I haven’t watched TV in years; kids and my previous job really killed that.
There’s SO much out there since I last picked up a remote, and I have a fucking huge backlog.
I’m open to anything, as long as it’s well done.
Series I liked: Vikings, Norsemen (hysterical), The Americans, GoT, Man in the High Castle, Expanse, Spartacus (Batiartus is amazing)
I’m scratching the surface of Boardwalk Empire, but open to other rabbit holes.
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- Feel Good is excellent, heartfelt, exciting, and an incredible window into the experiences of a range of queer identities
- Mr Robot is an excellent hacker/heist show that is secretly actually about something else entirely
- Final Space is one of the best animated series to come out in recent history, though it was sadly cancelled before it could be finished. Despite that, I still recommend watching the existing seasons
- Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts is another incredible animated series which is just oozing charm and wonderful, thoughtful writing
- Ragnarok is an excellent Norwegian show featuring norse mythology in the modern day. Strongly recommend watching subbed not dubbed
- Da Vinci’s Demons was really good and seems in line with your interests but was also cancelled before completion, sadly. Still worth watching
- The Good Place is one of the funniest, most genuinely entertaining and heartfelt series I’ve watched in recent memory
Double-plus upvote for The Good Place! It is a long story arc. There IS an ending (it doesn’t just trail off). It has an episode on the Trolley Problem! What more could you ask for!?
Upvote for Ragnarok. Dark is pretty good if you can keep up with it. I had to watch Norseman on my own - although my wife loved Vikings she nearly threw up halfway into the first episode of Norsemen. Slow Horses is magnificent.
watch the last of us first cause it was amazing.
- the last of us
- 3 body problem
- American horror story
- the boys
- dark matter
- from
- fallout
- fargo
- foundation
- hacks
- invincible
- the Lazarus project
- the mandalorian
- pantheon
- planet earth
- severance
- silo
- star trek strange New worlds
- stranger things
Solid list, I LOVED silo!
If you liked Norsemen, try Lilyhammer.
Watched the pilot, but had to put it down BC of life, but I’ll have to give it another go.
You should watch the wire if you haven’t!
Search Party was great. Alia Shawkat, John Early, Ron Livingston, eventually Jeff Goldblum. This show goes in some absolutely wild directions.
If you like Search Party, you’ll notice a lot of the same actors in both The Characters (particularly John Early’s episode) as well as I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson. Some of them also show up on Difficult People, which I adore. If you like Difficult People, you’ll probably love to watch Billy Eichner shouting at New Yorkers about pop culture on Billie on the Street.
If you find you want more Ron Livingston, Loudermilk is a great series.
For a little more Alia Shawkat, check out Izzie Gets the Fuck Across Town. Great movie starring Mackenzie Davis. Speaking of movies with Mackenzie Davis, Tully was also pretty good, and confusingly has both Ron Livingston and his doppelganger Mark Duplass in the same movie. Duck Butter is another good movie with Alia Shawkat that Mark and Jay Duplass show up in.
Speaking of the Duplass brothers, their movies are great. If you want some interesting low-tech weird scifi, check out both The Endless and The Resolution. These two movies co-exist, but you can really watch them in any order, though the Resolution came out first. They also put out a new movie this year called Something in the Dirt, which seems to be sort of related also. Personally, The Endless is my favorite of the three.
One of my favorites this year has been Pokerface, which features Natasha Lyonne as a drifter who wanders around solving murders. It feels kind of like Colombo or the old Incredible Hulk show. Typically they show you the murder at the beginning of the episode and then you get to see where Natasha fits in and how she goes about solving it. It’s great. Fantastic guest stars. It’s also very episodic, so you can easily just pick one up and watch it after not having seen the others for a while. There’s a plot that goes across the seasons, but it’s not a huge component of most of them or like heavily serialized. Still binge-worthy, but also a show that you can savor if you want to!
Staying on Natasha Lyonne for a moment, if you haven’t seen Russian Doll I can’t recommend it enough. It’s been out for a bit, but it’s absolutely amazing. I could watch Natasha all day. She’s also a major character in Orange is the New Black, if you haven’t gotten around to watching it yet. Highly recommended.
Others have mentioned Severance, which is definitely a must-watch also. The new season comes out in November.
