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| Love Ricky Gervais’ Alley Cats? Here Are 20 Animated Shows to Watch Next. |
Netflix’s Ricky Gervais’ Alley Cats has arrived with a wonderfully chaotic premise: throw a bunch of stray British cats into London, give them very different personalities, absolutely no interest in behaving sensibly, and let them spend their days searching for food, companionship and their next excuse to argue. Created by Ricky Gervais, the animated comedy follows Gus, Fang, Puke, Olive and Ponce as they navigate street life from their shabby abandoned flat, with the arrival of Kitten giving their already unruly existence another problem to worry about.
What makes Alley Cats particularly easy to binge is that the cats are not simply cartoon animals having cartoon adventures. They behave like a dysfunctional group of people who happen to have whiskers, claws and considerably fewer concerns about social etiquette. Their constant bickering, bleak observations, ridiculous schemes and unlikely friendships give the series a distinctly British comic edge. If that combination of adult animation, dysfunctional characters, dark jokes, strange adventures and animals behaving like deeply flawed humans sounds familiar, there are plenty of shows worth putting next in your queue.
Some viewers will immediately enjoy the combination of Gervais’ cynical humour and animated chaos, while others may find the relentless arguments and deliberately abrasive characters a little exhausting.
That split is part of the appeal of this particular corner of animation: these shows rarely ask everyone to be likeable, sensible or remotely well-adjusted. Sometimes the entire point is watching terrible decisions unfold and wondering why nobody simply went home.
Animated Shows Like Ricky Gervais’ Alley Cats
1. Animals. (2016–2018)
Animals. is perhaps one of the closest matches for Alley Cats because it takes creatures that normally exist in the background of a city and gives them complicated inner lives. Set among the rats, pigeons, cats, insects and other creatures of New York, the series turns ordinary urban survival into a series of bizarre conversations, personal crises and awkward encounters.
Created by Phil Matarese and Mike Luciano, the show has a loose, improvised quality that makes its animal characters feel surprisingly human.
Like Alley Cats, it finds comedy in the gap between the apparently insignificant lives of city animals and the enormous importance they attach to their own problems. Nobody is saving the world; they are mostly trying to survive another day without making an even bigger mess of things.
2. BoJack Horseman (2014–2020)
BoJack Horseman remains one of the essential choices for anyone looking for animated comedy aimed squarely at adults. The series follows BoJack, a former television star whose career has stalled, leaving him surrounded by fame, money and an impressive amount of personal confusion.
Created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the series combines absurd animal characters with stories about loneliness, friendship, ambition and the consequences of poor decisions. The connection to Alley Cats is not simply that both shows feature talking animals.
Both use animals to explore very human weaknesses, allowing ridiculous situations to sit alongside surprisingly thoughtful observations about everyday life. If Gus and his friends occasionally seem like people you would avoid at the pub, BoJack is what happens when those people own a mansion.
3. HouseBroken (2021–2023)
HouseBroken turns a group of pets into an informal support group, with Honey, a poodle, attempting to help other animals deal with their various emotional and behavioural problems. Naturally, the sessions rarely go according to plan because the pets have their own egos, insecurities and complicated relationships.
Created by Jennifer Crittenden, Clea DuVall and Gabrielle Allan, the series shares Alley Cats’ fascination with animals behaving like people. Both shows understand that putting human personalities inside animal bodies creates an immediate comic advantage. Cats and dogs can be stubborn, dramatic and petty enough without adding human-level overthinking, so giving them all three is asking for trouble.
4. Tuca & Bertie (2019–2022)
Tuca & Bertie follows two bird friends trying to navigate adulthood while dealing with very different personalities and increasingly complicated lives. Tuca is impulsive and carefree, while Bertie is more cautious, anxious and focused on building a career in baking.
Created by Lisa Hanawalt, the series is considerably more emotionally layered than Alley Cats, but the friendship at its centre provides a strong connection.
Both shows place very different personalities together and allow their disagreements to become the engine for the comedy. Beneath the jokes, both also understand that companionship can be messy, inconvenient and still completely necessary.
5. Paradise PD (2018–2022)
Paradise PD follows Kevin Crawford, a young police officer surrounded by a collection of spectacularly incompetent colleagues. Their attempts to deal with problems in the small town of Paradise usually create several new problems, because apparently solving one problem at a time would be far too sensible.
Created by Waco O’Guin and Roger Black, the series shares Alley Cats’ enthusiasm for dysfunctional groups whose members repeatedly make their own lives harder.
The characters clash constantly, their plans rarely survive contact with reality, and ordinary situations can escalate into complete chaos within minutes. If you enjoy watching characters make the wrong decision with absolute confidence, this is an obvious follow-up.
6. Brickleberry (2012–2015)
Brickleberry centres on a group of forest rangers attempting to keep a struggling national park running despite their spectacular lack of competence. Steve Williams is desperate to remain the park’s top ranger, while Ethel Anderson arrives with the experience and ability that immediately make Steve nervous.
