TV Shows on UK Streaming Services if You’re Stuck at Home Bored
Because we might be at home bored a lot in the coming weeks.
So you may have heard that there’s a terrible virus around. A lot of people aren’t going to be at work or school in the next few weeks. There’s no football or most other sports being played, so that cuts out one way of passing the time in front of the television. Chances are a lot of people are going to be sitting around at home with nothing to do, so let me recommend some TV series to watch! I’ve seen quite a few of these lists online, but most were based around what’s on American streaming services, so I decided to make a British equivalent. If anyone for some reason wanted their viewing choices to be Grace approved, here you go.
It’s broken down service by service, so you can just skip to what you subscribe to. If you don’t pay for any, I’ve got some free options at the end.
Netflix
Mad Men
Ok, you’ve probably heard of this one. But Mad Men remains a stunning achievement, even more so in the years since as TV has fallen into traps it deftly avoided. It’s more deliberately paced than many of its antihero counterparts, but that’s a big part of its power. Take your time with this one, as it’s a fine wine that resists the binge.
I’m aware I’ve made it sound a lot like homework, but it’s really plenty of fun, and full of great jokes.
Sense8
The premise: eight people around the world find out they’re “sensate”: the next step in evolution, humans who can feel each other’s thoughts and experiences no matter how far apart they are. It gets a little weird, as does all The Wachowskis’ work, which is no issue for me, but there’s a solid meat and potatoes sci-fi story engine at the core alongside some of its transcendentally beautiful moments.
Better Call Saul/Breaking Bad
On the off chance that you haven’t seen Breaking Bad, here’s your chance. Otherwise, I assume plenty have either given up on Saul early on or never tried it. And it really is a different rhythm to Bad. But let it work its way into you and I’d argue it’s even more rewarding.
Pose
TV’s master provocateur Ryan Murphy is no stranger to reworking reality formats into scripted series. Nip/Tuck took those horrible medical reality shows and put them in a drama context, while Glee is obviously a riff on the singing shows. This show does the same trick for Drag Race (which I have my issues with, but that’s for another day). The important thing is that it’s not Murphy’s baby, and just enough of his trashiness goes a long way in more stable hands.
The People vs. O.J. Simpson/Versace
These two Murphy-produced anthologies are about the best work he’s ever done. Both deal with extremely serious issues but in a tabloid glossy way that’s never anything less than sheer enjoyment. A win in just about every sense of the word and two true masterpieces.
Hannibal
If horror is more your thing, here’s where you want to turn. Bryan Fuller’s reinvention of the Hannibal Lecter story can sometimes lose itself in its own weirdness, but it’s about the most delectable, artful thing the unpleasant serial killer genre will ever come up with. There’s really nothing else like it.
The OA
Another show so deep in its own perspective. Is The OA what “art TV” can look like? It felt like a miracle at times. Some gawked at its own corniness, but go with it and it’s utterly, utterly rewarding.
Great News
Just want some laughs? This isn’t quite the best thing Tina Fey and Robert Carlock have ever produced, but it has that sense of joke density that so many other sitcoms no longer have. Sitcoms that want to be funny more than they want to be touching are in short supply and this is one of the last.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
The Fey/Carlock team also gave us this show, which eventually became a bit of a slog, but that first season especially is as good as any sitcom from the last decade or so. Man do they know how to make TV when they’re at it.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
This one is a little more of a comfort food comedy than the rapid fire jokes of the above, though it’s not exactly short on laughs itself. It’s always a good time to come back to.
BoJack Horseman
Is this even a comedy? I don’t know. It feels more like a drama with a side of absurdist jokes. I’ve grown a little tired of that sort of genre, but there’s no doubt BoJack is a master at it.
Russian Doll
So this miniseries isn’t exactly going to suck up a lot of time, but jesus does it gradually rachet up the tension in precision style. A lot of miniseries are really two hour films stretched out too long. This gets everything exactly right.