If you want to watch some engaging trash TV, check out the Circle. It’s extremely entertaining low-stakes reality game show fun.
One more to throw out there, if you haven’t seen it, which I’ve been really enjoying lately, is Baroness Von Sketch Show. Canadian sketch show featuring four women that I literally have trouble believing I haven’t seen in much else. They’re amazing and should have as many shows as they want. It has kind of Portlandia vibes, but with a somewhat more modern sensibility? I don’t know. It’s great.
I could literally go on about movies and TV for days. If there’s anything more specific like genre-wise you’re looking for, let me know!
GoT
You did NOT like GoT. Take that back!
But there’s a lot of good recommendations already, so I’ll re-affirm a few of them that I both saw and enjoyed (exclusions are probably because I didn’t see the shows):
- Black Mirror
- The Last of Us
- Three Body Problem
- The Foundation
- Hacks (for a change of pace from the rest)
- Mr. Robot
Some alternate ideas:
- The new Dr. Who – but only the first … maybe 3 seasons, then STOP before you get into another GoT debacle.
- The Watch – low budget adaptation of Terry Pratchett that made some fans FURIOUS by its re-imagination, but pretty grounded in Pratchett-ness if you can get past that. Probably for fans only. I’m told it is required that Pratchett fans watch Good Omens but can opt out of viewing The Watch.
- Resident Alien – is low budget, low humor, and stupid. I watch it anyway.
- Upstart Crow – wanted to be Black Adder, but… not quite. Still a pretty good riff on Shakespeare.
I thought Resident Alien was hilarious. Great Adolescent humor.
The Watch […] pretty grounded in Pratchett-ness
You’re literally the only person I’ve heard say anything like that. Sir Terry’s own daughter has disavowed it, saying that it “shares no DNA with my father’s Watch.”
I know a lot of people never got past the the total re-write of … well, everything. I understand that. If you go in wanting the source material or you will be horribly disappointed. If, instead, you go in saying, “Alright, I know the fans are in revolt, but let’s just see why this got made if it is so far from the source,” then I think you will see that yes, every aspect is changed, and the story mash-up misses the original points, but… But – BUT as a show, it was a change of pace (within what limits TV allows) and still retained a feel of a Watch novel. It wasn’t a clone of Game of Thrones or Black Adder, or anything else – and, true, it certainly wasn’t a clone of Night Watch, either. It was its own thing, and I’m a bit bummed out that the hatred means it will never get another season.
These were good:
- Arcane
- Black Mirror
- Mr. Robot (season 1 at least)
- Pantheon
- Scavengers Reign
- The Last of Us
I really enjoyed Scavengers Reign. I hope they make another season.
- Silo
- Severance
- The Last of Us
- Slow Horses
- The Foundation
- Three Body Problem
- The Peripheral
- Mr. Robot
- Fallout
- Dark
If you liked GoT, you’ll probably like House of the Dragon as it’s set in same universe.
I loved GoT but House of the Dragon bores me to tears. Too many rich people just doing rich people things.
I adored Spartacus! That’s worth a rematch.
Check out Fallout for sure. The Last of Us was also outstanding. Squid Game. The first season of Westworld.
Well since it seems like you like historical stuff if you are open to anime you should watch Vinland saga. The first season is really brutal but the next is all about ptsd and redemption.
: Vikings, Norsemen (hysterical), The Americans, GoT, Man in the High Castle, Expanse, Spartacus (Batiartus is amazing)
American Gods, Watchmen (TV series), Only Murders in the Building (alongside the suggested Search Party). Lilyhammer is good but you otta watch The Sopranos first if you haven’t (which means you’d also need to watch West Wing and The Wire because that’s that era of top tier TV).
For comedy, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is still going and they have evolved well. Their early seasons they are such awful people, but do a good job making it something that highlights issues in our society rather than perpetuating them. Of course, dummies will latch onto things and try to ruin them, and IASIP did a great job clapping back at those sorts of people for the last few seasons. If you do like the show, they also have a podcast for the first 86 episodes that has a little bit of info about the show as well, mostly just fun stories from the show runners and some guest stars.
I enjoyed Delicious In Dungeon. I liked the creative take on a Dungeons & Dragons type quest.
Squid game is excellent
