Having grown up in the age of 3 networks plus PBS, I find the current TV options overwhelming but I’m on the lookout for new stuff to watch. So what is your favorite current TV show? Please provide a brief synopsis and details for viewing.
Mine, without a doubt is AppleTV’s “Severance”. It’s in its second season and new episodes come out every Friday. In a nutshell, people undergo a voluntary procedure where their brains are “severed” by a computer chip that essentially divides them into 2 different people, a worker and a home life. The “two” people have no knowledge of each other. The worker works for a mysterious and presumably evil company called Lumon.
5 stars. Highly recommended. It might just be my favorite TV show of all time.
It’s a run of the mill network sitcom, but for the past three years my favorite show on TV has been Ghosts on CBS. For those not familiar, a couple inherits an old country manor in upstate New York, and after a near death experience, the wife can see and interact with the building’s ghosts, which include a Viking who died c. 1000 AD, through a sexed-up Finance Bro who died in 2000, and other ghosts from different eras. It’s the US adaptation of a British series of the same name and with the same concept.
But it is really hard to think of so many things as “current TV shows” in today’s market. A show that is on for 10 weeks straight (or comes out all the same day) and may or may not have a next season some time in the next two or three years? I don’t even know which shows should even count as “current”.
I’d second Severance, it’s awesome. Though nowadays the brief bit of TV watching we have after the kids go to bed has to be super light. Our tolerance for anything remotely dark is zero.
Our go to is Taskmaster, it’s a British comedy quiz show (of sorts). It’s in something like it’s 18th season so it’s not quite as fresh as it used to be, but still a good watch. All the episodes (plus the various foreign versions like Australia and NZ) are on YouTube…
I love Ghosts. The acting is great. The writing is great. the characters are well developed and feel like real people, but most episodes are light and the jokes are very funny.
I like the Night Court update. It is better than most suff on television, But it is not as good as the original. The original often had supernatural or sci fi stuff going on. Fairly often, those tings would turn out to be real. I haven’t seen anything supernatural or sf on the new show.
Really enjoying Severance also. Even rewatched all of season 1 the week before S2 started which I rarely do.
I will probably do the same before Andor starts up again in April.
In the last few years, the only show that I can recall had me hanging out for the next season has been Slow Horses. And that despite the fact that I have already read everything that Mick Herron has written.
I’d probably say Amazon’s The Boys, both because it’s a good story, I enjoy Karl Urban in just about anything, and I was a fan of the graphic novel prior to the series.
Netflix’s Wednesday would probably be my runner up. Though I enjoy the piranha-out-of-water bits more than the overarching plot so far.
Both are good, enjoyable, though neither would be my GOAT.
Honorable mention to Amazon’s Fallout but since I’m a huge fan of the F1-4 games, my enjoyment is compromised by trying to fix gaps/changes in the lore. If I was able to just evaluate it on my reactions to the characters and story, it would probably be a dead heat with Wednesday.
So at this point I’m saying The Boys (A+), Wednesday (A), Fallout (A-).
Our Thursday habit now is Severance (Apple TV) followed by The Pitt (Max). Completely different kinds of shows but those are my two current faves. For those that don’t know, The Pitt takes place in a Pittsburgh ER in real time. The entire season covers a simgle chaotic ten-hour shift.
The Pitt is really good and I’m indifferent to most hospital dramas. Probably my second favorite after Severance. I forgot to watch it tonight so I’ll get it and Severance tomorrow night. Definitely must see TV.
Some good shows have been mentioned so far, but the TV show that I enjoyed the most in the past 6 months or so was Behind Your Touch, a 16-episode Korean comedy-thriller on Netflix about a woman who acquires the ability to read an animal’s memories by touching its butt. She teams up with a hard-nosed cop to catch a mysterious serial killer (and to solve other less-serious crimes too).
The combination of goofy comedy and serious suspense was unlike any show I’ve seen before; it really felt like a fresh idea and the mystery kept me guessing. And it had a satisfying beginning, middle and end (which is more than I can say for a lot of TV shows).
Excluding the daily episode of Jeopardy!, I think the most recent “current” shows I watch are Doc Martin, which ended in 2022, and Heartbeat, which ceased production in 2010.
Except for documentaries and some cooking shows on different channels, there aren’t any other series I regularly follow.