Love it or hate it, cringe is a cornerstone of comedy. Whether it causes you to avert your eyes from the screen or laugh hysterically through the awkwardness, cringe comedy will always take big swings and land big reactions. Television has become the perfect vessel for cringe comedy. As we become attached to characters over a long period of time, we revel in their successes and feel second-hand embarrassment at their failures. Here is a list of some of the best shows to wield cringe as a weapon of comedy.

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Seinfeld co-creator Larry David writes and stars in this HBO series that follows Larry David, the incredibly successful and cantankerous co-creator of Seinfeld. In Curb Your Enthusiasm, LD encounters famous friends and acquaintances in Los Angeles, never missing an opportunity to voice his opinion, no matter how insensitive it may be. The show can mine laughs out of any and every uncomfortable situation that could be conjured up; from giving a child’s doll a bad haircut, to stealing flowers from a roadside memorial to pitting a holocaust survivor against a Survivor contestant. It’s never a dull moment for Larry.

The Office

This entry is a two-for-one from both sides of the pond. In just two seasons and a beloved Christmas special, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant created one of the most influential sitcoms of the century with their office set mockumentary. In this bone-dry series, a documentary crew films the staff of an office as it faces a potential closure. Gervais gives a skin-crawling performance as office manager David Brent, who fancies himself as some kind of comic genius but comes off as cringe personified, while Martin Freeman’s Tim and Lucy Davis’ Dawn inch towards each other in a will-they-won’t-they courtship for the ages. The Office’s international success led to the inevitable American remake of the show, which did the unimaginable by standing apart with its own identity and managing to match (and in some ways surpass) the original series. Steve Carell took the lead as Michael Scott, the branch manager of a paper company who wants nothing more than to be loved by his co-workers. While the UK version almost demands that you watch the show through your fingers, the remake manages to find some heart among the cringe and still has some of the most unbearable to sit through episodes of a sitcom of all time; most memorably in “The Dinner Party” and “Scott’s Tots”.

Arrested Development

When a shady businessman (Jeffrey Tambor) and patriarch of a wealthy family is jailed, it is up to his most competent son (Jason Bateman) to step up and keep his chaotic family together. While the Netflix revival may have tainted some of the luster towards the Bluth family, the original network TV run of Arrested Development remains as one of the funniest and rewatchable sitcoms of the past 20 years. Featuring one of the best ensemble casts ever assembled for a sitcom, who’re all backed by incredibly witty writing that fires off a variety of jokes at the rate of a machine gun, the cult series is a high point for modern network sitcoms.

Fleabag

Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s modern masterpiece follows a young, grief-stricken woman trying to navigate through her life. Waller-Bridge delivers a tour de force in both writing and acting, as the eponymous Fleabag, in this tragic and hilarious comedy drama creating one of the most memorable series of the past ten years in just twelve episodes. Fleabag manages to be both touching and also incredibly dark and dry; featuring some of the best fourth-wall breaks you’re likely to ever see.

The Inbetweeners

Almost everyone can look back at moments from their teen years and find something to unbearably cringe over. But hopefully, nobody has suffered through as much embarrassment as the four leads of the British sitcom The Inbetweeners. When his parents divorce, posh geek Will (Simon Bird) is forced to leave his private school and attend a much rougher public school for the final years of his education. In order to avoid being a social outcast in his new surroundings, Will quickly joins a friend group that consists of the socially awkward Simon (Joe Thomas), the perverted Jay (James Buckley), and the impossibly dim Neil (Blake Harrison). The four boys embark on many misadventures in search of booze, girls, and a good time, but always inevitably find disappointment and heartbreak. The ensemble’s chemistry is perfectly tuned, and the friendships feel real and authentic to a group of boys who’re that age.

Peep Show

A 21st-century Odd Couple, Peep Show takes us into the lives of Mark (David Mitchell) and Jeremy (Robert Webb) a pair of old university friends and long-time roommates living in south London. While their inner thoughts may reveal deep resentment for one another, the two can’t seem to function unless if they’re by each other’s side. Shot with a point-of-view style, Peep Show’s humor is often dark, but always hilarious and is a perfect execution of cringe comedy as we see the El Dude Brothers constantly fail in both their professional and love lives.

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I Think You Should Leave

Sketch comedy can often be the best place to explore weird social quirks or just plain bizarre comedic concepts. And former Saturday Night Live writer Tim Robinson manages to repeatedly mine both for a variety of wildly original, cringe-inducing, and surprisingly rewatchable sketches. From its first episode, I Think You Should Leave wields a confidently unique comedic voice that consistently delivers big laughs with a strong ratio of good to bad sketches that puts other series to shame.

Nathan For You

Nathan Fielder uses his good grades from one of Canada’s top business schools, and unmatched skills at making people uncomfortable, to create this sometimes painful-to-watch mockumentary series. In Nathan for You, Fielder stars as a version of himself who embarks on helping small business owners revitalize their companies through outlandish, sometimes irresponsible, schemes. The incredibly dry style and use of real businesses make this a uniquely uncomfortable viewing experience.

The Eric Andre Show

Eric Andre hosts television’s most unhinged talk show, in this Adult Swim series that comes across as Jackass meets The Tonight Show. Alongside co-host Hannibal Buress, Andre has cultivated a comedy space that revels in shock and awkwardness, by pulling pranks on unassuming guests and producing man-on-the-street segments that would make Jay Leno blush. The Eric Andre Show ranks among the most anarchic shows to have ever graced the screen and always manages to pull big laughs out of audience members on this crazy wavelength.

Review

This underseen gem from Comedy Central features a delightfully inventive premise that sees the host of a review show forced to endure whatever life experience his audience requests of him to have and give it a rating out of 5 stars; whether that means eating 15 pancakes, divorcing his wife or eating 30 pancakes. Andy Daly stars as Forrest MacNeil, the eternally enthusiastic host of Review, who has his life destroyed and undergoes a series of humiliations that leave him increasingly unhinged – all in the name of completing his mission of reviewing anything that life has to offer. Daly gives a masterclass performance as a self-destructive optimist who is willing to suffer for his art.