The 21 best Adult Swim shows

In September 2001—that is, 23 years ago somehow—Cartoon Network launched Adult Swim, a late-night programming block for the kind of people who would check out a kid’s TV channel just to see what it was airing after the kids went to bed. It was, essentially, for folks who hoped things would get a little weird. And that’s exactly what happened.

While Adult Swim has aired many live-action series over the years, it started as a home for adult animation. The shows were kind of like what you’d get if you took Cartoon Network’s daytime programming and filtered it through a lens of blender infomercials and staticky messages left, regretfully, sometime between 2 and 5 a.m. on an ex’s answering machine. Take, for example, Home Movies, the first show to air on the network. In its earliest iteration, the animated series about an eight-year-old aspiring filmmaker was largely improvised. It was too weird for its original network, UPN, which canceled the show due to low ratings. But it thrived for three and a half more seasons after Adult Swim picked it up.

Home Movies, like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Space Ghost Coast To Coast, and other Adult Swim classics, just made more sense after 10 p.m., when everything gets a little hazier, a little less linear, and a little more squiggly. It’s why so many Adult Swim shows are difficult to describe concisely. Sure, you can say that The Eric Andre Show and Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! are parodies of late-night talk shows and SNL-style sketch series, but does that really do them justice? They’re the sorts of shows that need to be seen to be understood, the sorts of shows that stand in direct opposition to…well, many things, but mostly common, commercial-minded TV sense. Adult Swim built its brand on niche appeal; it’s firmly comfortable knowing that many people just don’t get it. And that’s okay, because for those of us who do, it’s like finally finding a friend who just gets you on every level. Here are The A.V. Club’s 21 favorite shows to grace the network.

This article originally published in October 2023. It was updated in April 2024.

21. Eagleheart (2011-2014)

Produced by none other than Conaco, Conan O’Brien’s production company, is a sendup of cop shows. Starring Chris Elliott as U.S. Marshal Chris Monsanto, Brett Gelman as his dimwitted partner, and Maria Thayer as the smart one, the show offers plenty of silliness to go around. An example: an old man in a creepy van offers a young boy a ride somewhere, setting off some obvious red flags in us reasonable viewers, and yet it goes fine. Ultimately, it is the old man, accepting a ride from a trucker, van and all, who winds up the victim. That’s good stuff. [Meredith Hobbs Coons]