Comedy-drama, occasionally known as dramedy (portmanteau of words drama and comedy), is a subgenre in contemporary forms of tragicomedy, especially in television, that combines elements of comedy and drama.
A comedy is entertainment consisting of jokes and satire, intended to make an audience laugh. For ancient Greeks and Romans a comedy was a stage-play with a happy ending. In the Middle Ages, the term expanded to include narrative poems with happy endings and a lighter tone. In this sense Dante used the term in the title of his poem, La Divina Commedia.