This is not an inclusive list and not in any order.
Shrinking – Seasons 1 & 2 streaming on AppleTV+: a sweet, funny, serious, smart show with Jason Segel as a grieving therapist with an unorthodox approach, Harrison Ford as his grumpy therapist boss, Jessica Williams as his lively, funny colleague, and other engaging characters.
Love – three seasons on Netflix 2016 – 2018. Created by Judd Apatow (whom we know from the short-lived Freaks & Geeks and many movies, my favorite being The 40-Year-Old Virgin) and Paul Rust, the male lead, whom I’d never heard of. I found the series during 2020 and have watched it at least four times, twice this year. Gillian Jacobs plays the female lead. (You might know her from Community, another great one.) This is another sweet, funny, serious, smart show. (That seems to be my thing.) He’s a geeky, recently dumped tutor for kids working on movie sets/wannabe screenwriter who regularly gets together with multi-instrument friends to create theme songs for movies that don’t have them. (While You Were Sleeping, Gran Torino, and The Perfect Storm come to mind.) She’s an alcoholic, drug-using, love and sex addict who works as an assistant to a cringy call-in sex doctor for a random satellite radio station. She’s struggling to begin and maintain recovery. The two main characters seem very mismatched and have plenty of conflict, but the sweetness comes through in the ways they turn out to be right for each other.
Bad Sisters – Currently in Season 2 on AppleTV+. The show’s website calls it an “Irish dark comedy.” In Season 1, four sisters scheme to save the fifth from her abusive husband. Aside from that goal, each has her own reason for wishing him dead. Funny, quirky, engaging, smart, serious. I didn’t know any of the actors, then I saw Eve Hewson (atop the car) in Behind Her Eyes and The Perfect Couple. A secondary character – a snooping insurance worker and her love interest – is played by Daryl McCormack, late of this year’s Twisters and 2023’s The Woman in the Wall.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend – originally on the CW, 2015-2019, then on Netflix, not currently streaming free, available to purchase from AppleTV+, Prime, and Fandango Home. I’d heard of this award-winning show in its early years but was turned off by the name (which I didn’t know was chosen ironically to deconstruct the misogynistic stereotype). Some women in Facebook’s The Office Superfans group recommended it, so I checked it out late in 2018. It quickly became my favorite show ever. In a nutshell, Rebecca Bunch (played by Rachel Bloom) is a Yale- and Harvard-educated, highly successful NYC lawyer who’s desperately unhappy. When she runs into an old boyfriend from summer camp, she decides to take off after him to his hometown of West Covina, California. Once there, she’s crushed to learn he has a girlfriend and sets out to win him back. It’s brilliant – hilarious; serious; super smart. It operates on several levels at once: somewhat silly, raunchy, and even juvenile at times, but under that it’s feminist, inclusive, body positive, sex positive, educational about women’s health and healthy relationships. It destigmatizes mental illness, therapy, and treatment. Also, Bloom, show co-creator Aline Brosh McKenna (who wrote The Devil Wears Prada, among others), and the show’s musical producer, the late Adam Schlesinger, are all Jewish, so that’s one of the themes running through the series, both in dialogue and song.
I was sold in the 4th episode when Rebecca starts talking with her date about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. When does that ever happen on TV? Or the running Joyce Carol Oates joke in one episode of Season 3? I’ve rarely (never?) seen such a literate show.
It’s also a musical comedy, with two original songs per episode, often parodying a wide range of music genres. Bloom, Schlesinger, and Jack Dolgen wrote all the songs. It has quite serious moments when Rebecca has a mental breakdown and goes through recovery, but there’s also strong, positive comedy throughout. It’s an uplifting show that ends with satisfying character arcs for everyone. A lot of hearts were broken when it went off Netflix in September. We’re hoping it will be streamed for free on Paramount+. In the meantime, I bought the DVD series last year and the online version on Prime this fall.
Can you tell what style this video is copying? Soon after this, Santino Fontana won a Tony for Best Actor in a Musical. The show features several other Broadway performers, including Josh Groban.
What are some of your favorite shows?
