Farewell Archer, the unkillable spy comedy that never quite got the credit it deserved

After 14 seasons, the FX animated sitcom is finally drawing to a close. It’s an ending strangely lacking in fanfare, writes Louis Chilton, but there’s no denying the rare merits of its peak

Licence to chill: Sterling Archer (H Jon Benjamin) in the final season of ‘Archer’ (FXX)

How long must a TV series hang around before we decide to label it an “institution”? Five series? Ten? This week, US animated comedy Archer – a TV institution by most reasonable yardsticks – finally came to a close with the three-part finale of its 14th season. (The episodes debuted on FXX in the US; in the UK, the final season, minus the finale, arrived on Netflix last week.) Archer was always a mercurial and impressive work of pulp entertainment. Set in the world of professional espionage, the series starred H Jon Benjamin as the snarky, obnoxious but endlessly watchable James Bondalike Sterling Archer. After so many years, it’s hard not to feel like the response to Archer’s demise has been muted.

But then, the quippy spy series never quite got the credit it deserved, beyond a handful of awards (including four Emmys) and the adulation of a modest but devout fanbase. Of course, its marathon 14-season run would represent a major achievement in the world of live-action sitcoms, but the goalposts are considerably different within the realm of animation: Archer still falls well short of contemporaries such as American Dad! (20 series), Family Guy (22), South Park (26) and, of course, The Simpsons (a whopping 35). While Archer certainly shares strands of DNA with these series – lashings of Family Guy’s pop culture-literate reference humour, for instance – it also managed to carve out its own niche.

Eschewing the familial focus of most of its contemporaries, Archer was always a workplace sitcom at heart. Much of the comedy derived from the caustic quick-fire banter between Archer and his counterintelligence colleagues, voiced by Judy Greer, Chris Parnell, Aisha Tyler, Amber Nash, Lucky Yates, series creator Adam Reed and, until season 13, the late Jessica Walter. Jokes ranged from coarse innuendo to left-field cultural esoterica – you were just as likely to get a “that’s what she said” as a deep-cut allusion to a 17th-century philosopher. (Well, maybe not just as likely.)