From Basement Stages to Running the Show: Showrunners With Alt Comedy Roots

A remarkable number of the most original TV comedies of the past three decades were made by people who started in alternative comedy rooms: improv theatres, back-room showcases, monthly film nights and Fringe venues where a dozen strangers might watch you fail. This page profiles real showrunners and creators who took that route, from Mr. Show and Community to Broad City, Hacks, Atlanta and Fleabag, and looks at what the rooms gave them that television couldn’t.

A note on terms: a “showrunner” runs the writers’ room and steers a series day to day; a creator may or may not do that. We include both where the person had genuine creative control. If you want the institutions behind many of these stories, start with our history of the UCB Theatre.

What the rooms teach

Alt rooms are not a career program. They are places to make things in public, quickly, cheaply and often badly. That turns out to be excellent preparation for running a TV show. Four habits come up again and again in the careers below:

• Making your own material rather than waiting to be cast.
• Writing for a specific voice, usually your own or a close collaborator’s, because the room rewards specificity over broad appeal.
• Collaborating with a troupe, which becomes the core of a future writers’ room.
• Treating form as something you can play with, because experimental audiences expect it.

The 1990s Los Angeles generation

Bob Odenkirk and David Cross

After meeting on The Ben Stiller Show, Odenkirk and Cross staged live sketch shows in Los Angeles alt venues that became the pitch for Mr. Show with Bob and David (HBO, 1995–1998). They ran it as a true ensemble, and its writers’ room produced a generation of later creators, including Scott Aukerman (Comedy Bang! Bang!) and Dino Stamatopoulos (Moral Orel). Odenkirk then became a producer and mentor to newer weirdos, most famously Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim. See our profiles of Bob Odenkirk and David Cross.

Dan Harmon

Dan Harmon’s training ground was not a stand-up stage but Channel 101, the monthly short-film night he co-founded with Rob Schrab in Los Angeles in the early 2000s, where creators screened homemade “pilots” and the audience voted on which got to continue. It was a brutal, democratic way to learn TV structure. Harmon went on to create Community (NBC, 2009–2014; Yahoo Screen, 2015) and co-create Rick and Morty (Adult Swim, 2013 onward) with Justin Roiland. His obsession with story structure, the “story circle,” is a direct product of those years of making tiny episodes for a critical crowd.

Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim

Heidecker and Wareheim began making videos together after film school and were taken up by Odenkirk, who executive-produced their Adult Swim debut, Tom Goes to the Mayor. They then created Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! (2007–2010) and, with producer Dave Kneebone, built Abso Lutely Productions, which went on to produce other singular shows, including Nathan For You and The Eric Andre Show. They are an example of alt creators who became not just showrunners but infrastructure.

The New York scene

Michael Showalter and David Wain

Showalter and Wain were members of The State, the sketch troupe formed at New York University that got its own MTV series (1993–1995). With Michael Ian Black they then formed Stella, a trio that built a following in Manhattan’s late-1990s alt scene before a Comedy Central series in 2005. They co-wrote Wet Hot American Summer (2001) and later created its Netflix revival series. Showalter co-created Search Party (TBS, then HBO Max, 2016–2022) with Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers.

Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer

Jacobson and Glazer met through the Upright Citizens Brigade scene in New York in the late 2000s. Unable to get cast in the shows they wanted, they made their own: the web series Broad City (2009–2011). Amy Poehler, a UCB founder, came on as executive producer of the Comedy Central series, which ran from 2014 to 2019 with the two as creators, stars and showrunners. Jacobson later co-created A League of Their Own (Prime Video, 2022) with Will Graham.

Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky

Aniello and Downs came up in the same New York sketch and improv world and made web shorts together before becoming key creative figures on Broad City: Aniello as director and executive producer, Downs as writer, producer and the actor who played Trey. Statsky wrote for Broad City, Parks and Recreation and The Good Place. The three created Hacks (HBO Max, 2021 onward), about an old-school Las Vegas stand-up and the young alt-comedy writer she hires. It won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2024, and its whole premise is the conversation between mainstream and alternative comedy that these three lived through.

Donald Glover

As a student at NYU, Glover was part of Derrick Comedy, a sketch group that built an early YouTube following and performed live in New York, including at UCB, and made the feature Mystery Team (2009). That work helped get him hired as a writer on 30 Rock in his early twenties. He then created Atlanta (FX, 2016–2022), one of the most formally adventurous TV comedies ever made, and co-created Swarm (Prime Video, 2023) with Janine Nabers. See our Donald Glover profile.

Nick Kroll

Kroll came up through New York’s alternative stand-up and character scene in the early 2000s, where he and John Mulaney developed the old-man double act that became Oh, Hello. His character work led to Kroll Show (Comedy Central, 2013–2015), a sketch series built like a fake TV network, and he co-created the animated Netflix series Big Mouth (2017–2025) with Andrew Goldberg, Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett.

