TV Show Recommendations

I am frequently asked for TV recommendations. My parents just asked me to write down all the shows I was recommending to them because I apparently blurted out too many titles to remember. So I started writing out a list, and then also a short description so that she would know what they were about and why I recommended them.

Then I got the idea to archive this list somewhere and add to it as I go so that I don't have to keep writing it out every time. I watch a shitload of television (and movies), across just about all genres, and it's hard to remember them all, or to remember which movies to recommend to which people, who might have different tastes.

So I'm going to attempt to start a list. We'll see how well I keep up with it. I'm starting with a list of TV shows that I think my parents would like including my own description, and I'll be adding titles of shows that I recommend for other people, along with descriptions of those at a later time. For right now, if it has a description, it's because I'm recommending it to my parents. If it doesn't, then I recommend it, but for people who have different tastes than my parents. Later, when I update this post, I'll also update the explanation here.  It's late, so I'm just trying to get through my parents' list right now and I'll come back to this later for the others.

I am also going to list what network the show is on, but if the networks keep changing their inventory to make it too difficult to keep up, I'll abandon that. I may make a Listal list, but I can't include commentary on individual entries, just the groups within a list (apparently I can: https://www.listal.com/list/my-tv-show-recommendations).

I may also consider an airtable database, but you have to create an account (apparently) to see my databases and I know my parents are not going to do that, so that's a project for later down the road. I really like the Listal service, but I also really want to have my commentary on each listing.

So, for now, my TV show recommendations:

Netflix

• Grace & Frankie - hilarious comedy. 2 very different women in their '70s who don't like each other get dumped by their husbands so they can marry each other and the two women end up supporting each other. Hijinks ensue.


• iZombie - cop drama with an undead twist. A promising young doctor gets attacked at a party on a boat, falls overboard, washes ashore, and wakes up dead with a craving for brains. Unable to tell anyone that she's a zombie now, she gets a job at the city morgue so that she can steal brains without anyone noticing. She discovers that she takes on the personalities of the brains she eats and also accesses some of their memories. When a murder victim comes in, she tells the investigating police officer that she's "psychic" and starts teaming up with him to solve crimes.


• Cobra Kai - surprisingly good drama. Bad guy from the Karate Kid movie, Johnny Lawrence, is all grown up now and re-opens his old dojo and starts teaching karate. But he's still a jerk. Daniel LaRusso is now a successful car salesman with a beautiful wife and kids who tries to stop Johnny from imposing the abusive values of Cobra Kai dojo on the next generation.


• The Good Place - absurd comedy. Eleanor wakes up in an office waiting room, where she is told by an administrator (played by Ted Dansen) that she is dead and in the good place. But the description of Eleanor's life on earth in her file is not true. Now Eleanor has to figure out how to prevent anyone from finding out that she was actually a terrible human being so that they don't kick her out of the Good Place and send her to the Bad Place.


• Lucifer - supernatural cop drama. Lucifer, God's favorite son and angel who was cast out of heaven to rule hell, decides that he's done taking orders from an absentee father and abandons his underworldly administrative position for a life of luxury up on Earth. Where he meets Detective Chloe Decker and discovers that he rather enjoys helping her solve crimes even though she seems to be the only human on the entire planet who is immune to his charms.


• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - musical comedy. Rebecca Bunch is a successful New York City lawyer with a ton of anxiety problems who spontaneously decides one day to quit her lucrative position and move across the country to California, where her old middle school boyfriend lives, because dating him one summer is the last time she remembers being happy. The question is, can she convince him to love her and get back together, or is she just a psychotic stalker with a penchant for sappy musical numbers?


• Dead To Me - thriller / mystery. Recently widowed when her husband was killed by a hit and run vehicle, Jen struggles to cope with single motherhood and latent anger issues. Until Judy appears in her life. The exact opposite of foul-mouthed, angry Jen, Judy is sweet and kind and a little bit hippie-dippy. But who is she? Where did she come from? And who killed her husband?


• Dexter - cop drama with a murderous twist. Dexter is a forensic scientist with the Miami police department. He investigates murders by studying the methods by which people kill, including a specialty in blood spatter patterns. All the better to hide his own serial murders. But it's OK because he only kills other bad guys!


• Fuller House


• Sense8


• Altered Carbon


• One Day At A Time


• Black Mirror


• Sex Education

Hulu

• Elementary - Sherlock Holmes cop drama. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never liked the character he created and deeply resented his popularity. Consequently, the character of Sherlock Holmes is kind of a jerk. Doyle was trying to tell us that the sort of person who relies on "logic" is someone we should dislike, but for some reason, everyone loved his stories anyway. Over a century later, dozens of remakes have been made but they all have to work with this unlikable character. This imagining takes the Sherlock character into new realms, with Lucy Liu as Dr. Watson, not his sidekick and chronicler but a partner who can hold her own against the legendary Sherlock Holmes. Holmes and Watson team up together to solve crimes while we get a very different perspective on who they both are.


• Lie To Me - Sherlock Holmes-like cop drama. Cranky, abrasive Dr. Cal Lightman develops the theory of "micro-expressions" - tiny, quick, involuntary expressions that pass over people's faces that give away what they're thinking. Very loosely based on a real (but debunked) theory where Paul Ekman would analyze expressions from video, one frame at a time, whereas Lightman is able to read these expressions in real life as they happen with almost magical accuracy. The Lightman Group is a private business for hire that will detect people's lies and solve mysteries, sometimes even partnering with the police to solve crime.


• Bones - odd couple crime drama. Forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan teams up with FBI agent Booth to investigate crime, loosely based on the real life and novels of a forensic anthropologist named Kathy Reichs. Agent Booth brings human remains to a federal science lab where Dr. Brennan "Bones" studies them to help solve their deaths.


• Numb3rs - odd couple crime drama. Two brothers, one a decorated and successful FBI agent and the other a brilliant math genius and professor, who don't get along with each other because they don't understand each other. Until one of Don's FBI cases needs Charlie's mathematical expertise and brings them together.


• Full House


• Family Matters


• Perfect Strangers


• Designing Women


• Wonder Years


• Golden Girls


• MASH


• Cheers


• Married With Children


• Firefly


• Doogie Howser

Disney+

• Agent Carter - historical cop drama. Agent Peggy Carter was a secret British agent who worked on the Captain America project in World War II. After Captain America went Missing In Action and the war ended, she moved to the United States to work with the super secret organization called the Strategic Scientific Reserve in New York City, where she tries to solve crimes while battling her coworkers' and superiors' disbelief that women are capable of doing anything other than serving coffee and filing paperwork.


• The Mandalorian

Other Networks

• Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries