This paper will deal with the description of the poetics and history of the development of situation comedy, better known as sitcom. The goal of the paper is, rather than finding a single definition, to break down the way it functions as a subgenre and to understand what the placement of a certain program in the subgenre of situation comedy depends on. When summarizing its poetics, several classic dictionary definitions will be given, in order to later analyze in more detail the textual features of the subgenre mentioned in them. Furthermore, in the first part, having established the foundation by defining the genre as a cultural category, the situation comedy will be viewed from the aspect of the industry that produces it and the audience that contributes to genre coding with its reactions to the programs. In the second part of the paper, the history of the development of situation comedy in the United States will be traced, from the first appearance of radio comedy in the 1920s to its modern trends in the twenty-first century. In the last part, using the example of the sitcom "BoJack Horseman", the direction in which the genre is moving today will be illustrated in more detail, which will ultimately help shape the conclusion about the future of sitcoms, but also genres in general.