The Vampire Diaries
An all time entry in the “better than it sounds” canon. It takes about seven or so episodes to get going, and then it falls apart towards the end of season three. But my god is that golden stretch some of the most propulsive genre storytelling you’re ever likely to see on the small screen. If anything was ever built for the binge, it’s this.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Your mileage for this pretty much runs on how much you can tolerate the first season’s opening titles. If they seem delightful to you, go all in. If they grate, maybe avoid this one, because it’s like that a lot.
Jane the Virgin
This one runs on some of the same qualities as Crazy Ex-Girlfriend but might be a safer bet. If you like properly executed soapy shows, this is where you need to turn.
Gilmore Girls
Yeah, you’ve probably seen it. But it really does hold up as a show that wants to invite you into its town every episode. Wrap yourself up in Stars Hollow while you can’t spend much time outside in your own town.
Amazon Prime
Community
It was my show of the decade, so it’s only right that it takes its pride of place here:
“It’s the purest illustration of what TV can do as a medium. It was able to break into all sorts of formal experiments because it had a format and a weekly slot. It built up a place we wanted to visit every week. But above all else, it brought people together, both on and off screen.”
30 Rock
Yes, some of the topical jokes are a little dated now. And yes, some of it has become what can be best described as problematic. But the wit, the joke density, the level of near perfect execution in a straightforward form remains untouchable.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Yes, it’s one of the greatest shows in the history of the medium. Yes, it’s groundbreaking in so many ways. Yes, it’s probably the most purely entertaining thing on this list on top of all the ways it’s important art. But let’s cut to the chase here: that first season is rough. You can get through it in just four episodes: “Welcome to the Hellmouth”, “The Harvest”, “Angel” and “Prophecy Girl”. Don’t let completism stop you from ever getting to the good stuff.
The Magicians
“What if Buffy, but weirdly depressed and insular all the time, instead of just some of it?”
Yes, that’s actually a good thing.
The Americans
Another from my shows of the decade list:
“ It’s about what it means to belong to something greater than yourself, be it a marriage, a family, a political organisation or a nation state. There’s a historical case to be made for this show as the final chapter in the antihero era, and with so much of the genre centring the self, this show was about what it means to look beyond that. It was often a prickly show, difficult to love, and I myself took an embarrassingly long time to warm to it. But once it worked its way in, I was utterly smitten with it.”
Freaks and Geeks
Adolescence, but the unpleasant side, rather than the glossier stuff we usually get on TV. But still full of warmth and compassion as well as the jokes you’d expect from the stacked cast and crew.
Please Like Me
I don’t watch a lot of Australian TV. I assume most of it isn’t honest dramedies about LGBTQ characters. But god, imagine if it was.
Catastrophe
You might have figured out this far into the list that I don’t watch a lot of British TV. This comedy is made by an Irish woman and an American man, so it barely counts. Anyway, it’s really funny and heartfelt in a truthful way.
Mr. Robot
God, what a weirdo trip. If you can handle having the rug pulled from under your feet over and over again as well as a little, let’s just say, collegiate sensibilities, you’ll be into this.
Firefly
The sheen seems to have fallen off this one a little in recent years but it’s still got great storytelling to its bones. Sci-fi and western seem to be a popular combination these days, and Firefly was there early.
Sky box sets/Now TV
The Sopranos/The Wire/Deadwood
The 2000s had one universally accepted truth: these three shows were pretty much the best TV drama ever made. The crème de la crème. The shows that changed everything. So obviously you’d be wise to watch them.
Twin Peaks
Of course, some would argue they owed a hell of a debt to Twin Peaks. The first two seasons aired thirty years ago now and yet there’s nothing about them that feel dated. The show has been ripped off countless times but it still feels totally distinctive. There is only one Twin Peaks. It stands alone, unlike anything before and after. The third season in particular is a wild ride.
30 Rock
Turns out this show is streaming in two places. It’s funny wherever you watch it.
Enlightened
Just watch this show, people. It is everything. As I wrote before:
“For all that ideas around mental health, environmental sustainability, wellness and corporate fake progressivism became buzzwords as this decade matured, they were tackled most gracefully by Enlightened, which felt like miraculous TV at the time but has become nothing short of a parable in 2019. Laura Dern, with what is surely the strongest performance on television in the 2010s, centred Amy Jellicoe as someone desperate to be the change in the system while simultaneously intoxicated, as we all are, by capitalism’s own attempts to withhold and sell us our own rightful peace of mind.”
