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Burns and Allen
Start with: The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (CBS, 1950 to 1958)
The original template for the patient straight man and the partner whose logic runs on its own track. George Burns and Gracie Allen met in 1922, married in 1926 and carried the act from vaudeville to radio and then television. George fed the lines and let Gracie's reasoning tie itself into knots he never quite managed to untangle, and the joke was always that she sounded completely sure of herself. The sitcom is the easiest way in: George steps out of the story to talk to the audience while Gracie keeps the plot spinning. It ended when Gracie retired in 1958.
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Laurel and Hardy
Start with: The Music Box (1932)
The screen's great slow-burn partnership. Stan Laurel played the clumsy, childlike one and Oliver Hardy the pompous gentleman who suffers for it, and the comedy lives in the pauses: Ollie's long look into the camera, Stan's crumpling face. Off screen the division was different, because Laurel did much of the creative work and often rewrote whole sequences. They became a team at the Hal Roach studio in 1927. The Music Box, in which they haul a piano up an enormous flight of steps, won the Academy Award for best live-action short and shows the whole method in under half an hour.
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Abbott and Costello
Start with: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), then "Who's on First?" in The Naughty Nineties (1945)
Bud Abbott was the sharp, scheming straight man and Lou Costello the flustered innocent, a burlesque setup they first worked together in 1935 and drilled until the rhythm became the joke. "Who's on First?" is the proof: a baseball roster turned into a spiraling argument where every answer is correct and nobody understands it. A plaque and gold record of the routine have been on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame since 1956. For a full feature, the Frankenstein film revived their careers and still plays as well as a horror spoof as a comedy.
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Bob and Ray
Start with: the "Slow Talkers of America" sketch
Radio's driest double act and the quiet ancestor of every deadpan parody on this list. Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding were Boston announcers who filled rained-out Red Sox airtime with improvised banter until WHDH gave them a weekday show in 1946, and they kept going for five decades. They played mock interviews and broadcasts as though they were entirely serious. In the Slow Talkers sketch, Elliott's spokesman leaves such long gaps between words that Goulding's interviewer slowly comes apart, which makes it a perfect lesson in how much comedy a pause can carry. Elliott's hapless reporter Wally Ballou is the next stop.
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Martin and Lewis
Start with: Artists and Models (1955)
The loudest, loosest act of the postwar nightclub boom. Dean Martin sang, stayed cool and played straight man, a thankless job he made look effortless, while Jerry Lewis turned into a flailing, shrieking man-child around him. They debuted at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 25, 1946, became huge on NBC's Colgate Comedy Hour, made sixteen features for Paramount and split ten years to the day after that first show. Artists and Models, with Martin as a painter and Lewis as his comic-book-obsessed roommate, has the most visual invention of their films and shows how much of the chemistry was Martin's calm.
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Nichols and May
Start with: An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May (1960 album)
The duo that moved comedy from jokes to scenes. Mike Nichols and Elaine May met at the University of Chicago and began at the Compass Players, the forerunner of Second City, building improvised two-handers about telephone operators, disc jockeys, adultery, and mothers and sons. Neither was the straight man: each could lead, follow or turn the scene, which is why their sketches feel like eavesdropping rather than a routine. The album recorded from their Broadway debut won the Grammy for best comedy performance. The act lasted only until 1961, and both went on to celebrated careers as directors and writers, but these recordings still sound startlingly modern.
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Stiller and Meara
Start with: their Ed Sullivan Show sketches (1963 to 1971)
A husband-and-wife team who made marriage itself the material. Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara were among the first graduates of Chicago's Second City to become famous, and their sketches lampooned everything from marriage to everyday life with the two of them pulling in opposite directions, so the friction did the work a punchline usually does. Ed Sullivan was their home: after a debut on April 7, 1963, they came back 35 more times, one of the show's most frequent acts, appearing every year until its final season. Those short spots are the right size for a first taste, and fans of Seinfeld will hear where Frank Costanza's bluster came from.