Julio Torres and Ana Fabrega

Torres, who moved to New York from El Salvador, built his reputation in the city’s alt rooms with dreamlike, object-obsessed stand-up before writing for Saturday Night Live. Fabrega made her name in the same scene with deadpan, surreal character work. With Fred Armisen they co-created Los Espookys (HBO, 2019–2022), a largely Spanish-language comedy about friends who stage horror experiences for clients. Torres went on to create Fantasmas (HBO, 2024). See our Julio Torres profile.

Sketch and improv theatres: Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin

Tim Robinson trained and performed at The Second City in Detroit before joining Saturday Night Live, first as a cast member and then as a writer. With fellow SNL writer Zach Kanin he co-created Detroiters (Comedy Central, 2017–2018), I Think You Should Leave (Netflix, 2019–2023) and The Chair Company (HBO, 2025). Second City is arguably the mainstream of improv rather than its alternative, but Robinson’s sensibility is pure alt: committed, uncomfortable and suspicious of the easy laugh.

The UK route: Fringe theatre and spoken word

Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Waller-Bridge developed Fleabag as a short piece for a storytelling night run by her theatre company, DryWrite, then expanded it into a one-woman show for the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe. The BBC series (2016–2019) kept the play’s direct address and won four Primetime Emmys in 2019, including Outstanding Comedy Series. She was also lead writer of the first season of Killing Eve. Our Fleabag guide covers the story, and our guide to writing a Fringe hour explains the route.

Michaela Coel

Coel began performing poetry at open-mic nights in London before studying drama. Her one-woman play Chewing Gum Dreams became the basis for Chewing Gum (E4, 2015–2017), which she wrote and starred in. Her next series, I May Destroy You (BBC and HBO, 2020), which she created, wrote, co-directed and starred in, is closer to drama but keeps the formal daring and personal specificity of those early rooms.

Not every route runs through a room: Nathan Fielder

Some alt-minded creators came up through television itself. Nathan Fielder studied business, went through Humber College’s comedy program in Toronto and learned his craft as a field correspondent on the CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes. He went on to create Nathan For You, The Rehearsal and, with Benny Safdie, The Curse. His career is a reminder that “alternative” describes a sensibility more than a venue.

At a glance

What they brought to television

Look across these shows and some shared traits stand out:

1. Ensembles of friends. Writers’ rooms built from people the creators performed with: the Mr. Show players, the UCB and Broad City circle that made Hacks, the Robinson–Kanin–Richardson axis.
2. Form as content. Linked sketches, fake networks, fourth-wall breaks, anthology episodes. Alt audiences rewarded formal games, and these creators kept playing them on bigger stages.
3. Specific voices. Shows about particular people in particular places (Atlanta, Detroit, London, a Latin American town of horror enthusiasts) rather than an imagined average viewer.
4. Comfort with discomfort. From the cringe of I Think You Should Leave to the darkness of I May Destroy You, these shows let scenes be awkward, sad or unresolved.

The honest pathway

If you’re performing in alt rooms now and wondering how people get from there to a writers’ room, the stories above suggest a few honest lessons. None of them guarantees anything.

• Make finished things. Web series, short films, recorded sets, a Fringe hour. Almost every person above got noticed for something they made without permission.
• Find your collaborators early. Many of these careers are partnerships that began on stage.
• The people watching you are the industry. Odenkirk mentoring Tim and Eric, Poehler backing Broad City: alt rooms are where established creators spot newer ones.
• Learn structure. Harmon’s Channel 101 years are the best argument that writing many short things for a demanding audience teaches you how television works.

For the money side of all this, see our guide to the business of comedy.

Frequently asked questions

Which TV showrunners started in alternative comedy?

Examples include Bob Odenkirk and David Cross (Mr. Show), Dan Harmon (Community, Rick and Morty) via the Channel 101 film night, Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer (Broad City) via UCB, Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky (Hacks), Donald Glover (Atlanta), Nick Kroll (Big Mouth), Julio Torres (Los Espookys), Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin (I Think You Should Leave) and Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag).

How do alt comedians get into TV writing?

The common routes are making their own material that gets noticed (web series, live shows, festival hours), being hired onto staffs by people who saw them perform, and working up through jobs such as writers’ assistant. Almost every path depends on years of making work in public before anyone pays for it.

What is an alt comedy room?

A small, usually independent venue or recurring show (a bar back room, a black-box theatre, an improv theatre’s late slot) where comedians try experimental material for audiences who come to see something different from mainstream club stand-up.

Was Hacks made by alt comedians?

Yes. Hacks was created by Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky, who came up through New York’s UCB-era sketch and comedy scene and worked together on Broad City before making Hacks for HBO Max.