Meanwhile, Woody Johnson is supposed to keep everyone under control, which is unfortunate because he is often the least qualified person in the room.
The series was created by Waco O’Guin and Roger Black, and its connection with Alley Cats comes from the dysfunctional ensemble. Nobody seems particularly good at their job, everyone has an opinion and every attempt at cooperation tends to make matters worse. The forest may be peaceful, but the staff certainly are not.
7. Drawn Together (2004–2007)
Drawn Together takes the reality-TV house format and fills it with animated characters who could hardly be more different. A superhero, a princess, a video-game-style character, a talking creature and several other wildly exaggerated personalities are forced to live under one roof while cameras capture their every move.
Created by Jordan Young, Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein, the show thrives on personality clashes. That makes it a natural companion to Alley Cats, where the central group also consists of characters who would probably struggle to agree on what to have for dinner. The humour comes from putting incompatible personalities together and then waiting patiently for everything to go wrong.
8. The Freak Brothers (2020– )
The Freak Brothers follows three counterculture figures from 1969 who unexpectedly wake up decades later in the modern world. Phineas, Franklin and Fat Freddy must suddenly figure out how society has changed while living with the people occupying their former home.
Based on the comic by Gilbert Shelton, the animated comedy relies heavily on culture shock, dysfunctional relationships and characters who are spectacularly ill-equipped to adapt.
Like Alley Cats, it finds much of its humour in people who have their own very specific worldview colliding with a world that does not particularly care about it.
9. Fugget About It (2012–2016)
Fugget About It follows Jimmy Falcone, a former New York mobster placed into witness protection with his family in Canada. The problem is that moving somewhere quieter does not magically erase Jimmy's old habits.
Created by Jeff Abugov, Nicholas Tabarrok and Willem Wennekers, the series builds comedy from the clash between Jimmy's past and his new surroundings. Like Alley Cats, it centres on flawed characters whose personalities are often their own biggest obstacles. Jimmy can leave his old world behind, but apparently he cannot leave his instincts behind with it.
10. Farzar (2022)
Farzar follows Prince Fichael after his comfortable life is disrupted by an alien attack. He gathers an eccentric group around him and sets out to protect his world, only for the mission to become increasingly complicated by secrets, misunderstandings and a team that seems uniquely qualified to make every situation worse.
Created by Waco O’Guin and Roger Black, the show shares Alley Cats’ taste for mismatched ensembles and deliberately ridiculous situations.
The characters often have their own agendas, which means even the simplest plan can collapse spectacularly. It is essentially the sort of group project where everyone has forgotten what the project is.
11. Hit-Monkey (2021–2024)
Hit-Monkey follows a Japanese snow monkey whose life changes after he becomes connected to an American assassin named Bryce. Following Bryce's death, the monkey is pulled into a dangerous journey in Tokyo while being guided by his ghostly companion.
Created by Will Speck and Josh Gordon and based on the Marvel Comics character, the series is more action-driven than Alley Cats, but the connection comes through its unusual animal protagonist and strange human-animal partnership. Both shows take an animal that would normally have a very different role in fiction and put it at the centre of an adult story where survival, loyalty and absurdity collide.
12. Monkey Dust (2003–2005)
Monkey Dust is a much darker and more satirical choice, presenting a bleak animated portrait of British society through a collection of disconnected stories and characters. Rather than following one central cast, the series moves between different corners of urban life, using exaggerated situations to expose hypocrisy and social absurdities.
Created by Harry Thompson and Shaun Pye, the British series shares Alley Cats’ willingness to use animation for humour that would feel considerably stranger in a conventional sitcom.
Both shows are interested in the less glamorous side of everyday life and are comfortable allowing their characters to be deeply flawed. The difference is that Monkey Dust takes the darkness considerably further.
13. Archer (2009–2023)
Archer follows Sterling Archer, an exceptionally capable spy whose biggest weakness is Sterling Archer himself. Surrounded by colleagues who are equally difficult, Archer spends much of his professional life turning straightforward assignments into personal disputes.
Created by Adam Reed, the series is a great choice for Alley Cats fans because the comedy is driven as much by conversation and personality clashes as by the actual plot. Archer and his colleagues can be in the middle of a serious mission and still find time to argue about something completely irrelevant. That particular ability to prioritise petty disagreements over common sense feels very familiar.
14. Solar Opposites (2018–2025)
Solar Opposites follows a group of aliens who crash-land on Earth and are forced to live among humans while waiting for a chance to leave. Their attempts to understand human society lead to increasingly strange situations, while the series develops several completely unexpected stories alongside its main plot.
Created by Justin Roiland and Mike McMahan, the show shares Alley Cats’ fascination with outsiders observing ordinary life and finding it ridiculous. The characters are constantly trying to understand rules that everyone else simply accepts, which creates plenty of opportunities for sarcasm and chaos. Like the cats, they are also much more interested in their immediate problems than in behaving like responsible members of society.