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Smothers Brothers
Start with: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (CBS)
Two brothers, a guitar and a double bass, and a folk song that never gets finished. Tom Smothers played the clueless one, Dick the exasperated straight man, and their musical numbers kept collapsing into sibling squabbles that Tom ended with his signature complaint, "Mom always liked you best!" The gentle act hid a sharp edge. Their CBS variety hour became one of the most controversial programs of the Vietnam War era for its political material, and network chief William S. Paley abruptly canceled it on April 4, 1969. Watch it for the push and pull between brotherly nonsense and real satire; Tom died in December 2023, at 86.
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Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, hosts of Laugh-In (NBC, 1968 to 1973)
Rowan and Martin were a nightclub double act of the most traditional kind: Rowan the exasperated straight man, Martin the dim guy who derailed every introduction with misunderstandings and tangents. Their genius was putting that old-fashioned anchor at the center of the fastest, most fragmented show on 1960s television, where gags, catchphrases and one-liners flew past in seconds. The hosts' segments give the chaos a rhythm to return to. Start with any early episode and wait for the sign-off, Rowan's "Say good night, Dick" and Martin's "Good night, Dick!"
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Cheech & Chong
Start with: Up in Smoke (1978), then the album Los Cochinos
The act that turned the counterculture into a two-man road show. Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong met in Vancouver and found their audience on comedy records, playing sketches like radio plays with a buzz on. There is no real straight man here; the joke is two equally blissed-out guys feeding each other bad ideas at half speed. In Up in Smoke, Marin's Pedro picks up Chong's hitchhiking drummer Man, and the pair end up driving a van built out of marijuana from Mexico to Los Angeles. Lou Adler's film was made cheaply and earned more than $100 million worldwide. Los Cochinos brought the duo their only Grammy, for best comedy recording.
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Penn & Teller
Start with: Penn & Teller: Fool Us
The talker and the silent one, a split as old as the music hall and still completely fresh in their hands. Penn Jillette does all the speaking, loud, argumentative and gleefully rude about the conventions of magic, while Teller generally says nothing on stage and carries the eeriest tricks through mime and timing. Their first show together was at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival on August 19, 1975, and they have played Las Vegas, at the Rio, since 2001. Fool Us, where other magicians try to get a trick past them, is the warmest way in, because it shows how much they love the craft they spend the rest of their act mocking.
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Mr. Show with Bob and David
Bob Odenkirk and David Cross (HBO, 1995 to 1998)
The duo that rebuilt the sketch show around the link. Instead of stopping after each punchline, every sketch slides into the next, so a minor character in one scene might turn out to be the lead of the following one, and a half hour plays like a single runaway idea. Neither man is the fixed straight man: they trade the sane role and the lunatic one from sketch to sketch, which keeps the transitions unpredictable. Start with the first season's four episodes to see the method, then keep going; the show ran four seasons, and the pair revived it as W/ Bob & David on Netflix in November 2015. Anyone who knows Odenkirk only from Better Call Saul is in for a shock.
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Kenan & Kel
Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell (Nickelodeon, 1996 to 2001)
Start with: the Kenan & Kel sitcom, then Good Burger (1997)
A classic schemer-and-stooge pairing delivered to a generation of kids who did not know they were watching vaudeville. Producers spotted Thompson and Mitchell clowning around on the set of All That and taped a pilot during a hiatus. In the sitcom, Kenan cooks up get-rich-quick plans and Kel's clumsiness and dreamy nature wreck them, with Kel's frazzled "Aww, here it goes!" opening and closing every episode. The timing is pure double act, and it has aged better than most 1990s kids' TV. The pair reunited for Good Burger 2 on Paramount+ in November 2023.
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Tenacious D
Born
Start with: the album Tenacious D (2001), and the song "Tribute"
The comedy duo as a rock band, and a reminder that the old straight-man formula works with guitars. Jack Black is the bombastic frontman convinced of the band's destiny, and Kyle Gass is the calmer, put-upon partner who keeps the riff going while Black oversells everything. They formed in Los Angeles in 1994, got a short HBO series, and their debut album, with Dave Grohl on drums, made "Tribute," a song about a greater song they have forgotten, a cult favorite. The jokes land because the music is genuinely good. The act has been on hold since July 2024, after Gass's onstage joke about the attempt on Donald Trump's life, and in 2026 the two sent mixed signals about its future.
