Best Comedy Of Manners Movies & TV Shows

A stand-up comedian and his three offbeat friends weather the pitfalls and payoffs of life in New York City in the '90s. It's a show about nothing.

Set in England in the early 19th century, Pride and Prejudice tells the story of Mr and Mrs Bennet's five unmarried daughters after the rich and eligible Mr Bingley and his status-conscious friend, Mr Darcy, have moved into their neighbourhood. While Bingley takes an immediate liking to the eldest Bennet daughter, Jane, Darcy has difficulty adapting to local society and repeatedly clashes with the second-eldest Bennet daughter, Elizabeth.

Two musicians witness a mob hit and struggle to find a way out of the city before they are found by the gangsters. Their only opportunity is to join an all-girl band as they leave on a tour. To make their getaway they must first disguise themselves as women, then keep their identities secret and deal with the problems this brings - such as an attractive bandmate and a very determined suitor.

Manhattan explores how the life of a middle-aged television writer dating a teenage girl is further complicated when he falls in love with his best friend's mistress.

After many years spent at the “Cheers” bar, Frasier moves back home to Seattle to work as a radio psychiatrist after his policeman father gets shot in the hip on duty.

Nester Patou, a naive police officer, is transferred to the red light district in Paris and organizes a raid on a dodgy hotel running as a brothel. In doing so he inadvertently disrupts the corrupt system of the police and the pimps union, and even nets his station superior. Fired from his job, Nester goes to the local bar for a drink and befriends a pretty young lady named Irma la Douce. Upon realizing she is a prostitute, Nester invents a crazy scheme to keep her from seeing other men.

A New York gangster and his girlfriend attempt to turn street beggar Apple Annie into a society lady when the peddler learns her daughter is marrying royalty.

A young law school graduate is hired by a prestigious firm, but he neglects to inform them he is allergic to even a single whiff of alcohol.

A snobbish investor and a wily street con-artist find their positions reversed as part of a bet by two callous millionaires.

Never-wed, poor, rough around the edges Apple Annie has always written to her daughter, Louise, in Spain that she is married and a member of New York's high society. Upon receiving unexpected word from Louise (who hasn't seen Annie since infancy) that she is en route to America with her new fiancé and his father, a count, so the three of them can meet her, Annie panics, despairing that her beloved daughter will be destroyed by the deception.

Two wealthy Victorian widows are courted tentatively by two impoverished British aristocrats. When one of the dowagers suggests that her beau go away with her for a month to see if they are compatible, the fireworks begin.

A gay cabaret owner and his drag queen companion agree to put up a false straight front so that their son can introduce them to his fiancé's conservative moralistic parents.

When Lucy Honeychurch and chaperon Charlotte Bartlett find themselves in Florence with rooms without views, fellow guests Mr Emerson and son George step in to remedy the situation. Meeting the Emersons could change Lucy's life forever but, once back in England, how will her experiences in Tuscany affect her marriage plans?

A society woman believes her husband is having an affair, a misconception which may have dire personal consequences for all involved.

Raymond Dabney returns to his family after trouble with the law. He convinces the sheriff to give him a job watching the house and furniture of widow Crystal Wetherby without knowing she is engaged to his brother.

After experiencing a traumatic misfortune, Jasmine French, a wealthy woman from New York, moves to San Francisco to live with her foster sister Ginger and the firm purpose of getting a new life, but she will be haunted by anxiety and memories of the past.

An English mystery novelist invites a medium to his home, so she may conduct a séance for a small gathering. The writer hopes to gather enough material for the book he's working on, as well as to expose the medium as a charlatan. However, proceedings take an unexpected turn, resulting in a chain of supernatural events being set into motion that wreak havoc on the man's present marriage.

Gulley Jimson is a boorish aging artist recently released from prison. A swindler in search of his next art project, he hunkers down in the penthouse of would-be patrons the Beeders while they go on an extended vacation; he paints a mural on their wall, pawns their valuables and, along with the sculptor Abel, inadvertently smashes a large hole in their floor. Jimson's next project is an even larger wall in an abandoned church.

Julia and William were married and soon separated by his snobbish family. They meet again many years later, when their daughter he has raised invites her mother to her wedding, with the disapproval of William's mother.

Two young gentlemen living in 1890s England use the same pseudonym ("Ernest") on the sly, which is fine until they both fall in love with women using that name, which leads to a comedy of mistaken identities...

A woman and her husband take separate vacations, and she falls in love with another man.

Anne Schuyler is an upper-crust socialite who bullies her reporter husband into conforming to her highfalutin ways. The husband chafes at the confinement of high society, though, and yearns for a creative outlet. He decides to write a play and collaborates with a fellow reporter.

A film editor breaks up with his girlfriend, unsure if he is in love.

Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev travels to America to make a documentary. As he zigzags across the nation, Borat meets real people in real situations with hysterical consequences. His backwards behavior generates strong reactions around him exposing prejudices and hypocrisies in American culture.

The concurrent sexual lives of best friends Jonathan and Sandy are presented, those lives which are affected by the sexual mores of the time and their own temperament, especially in relation to the respective women who end up in their lives.

Emma Woodhouse has a rigid sense of propriety as regards matrimonial alliances. Unfortunately she insists on matchmaking for her less forceful friend, Harriet, and so causes her to come to grief. Through the sharp words of Mr. Knightley, and the example of the opinionated Mrs. Elton, someone not unlike herself, Emma's attitudes begin to soften.

A chaotic Bridget Jones meets a snobbish lawyer, and he soon enters her world of imperfections.

Anabel Sims is determined to find the perfect husband. She thinks she's found her man in Madison Brown, a handsome pediatrician. She then prepares an elaborate scheme to trap him into marriage

A chic jewel thief in England falls in love with one of her marks.

