I haven’t been watching much in terms of actual shows for a good while, then while listening to a podcast a host casually mentioned they had rewatched Chernobyl, how it still holds up, that there’s a reason it got as much acclaim as it did, etc. So I thought I’d give it a go and wow, loved it (still one episode left to watch).
Had me thinking, what else have I missed out on? What are some “absolute cinema” TV shows that still hold up and and are considered must watch?
I always plug Scavenger’s Reign. It’s a a sci fi survival show about a set of people who get stranded on an alien planet animated kind of like a graphic novel. The creators used a bunch of nature documentaries as inspiration to create a truly alien and interdependent ecosystem, but the theme tells you everything you need to know about the tone.
Also, animated sci fi comedy, The Venture Bros
I’m always ready to plug Bojack Horseman. Yes, it’s an animated show about an anthropomorphic horse, with tons of silly, animal puns and visual gags, and cartoon-ish storylines, and it will sometimes just rip you open emotionally. Will Arnett is a phenomenally gifted voice actor. And despite this, one of the best episodes of television I’ve ever seen is one in which he has barely any lines.
The usual advice, of course, is that it takes until the middle of the first season to get really good. (The first few episodes aren’t bad, they’re just light comedy.)
It did some really cool experimental stuff as well, such as:
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An episode that’s 90% the main character’s monologue, delivered straight into the ‘camera’.
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An episode from the perspective of someone with advanced dementia, where a lot of the important details are scribbled out.
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An episode from the perspective of someone who’s (perhaps) dying, and it’s all explicitly stated to be a hallucination as their neurons are misfiring.
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A lot of exploration into themes of nihilism and pointlessness.
And it all works. That show is amazing.
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I really love this show. I’ll rewatch it every now and again. After my own mom died, “Free Churro” really hit differently. It’s a really beautiful dive into the thoughts and emotions that can come up when your mom is recently dead but your mom was also chronically an asshole.
The exploration of Beatrice’s and Bojack’s relationship thoughout the series, and the flashbacks to how Beatrice’s own trauma shaped her and her relationship with Bojack, and Bojack’s final acceptance that now, finally, he knows there’s no chance she’ll ever be the mother he wanted or the one he needed, really helped me come to grips with what I was going through, mentally and emotionally.
The rest of the show is also really good. I’m a big fan of Character Actress Margo Martindale.
The Good Place. Season one is just to set it up, please stick with it through at least S2. The ending makes me cry every time I watch it
Frieren: Beyond Jouney’s End is absolutely incredible. Even if you don’t watch anime I’d still recommend this as a gateway into the medium.
Ted Lasso. Surface level it’s a “fish out of water” story of an American College Football coach going to England to coach Professional Football (soccer). In actuality it’s a show about loss, growth, relationships, and packs more emotions than you’ll know what to do with. I know a lot of people gush about it, but I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that it might be the most perfect show I’ve ever watched.
Similarly, Schitt’s Creek. A lot of similar themes, also a nearly perfect show. I will say that it took me a little bit to get past the first couple of episodes because it seemed like all of the characters were kinda awful, but that’s really setting things up for character growth.
My Fiancee and I just over the last couple of weeks binged the series 12 Monkeys for the first time. Easily one of my favorite shows period, and it’s a show that ended as intended.
If you’ve seen the movie, from other people’s observations (I haven’t watched it), the first season of the show vaguely follows along a similar idea, but it absolutely is not the same afterwards.
It’s 4 seasons and 46 episodes so it’s not a huge commitment, but the payoff is so worth it.
The show is one of the rare ones where it only gets better as it goes on, up to the very last episode. Truly underrated and overlooked.
I binged that show a few years ago and loved it. One thing that I couldn’t stop thinking about though - it’s been 25 years since the apocalypse; where are they getting all the booze, cigarettes, fuel and bullets from? There’s presumably no manufacturing going on, and looting would have used up existing stocks pretty quickly.
Nobody seems to have watched it, but “Counterpart”. It’s a mind fuck Science Fiction show. Only 20 episodes, so manageable.
It was cancelled, but the writers knew beforehand and wrote an absolute perfect conclusion for the last episodes.
Also it’s best to go in blind. There are events predicted in the show that later happened for real (I don’t want to spoil it), and it’s fun to think “oh that is how and why it happened”!
Also J.K. Simmons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpart_(TV_series)
I can’t recommend this show enough.