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Tim & Eric
Start with: Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! (Adult Swim, 2007 to 2010)
Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim took the double act apart and reassembled it out of public-access television, bad local ads and corporate video. They split the work less as straight man and clown than as two equally committed sincere idiots, each playing it completely straight while the material falls apart around them. The creators called the show "the nightmare version of television," and the off-kilter editing makes every segment feel slightly wrong in a way that is hard to stop watching. Fake commercials for the Cinco corporation's useless products are an easy entry point, and John C. Reilly's Dr. Steve Brule is the gateway character.
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Key & Peele
Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele (Comedy Central, 2012 to 2015)
Start with: the "Substitute Teacher" and "Obama's Anger Translator" sketches
The duo that made the two-hander sketch feel like short cinema. Key tends to take the explosive roles, like Mr. Garvey, the furious veteran substitute let loose on a suburban roll call, or Luther, who turns the president's calm statements into tirades, while Peele often plays the cool center those characters crash against. They swap constantly, and that range is the point. The show ran five seasons and won a Peabody Award for its satire of a racially divided and racially connected America. The East/West Bowl sketches, with ever more absurd football player names, are the perfect third stop.
More about Key & Peele17
Broad City (2014)
8.4/10on IMDb
First aired
Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer (Comedy Central, 2014 to 2019)
Start with: season one of Broad City
The best proof that the duo survived the jump from stage to the internet. Jacobson and Glazer built the act themselves as a web series about two broke friends in New York, and Amy Poehler mentored them and came aboard as executive producer when it moved to television. They play exaggerated versions of themselves: Abbi the aspiring artist in Astoria, the one who still believes the rules apply, and Ilana the extroverted slacker in Gowanus who treats every day as an adventure and Abbi as its co-star. The comedy is in that devotion, two people completely on each other's side against a city that keeps winning. It ran five seasons.
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The Oh, Hello Show
Nick Kroll and John Mulaney as Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland
Start with: Oh, Hello on Broadway (Netflix, 2017)
Two of the sharpest stand-ups of their generation hiding inside a pair of turtlenecked old men from the Upper West Side. The act grew out of the New York club Rififi in the early 2000s and spread through Kroll Show, where the two hosted Too Much Tuna, a prank show whose prank is announced before it starts. The division is balanced: Kroll's Gil is the proud actor and voice-actor, Mulaney's George the more aggressive one, an author and playwright, and each man's vanity props up the other's. The Broadway run at the Lyceum ended in January 2017, and the Netflix recording, with Steve Martin as guest, is the definitive version.
More about The Oh, Hello Show19
Desus & Mero (2019 TV series)
Desus Nice and The Kid Mero (Viceland 2016 to 2018, Showtime 2019 to 2022)
Start with: "The Obama Interview" episode of the Showtime series (December 13, 2020)
Two Bronx natives who proved a double act could be built on pure conversation. They rose together through the Complex podcast Desus vs. Mero, and their late-night shows kept the same loose, riffing rhythm, one man launching a bit and the other topping it before the guest can get a word in. There is no straight man at all, just two people who make each other laugh while the audience sits in. The Obama episode shows them at their sharpest, keeping their own tone with a former president. The pair chose to go their separate ways in 2022, so the act is finished.
More about Desus & Mero (2019 TV series)20
Rhett & Link
Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal (Good Mythical Morning, from 2012)
Start with: Good Mythical Morning, now also on Netflix
The streaming era's answer to the old variety team. Rhett and Link met on their first day of first grade in North Carolina in 1984, made cheap, cheerful ads for small businesses in the web series I Love Local Commercials, and in January 2012 launched Good Mythical Morning, a weekday show of taste tests and eating challenges. They trade the roles of instigator and victim from segment to segment, and the comedy rests on forty years of friendship that makes every jab land softly. The show passed its 3,000th episode in March 2026, and new episodes began arriving on Netflix in September 2026, the most active act here.
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