15. Big Mouth (2017–2025)
Big Mouth centres on a group of teenagers navigating adolescence, friendship and the bizarre emotional changes that come with growing up. Its characters frequently make terrible decisions, misunderstand one another and turn relatively ordinary problems into enormous personal dramas.
Created by Nick Kroll, Andrew Goldberg, Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett, the series has a similar willingness to make everyday life exaggerated and ridiculous. While its setting and characters are completely different from Alley Cats, both shows use animation to push social awkwardness and personal embarrassment far beyond what a live-action comedy could comfortably manage.
16. Inside Job (2021–2022)
Inside Job follows employees at Cognito Inc., a secret organisation responsible for controlling bizarre conspiracies and hidden operations behind the scenes of everyday society. Reagan Ridley is a highly capable but socially awkward employee attempting to keep the company functioning while dealing with colleagues who are not exactly models of stability.
Created by Shion Takeuchi, the show fits alongside Alley Cats because its characters are constantly fighting among themselves while dealing with situations that are already ridiculous. The humour comes from watching supposedly important people behave like petty colleagues who have been stuck together for far too long.
17. Human Resources (2022–2023)
Human Resources moves the strange creatures from Big Mouth into their own workplace comedy. Hormone Monsters, Shame Wizards, Love Bugs and other creatures are tasked with guiding humans through the complicated business of everyday emotions.
The series was created by Kelly Galuska, Nick Kroll, Andrew Goldberg, Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin. Its connection to Alley Cats is strongest in the way it turns abstract human problems into characters with their own personalities and disagreements. The result is a workplace where everyone is supposedly helping people while frequently struggling to manage themselves. Which, frankly, sounds like most offices.
18. Close Enough (2020–2022)
Close Enough follows a young married couple and their friends as they try to manage adulthood, parenting, work and the general chaos of living in Los Angeles. Josh and Emily want to be responsible adults, but their lives have a habit of becoming increasingly ridiculous.
Created by J. G. Quintel, the series is a good choice for viewers who enjoy the everyday-life comedy of Alley Cats. Neither show needs an elaborate premise for a story to become absurd. A normal day can quickly turn into an adventure because the characters themselves are incapable of leaving well enough alone.
19. The Great North (2021–2025)
The Great North follows the Tobin family in Alaska, where single father Beef tries to keep his children close while each of them develops their own eccentric interests and ambitions. The family dynamic provides most of the comedy, with affection and irritation constantly existing side by side.
Created by Wendy Molyneux, Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin and Minty Lewis, the show is warmer than Alley Cats, but the family dynamic makes it a worthwhile companion.
Both series rely on characters who are wildly different yet remain connected because, despite all the arguments, they genuinely need one another. The cats may be less wholesome about it, but the principle is similar.
20. Krapopolis (2023–2025)
Krapopolis is set in an ancient Greek world populated by humans, monsters and gods, following a dysfunctional family attempting to rule a chaotic kingdom. Tyrannis is a young king surrounded by relatives and creatures who are hardly the ideal team for building a civilisation.
Created by Dan Harmon, the series mixes mythology with workplace-style comedy and family dysfunction. Its characters constantly disagree, scheme and misunderstand one another, making it another strong option for anyone who likes the ensemble chaos of Alley Cats.
The setting may involve ancient gods rather than London alleyways, but the basic problem remains remarkably similar: put too many difficult personalities together and wait.
The strongest similarities are not necessarily visual. The real connection is the combination of adult animation, flawed characters, ensemble comedy, dark humour and everyday problems becoming unnecessarily complicated. Animals. is probably the closest match if the appeal is watching city creatures deal with surprisingly human problems, while BoJack Horseman is the obvious choice for viewers who want animal characters with more emotional depth.
For pure dysfunctional-group comedy, Paradise PD, Brickleberry, Drawn Together and Archer are particularly strong alternatives. If the animal element is what attracted you to Alley Cats, HouseBroken, Tuca & Bertie, The Freak Brothers and Hit-Monkey are worth moving higher up the queue.
Meanwhile, viewers drawn specifically to the British tone may find Monkey Dust the most interesting recommendation, although its much darker approach makes it a very different viewing experience.
That is ultimately the fun of adult animation: two shows can both feature talking animals, terrible decisions and jokes about everyday life while having completely different ideas about where the joke should go next.
Ricky Gervais’ Alley Cats sits in a particularly entertaining corner of animation where cats can spend an entire afternoon arguing about food, friendship, territory or absolutely nothing of consequence while somehow turning it into a philosophical crisis. If that sounds like your kind of chaos, this list has plenty of replacements once you have run through the London strays.
Whether you prefer the emotional depth of BoJack Horseman, the surreal chaos of Solar Opposites, the animal-centred comedy of Animals. or the dysfunctional ensemble madness of Archer, there is something here to keep the same sarcastic energy going. Which of these shows is your favourite, and which animated series would you add to the list for other Alley Cats fans? Let us know what deserves a place in the next round.