Widow’s Bay is a recent horror comedy series starring Matthew Rhys & Stephen Root that’ll be getting a second season. I consume all media and I highly recommend this gem, especially for the person who’s seen everything in these comments. It has excellent, subtle comedy, ramping lore-building in the vein of the best years of LOST, and the story of the week combined with overarching season arc structure of classics like X-Files.
TV Shows
Must Watch
- Breaking Bad
- Better Call Saul
- Chernobyl
- Peaky Blinders
- Dinosaurs
Highly Rated (With Caveats)
- The Wire: A timeless masterpiece, but the extremely slow pace requires pushing through the first season.
- Band of Brothers: Excellent, but historically did Captain Sobel dirty—he wasn’t like that.
- Primal: Extremely good, but the story ends at Season 2. Season 3 is an unnecessary overextension.
Good Shows (Minor Caveats)
- Narcos: Enjoyable until Escobar (the star) is captured, then it loses its appeal.
- Pablo Escobar, The Drug Lord (El Patrón del Mal): Less dramatic but more accurate and highly enjoyable than Narcos.
- Dune: Prophecy & House of the Dragon: Good overall, but heavily woke. They take too many liberties and squander their superior source materials.
Great for Uniqueness, Story, or Style (Major Caveats)
- Game of Thrones (Seasons 1-4): The absolute best TV ever made. It doesn’t top Breaking Bad only because the later seasons are absolute garbage.
- The Sopranos: Great episodic show, but slow. The overarching story wasn’t the main focus; six seasons could have been condensed into three.
Shows That Don’t Live Up to Their Name
- Dark: Starts great, but convoluted rules in Season 2 and Deus ex machina plot devices in Season 3 ruin it.
- Shōgun (2024): Unremarkable. Unfaithful to the source material due to wokeness, specifically erasing Blackthorne’s protagonism because he’s white.
- The Expanse: A convoluted, messy dumpster fire.
- Westworld: A convoluted, messy dumpster fire.
- Euphoria: Hot Gen Z garbage.
- A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: Pure hype with no justification to exist. Spends 6 episodes on Dunk, an absolute loser and terrible fighter, whereas the show was advertised as being about Aegon Targaryen, who barely gets screen time in the show
Anime
Must Watch
- Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (Sousou no Frieren): A beautiful, clean, family-safe show with no fan service. The appeal is the whole package.
Good Shows (Minor Caveats)
- Noragami: Beautiful, but not a masterpiece; sequels dip in quality.
- Psycho-Pass: Genuinely good Minority Report-style premise. Season 1 is amazing.
- Mob Psycho 100: Good comedy, but relies on repetitive tropes after Season 2.
- One Punch Man: Extremely funny great premise, but the quality drop after Season 1 shouldn’t have happened.
- Dragon Ball / Dragon Ball Z: Legendary but too long (Kai is the shorter alternative).
Great for Uniqueness, Story, or Style (Major Caveats)
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: Very unique. The writer projected his mental issues onto a weird cast, the protagonist is a loser, and it has no proper ending.
- Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood: Good, but overhyped. Suffers from forced humor, quality drops near the end, and a predictable “happily ever after” ending.
- Fullmetal Alchemist (2003): Much darker, serious, and extremely good, but the animation is garbage.
- Tokyo Ghoul: Only good until Season 2 before major quality dips.
Shows That Don’t Live Up to Their Name
- Death Note: A bad show imo. The premise is amazing but the characters are so obnoxious that i dropped it
EDIT:
Forgot to mentione The Last of Us. Pretty good show with story close to the original. I rated it an 8/10 on IMDb.
Issues it has if you liked the game though:
- Bella Ramsey was severely miscast as Ella. Ellie in the games is a fierce, humorous and lovely girl, who’s matured too early. On the show she tries to be but isn’t funny, she’s aggressive and lacks self control. You’ll have to accept it for what it is, two different characters altogether.
- Season 2 has some noticeable defects
- It inherits the game’s plot, which is amateurish at best *Some parts are rushed
- Take the already ridiculously written character of Abby Anderson and miscast an actress for it to, and there you have it
- Kaitlyn Dever was supposed to be Ellie, and i think she’d work really well as her. They miscast that one and they used Kaytlin as Abby, who has a totally different personality
In the end i think it’s not a terrible show, but it could easily have been a much better one
wokeness,
I thought you had some interesting insights until I saw you list “wokeness” as a caveat.
Then I saw how you rated one of the greatest Sci-Fi shows of all time, The Expanse, and knew I could discard everything you said.
