Actually, looking for recommendations for shows my wife and I can binge watch together. We like doing this, but it’s very hard to find shows we both enjoy. She tends to be into realistic, emotionally based stories, while I prefer adventure stories and comedies. The biggest restriction is that she can’t tolerate any violence at all, which probably eliminates 90% of the things people came into this thread to recommend; Game of Thrones is never, ever happening.
Our favorite show ever was Weeds, which met all our needs for romance, comedy, suspense, and (mostly) nonviolence. Nothing else has quite made the grade since. Others we have more or less enjoyed included Mad Men, Big Love, Sex and the City, and The Good Wife.
had plenty of emotionally based stories, plus very funny comedy. The songs are the funniest things on TV. Don’t know if it’s bingable yet though. ITunes supposedly had the first season for free, but that may have expired. No violence, either.
Master of None from Netflix. Aziz Ansari stars, writes, and produces on this fantastic show which mingles among topics of being single, complicated relationships, and race.
Per Rotten Tomatoes: “Critics Consensus: Exceptionally executed with charm, humor, and heart, Master of None is a refreshingly offbeat take on a familiar premise.”
What kind of shows are you looking for? Are you open to sitcoms? How I Met Your Mother is on Netflix. It’s light enough that you can watch a few episodes a night but has good long arcs and lots of intricate dialogue and ridiculously clever throwbacks and foreshadowing that make you want to go back and watch it again.
I would suggest Six Feet Under since I can recall that getting grouped in with Weeds when they were running at the same time, but I have a feeling that even if you took out the few violent scenes (or maybe it was just the one over the top one (red hoodie)), if she responds like that to any violence, the show as a whole, might be too emotional for her.
I loved Bored to Death, which is a comedy about a guy pretending to be a private investigator. The first few episodes are a little slow, but I loved the rest of it.
Pushing Daisies is also a great show. It’s about a piemaker who solves murders using his ability to communicate with the dead.
Pushing Daisies was amazing*,**. Is it streaming anywhere? Looks like it’s on Netflix if you have the rental plan or Amazon if you want to buy each episode. I’m not sure about other streaming services.
*FTR, I never got into Dead Like Me
**If you watch this, make sure you watch it in HD/Blue-Ray.
I loved Arrested Development but it’s definitely more on the comedy side of the spectrum. Actually, with the criteria of no violence…I can only think of comedies lol Parks and Recreation and Community. Oh! For a nice ‘realistic’ one that, the British series Call the Midwife is fantastic.
Scrubs is another one. I like to compare it to HIMYM. Even ignoring all the websites showing the similarities, I’m just saying that if you like one, you’ll probably like the other.
@AngelSoft In my post where I mentioned HIMYM I was going to mention Arrested Development as a comparison to HIMYM WRT to all the throwbacks, foreshadowing, cleverness etc, but HIMYM is a lot less in your face about it (and the respective shows are meant to be like that). There’s a lot of Buzzfeed/Cracked type slideshows about HIMYM that show all the hidden jokes.
You could try Enlightened starring Laura Dern and Mike White. It’s a comedy-drama about a woman trying to piece her life back together after being inspired by her experiences in rehab, with mixed results. It has realism, emotion, comedy and corporate espionage; I really enjoyed it.
I remember seeing ‘Justifed’ Season One disk set for a ridiculously low price at Target. I had seen ads for it but wasn’t that interested, but I bought it on a whim. What did I have to lose.
I put the first disk in. As soon as Raylan shot Tommy Bucks at the Hotel in Miami (first scene), I was hooked. I watched 6 episodes in a row and was late to work the next morning.
Yes! Justified is great, and hardly any violence at all! Why, there are entire episodes that go by with less than three people being brutally shot to death, and in some episodes there’s no murder at all, only a little bit of hammer-to-the-hand torture or whatnot!
“Mozart in the Jungle” is the perfect binge watching show. Very funny, semi-realistic, great characters. Re: violence, I think there was a punch or two thrown in the first season (which is as far as I’ve gotten so far).
House. Not a ton of romance, but some bromance. Good drama. Good comedy.
Once Upon a Time. It’s certainly an adventure. Tons of romance. There is some fighting, but it’s also a Disney production, so I don’t think you really need to worry about it being “violent”, unless you’re being very literal. (Of course, if you are being very literal, I don’t know how you could ever have an adventure story that isn’t also violent?)
