How can any of us define what the best of all time is? For some people, thinking about the best TV show or film of all time is akin to asking them what their favorite within the respective medium is. But to say that something is your favorite film or TV show is not automatically the same as deeming it the best. For some, to be the best means that you have to be influential or that the end result has to have some grand statement attached. And more importantly, if the question “What is the best of all time?” is being asked, do we ask ourselves or do we rely on outside sources? 

The voice of the critic is important, but it can also be ignored if a critic doesn’t like a show or film the way that we do, or if they just flat-out hate something we adore. But if we accept that critics’ voices are worth listening to (which they are), then it comes down to either Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes in terms of the best options for aggregating tens (and sometimes, in the case of big-budget films, hundreds) of reviews from across the Internet and the globe to identify what may well be the best. Arguably, Metacritic is the better option, for two reasons. First, Metacritic doesn’t pull from hundreds of random sources. Often, the reviews it collects, even for the biggest new movie, amount to about 50 or so essays or articles from the true cream of the crop online. And second, because its numbers directly correlate to the ratings that a critic actually assigns (as opposed to its main competition, whose scores simply reflect if a review is generally positive or negative), the combined scores feel more accurate to whether or not a show is actually good.

So, with all that out of the way, the question before us is this: what, according to Metacritic, is the best sitcom of all time? The picture above this may have given you a hint, but if not, let’s be clear that the answer is the British version of “The Office,” with a 97 score. When it comes to influence, few shows can claim to be as massively impactful (even without realizing it) than “The Office,” created and written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. For a show with such a deliberately small premise — a documentary crew tracks the day-to-day lives of people working at a paper company in the English town of Slough — “The Office” is a show whose impact spread quickly across the pond to the United States, and continues to have a great impact. 

Leave aside the fact that Gervais and co-star Martin Freeman have become internationally known thanks to playing, respectively, pompous and clownish office manager David Brent and the capable and lovelorn paper salesman Tim. You can even leave aside the fact that the show inspired a massively famous American remake that helped Steve Carell and John Krasinski become major stars (for playing the stateside counterparts of David and Tim). Think of how many modern sitcoms, from “Abbott Elementary” to “St. Denis Medical,” are essentially derived from the same mockumentary style. “The Office” belongs alongside the handful (at best) of other sitcoms that have truly shaped the genre over the decades.