Looking
Another of my shows of the decade:
“A lot of low rated, cancelled-too-soon shows are deliberately obtuse, but Looking was an entirely open hearted and accessible show that just couldn’t find its audience. The only knock against it was in its small scale, quiet storytelling, but that’s really why it felt so natural to jump into. Looking was often compared to something like Girls, with its very consciously unlikeable people, but in reality it was very much a show where you were invited to fall for and care about these people.”
Girls
“A lot of what felt totally fresh in the first half of this decade suddenly felt horribly out of step in the second, which led to a lot of tragic falls from the zeitgeist overnight among many similar shows to this one. Girls, though, always had a quality of being slightly out of touch from the word go, like a baby boomer’s projection of how millennials behave, so if anything becoming even further from the truth of the world today has only helped it. It’s funny in hindsight how revolutionary that first season felt in 2012, but it really was doing things on a storytelling level that just didn’t exist on the small screen until then.”
Westworld
More like Bestworld.
“The most common knock against Westworld is its impenetrable icy coldness, its penchant for feeling like an instruction manual. This is, I would suggest, the entire point. It’s not a show arguing, as often assumed, that robots are people, but that people are robots. A lot of pop culture deals with the question of whether free will exists, but it’s refreshing to see a big HBO sci-fi show like this come down firmly on the side of “no”. We’re all rats in a maze to Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan.
True Detective
“Yeah, yeah, backlash, whatever. Who cares? The first season of this show was built to both conform to TV’s worst surface level tendencies while totally disrupting them in its core DNA. “Great TV” is supposed to present itself as such on the page, getting to a core narrative structure that’s expressed by everything else. If you get down to True Detective season one’s core story, there’s not much there, but this is entirely the point. This show used a simplistic structure to root its ambition in solid ground, while so much of TV trains us to expect the opposite.”
Awkward.
The best teen comedy of the decade almost by default, though that shouldn’t detract from its qualities. It managed to balance the characters’ real emotions with a sense that it’s just teen bullshit and it’s not going to matter in five years. The creator Lauren Iungerich left after season three, and you can do the same, as that finale serves as a satisfying conclusion.
Olive Kitteridge
It’s only four hours, but damn, what a gut punch of a drama about ageing, depression, and so much more.
All 4 and BBC iPlayer, aka “The Free Stuff”
Seinfeld (All 4)
This is almost universally considered one of if not the best American sitcom ever, and hardly anyone in Britain has seen it. It’s weird. You can rectify that now.
Community (All 4)
It’s available here, too. You have to sit through adverts on All 4, so if you have Prime you’re better off there, but a great show regardless.
Pose (BBC iPlayer)
Another repeat entry, another enjoyable show wherever.
Freaks and Geeks (All 4)
See above.
ER (All 4)
It’s so heart-pounding. It packs so much into each episode. It is pure television.
Hill Street Blues (All 4)
This 80s drama changed everything for American TV. And it’s just sitting there on All 4.
St. Elsewhere (All 4)
Another all-time classic just sitting there for some reason.
Doctor Who (BBC iPlayer)
Yeah, it’s been a bit of a mess in the last few years. But if you wanted to remind yourself of when it was really terrific, it’s sitting there waiting for you.
My Mad Fat Diary (All 4)
This show discovered Jodie Comer. Not Killing Eve. This show. And don’t you let anyone forget it.
Mistifts (All 4)
Everyone knows how wickedly entertaining those early years were. But I think the later stuff gets a little underrated. When the show was forced to replace its cast, it retooled in some actually interesting ways. Worth watching all the way through.
Catastrophe (All 4)
It’s also here, if you wanted to check it out.
The Thick of It (BBC iPlayer)
Bleak satire is often a tough watch for me, but even I can’t resist it when it’s this well done. And even if you don’t care about the satire, it has some really funny lines anyway.