘The Simpsons’ (1989-)

The longest-running scripted series in television history, “The Simpsons” has become a ubiquitous piece of popular culture, making it easy to forget how groundbreaking it was in 1989. A zany sitcom about a family of five in a town called Springfield (no, we will never know which state), where Homer (Dan Castellaneta), a nuclear plant technician with anger management issues and no-nonsense Marge (Julie Kavner) are raising their kids, Bart (Nancy Cartwright), Lisa (Yeardley Smith) and baby Maggie. Over the course of more than 800 episodes, the series maintains a “joke-a-minute spectacle that veered between absurdist physical gags and heartfelt family squabbles” that still “functions as an education in American culture,” said Jesse David Fox at Vulture. (Disney+)

‘South Park’ (1997-)

One of several groundbreaking ’90s-era animated series still in production, Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s ultra-cynical comedy remains centered around a group of dyspeptic, cursing fourth-graders, one of whom (Kenny, voiced by Stone) dies during almost every single episode of the first five seasons, with his friends exclaiming, “Oh my God, they killed Kenny!”

Irreverent and provocative, the series offers a long-running satirical take on pop culture and American politics. The show’s “bestiary of Main Street America, its hapless parents and inept leaders, its weird small businesses and petty local politics, its moral pretensions and amoral vanities do ring true, however exaggerated,” said Jacob Bacharach at The New Republic. (Paramount+)

‘Family Guy’ (1999-)

A show that is as historically important as “The Simpsons” in making animated series appeal to grown-ups, creator Seth MacFarlane’s pointed farce about the misadventures of a dysfunctional family that includes a malevolent baby named Stewie (MacFarlane) is still going strong. MacFarlane also voices the bumbling patriarch, Peter Griffin, with Alex Borstein as his wife, Lois, and Seth Green and Mila Kunis as their older kids, Meg and Chris. The show “has laughs, and lots of them, poking fun at targets as diverse as prison perversion, Hitler’s inferiority and football announcers,” said Barry Garron at The Hollywood Reporter. It is “bright, entertaining and often witty and warm.” (Hulu)

‘The Boondocks’ (2005-2014)

“The Boondocks,” adapted from Aaron McGruder’s popular comic strip, is one of the few animated series to make a serious effort to tackle issues of race and privilege in contemporary America, albeit in an often intentionally crass fashion. When Robert “Granddad” Freeman (John Witherspoon) and his grandsons, Huey and Riley (Regina King on both counts), move from Chicago to a predominantly white suburb, they struggle to maintain their connection to their roots and situate themselves in a radically different culture. The writing is “funny and pungent from the start,” and the “Asian-influenced animation” makes it the “American show truest to the look and feel of serious Japanese anime,” said Mike Hale at The New York Times. (HBO Max)

‘Archer’ (2009-2023)

H. Jon Benjamin is Sterling Archer, an agent with a spy agency that was called International Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS) in the early seasons before that became untenable. Archer is a jerk, a well-worn conceit made fresh by his dynamics with his colleagues.

Like “Parks and Recreation,” this is essentially an office comedy with a serving of espionage adventure on the side. A superb ensemble includes his mother, Malory (Jessica Walter), agent Lana Kane (Aisha Tyler) and nerdy Cyril Figgis (Chris Parnell) among many others. An “extremely silly show that consistently reveals itself as surprisingly mature via the thoughtfulness and expertise infused throughout all of its other production aspects,” it manages to be “at once categorically preposterous and occasionally brilliant,” said Mike LeChavillier at Slant Magazine. (Disney+)

‘Adventure Time’ (2010-2018)

Perhaps some might quibble with the inclusion of The Cartoon Network’s trippy, post-apocalyptic coming-of-age story on a list for adults, but Pendleton Ward’s endlessly inventive, uproarious and frequently touching series is for all ages. The show follows the adventures of a boy named Finn (Jeremy Shada) and his shape-shifting dog, Jake (John DiMaggio), who can bend and twist his body into anything from a brick house to a “Gut Grinder,” a monster who steals gold from local villages. “Adventure Time” is steeped in a “deeper, more earnest kind of surrealism that is distinct from some inchoate sense of oddity,” the series “treats subjects like loss, romance and aging with great tact and feeling,” said Juliet Kleber at The New Republic. (Disney+)

‘Bob’s Burgers’ (2011-)

“Bob’s Burgers” is frequently contrasted with its more cynical fellow-travelers, like “South Park” and “The Simpsons.” Its bedrock appeal has always been its depiction of a more or less happy family struggling to get by while running a Jersey Shore burger joint.

H. Jon Benjamin voices Bob, with his wife, Linda (John Roberts), and their three goofy offspring, Tina (Dan Mintz), Gene (Eugene Mirman) and Louise (Kristen Schaal). Its “offbeat family dynamic is the show’s greatest asset,” and their often cringe-worthy foibles “remind us that families are often most tightly knit when they’re at their most pathetic,” said Joseph Jon Lanthier at Slant Magazine. (Disney+)

‘BoJack Horseman’ (2014-2020)

BoJack (Will Arnett) is a down-on-his-luck, hard-drinking horse and former sitcom star experiencing the familiar beats of post-stardom, including addiction and depression, in a lovingly realized alternate Hollywood in which animals and humans live side-by-side. That alone makes “BoJack Horseman,” which was the first adult animated series from Netflix, unique in the space.

In the first season, BoJack is on the comeback trail, half-heartedly working on a memoir with his biographer, Diane (Alison Brie), and possibly breaking up her marriage to Mr. Peanutbutter (Paul F. Tompkins). It’s “one of the wisest, most emotionally ambitious and — this is not a contradiction —spectacularly goofy series on television,” said Emily Nussbaum at The New Yorker. (Netflix)

‘Arcane’ (2021-2024)

With so much animated content out there, it’s not easy to make something that feels genuinely fresh and that looks like nothing else on TV, but that’s exactly what showrunners Christian Linke and Alex Yee deliver with “Arcane.” Based in the universe of the game League of Legends, it revolves around sisters Vi (Hailee Steinfeld) and Jinx (Ella Purnell) and a haves and have-nots struggle between the gleaming city of Piltover and the run-down, oppressed “undercity” of Zaun.

As children, Vi and Jinx lose their parents in an abortive revolution in Zaun, and years later find themselves on opposite sides of an unfolding power struggle between the two city-states. Easily “one of the most lavishly acclaimed animated series of the past decade,” it is carried out with a “fascinating collision of style,” in which “various forms of traditional animation are spliced together with computer-generated 3D,” said Kambole Campbell at Empire. (Netflix)