Celestine, the chamber-maid, has a new job in the country, at the Lanlaires. She has decided to use her beauty to seduce a wealthy man, but Mr. Lanlaire is not a right choice: the house is firmly controlled by Madame Lanlaire, helped by the strange valet Joseph. Then she tries the neighbour, former officer Mauger. This seems to work. But soon the son of the Lanlaires comes back. He is young, attractive and does not share his mother's antirepublican opinions. So Celestine's beauty attracts Captain Mauger, young Georges Lanlaire, and Joseph. Three men, from three different social classes, with three different conceptions of life. Will Celestine be able to convince Georges of her sincerity?

Scandal and mystery reign following the arrival of Edwina in a small Irish town populated entirely by widows. Edwina quickly falls out with the locals while also falling in with the son of the community's leader

A midwestern teacher questions his sexuality after a former student makes a comment about him at the Academy Awards.

Two aging playboys are both after the same attractive young woman, but she fends them off by claiming that she plans to remain a virgin until her wedding night. Both men determine to find a way around her objections.

A managing editor sends a socialite reporter to spy on her boyfriend, mixed up in murder.

Robert and Nina Tracey resolve to live separate lives when their eight-year marriage dissolves into disagreements and divorce. But their separate attempts to get back out on the dating scene have a funny way of bringing them together.

Morgan, an aggressive and self-admitted dreamer, a fantasist who uses his flights of fancy as refuge from external reality, where his unconventional behavior lands him in a divorce from his wife, Leonie, trouble with the police and, ultimately, incarceration in a lunatic asylum.

After returning to Los Angeles from a group therapy session, documentary filmmaker Bob Sanders and his wife, Carol, find themselves becoming vigilante couples counselors, offering unsolicited advice to their best friends, Ted and Alice Henderson. Not wanting to be rude, the Hendersons play along, but some latent sexual tension among the four soon comes bubbling to the surface, and long-buried desires don't stay buried for long.

Dowdy Sylvia accepts her boss' marriage proposal, even though he only asked her to avoid marriage to another woman. As a wealthy wife, Sylvia changes from ugly duckling to uninhibited swan and even contemplates having an affair with a man she meets during a trip to Paris.

During a high profile Mafia testimony case, a contract killer checks-in a hotel room near the courthouse while his next door depressed neighbor wants to commit suicide due to marital problems.

Laurel Ayres is a businesswoman trying to make it but unfortunately she works at a investment firm where she does all the work but all the senior investors like Frank Peterson grab all the credit. She then leaves and starts her own firm. While trying to find clients Laurel pretends that she has a male partner named Robert Cutty. And when she starts to do well all of her clients wants to meet Cutty which is difficult since he doesn't exist.

A politician's wife plots for her husband to become the next U.S. President.

After 17 years of marriage in American suburbia, Richard and Barbara Harmon step into the new world of divorce.

A comedy of discriminating taste and dirty little secrets, the story is set in 1952 England, where Nigel, the Earl of Marshwood, woos Hollywood star Miranda Frayle, upsetting both his mother, Countess Felicity of Marshwood, and her former love, fellow Hollywood star Don Lucas. Right before the engagement party to be held at Marshwood, Moxie, the Countess's personal maid and best friend reveals that Miranda is her estranged sister. Crestwell, the Countess's butler, quickly devises a plan-but an inebriated Lucas's arrival at Marshwood to try to talk to Miranda causes all chaos to break loose.

Prudence Cole is an unsophisticated Quaker girl being raised by her two aunts. Prudence is flirted with by snobbish Henry Garrison, who actually disdains the girl for her lack of worldliness and savoir faire. When Henry and his friends try to embarrass her at a posh resort, Prudence turns the tables on them.

The madcap life of eccentric Mame Dennis and her bohemian, intellectual arty clique is disrupted when her deceased brother's 10-year-old son Patrick is entrusted to her care. Rather than bow to convention, Mame introduces the boy to her free-wheeling lifestyle, instilling in him her favorite credo, "Life is a banquet, and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death."

When a western Pennsylvania auto plant is acquired by a Japanese company, brokering auto worker Hunt Stevenson faces the tricky challenge of mediating the assimilation of two clashing corporate cultures. At one end is the Japanese plant manager and the sycophant who is angling for his position. At the other, a number of disgruntled long-time union members struggle with the new exigencies of Japanese quality control.

When a celebrated TV show host returns to his hometown in the South, his family is there to remind him that going home is no vacation!

Tom Canty is a poor English boy who bears a remarkable resemblance to Edward, Prince of Wales and son of King Henry VIII. The two boys meet and decide to play a joke on the court by dressing in each other's clothes, but the plan goes awry when they are separated and each must live the other's life.

Lonely in his English country estate, Sir Basil decides to gather his grown (albeit illegitimate) children around him in his declining years. He uses a ledger which keeps track of the payments he has been making to ex-lovers to locate 2 of them, and a third is found by a lawyer in New York, her mother was too proud to accept any money. Sir Basil is a curmudgeon, and his three adult children have a hard time with him at first. Toni, the American, is a free spirit who had a budding career in show business. Jeffery is English and a semi-gentleman, and Maria is Italian, with a Latin temperament. They begin to bond, especially Sir Basil and Toni, whose outgoing personality finally wins over the old man. But past lives begin to creep back into the picture and threaten the old man's plans for a life filled with his children.

The career and personal life of writer Lee are at a standstill, so he divorces his bashful wife, Robin, and dives into a new job as an entertainment journalist. His assignments take him to the swankiest corners of Manhattan, but as he jumps from one lavish party to another and engages in numerous empty romances, he starts to doubt the worth of his work. Meanwhile, top TV producer Tony falls for Robin and introduces her to the world of celebrity.