I’ll second this.
A lot of the common trend to darkness is due to overcompensation from the years television was considered the bottom of the entertainment world. Now that television is considered the hip media, simply being entertaining is not enough. To be taken seriously, every show must be (or seem to be) dealing with the deepest fears and themes.
Plus the contemporary media climate factors in too. With the Nielsen ratings virtually useless these days, tweets/blogs/Facebook posts are the most important way to measure a show’s popularity. And guess what, people are not going to have a big social media reaction to conventional shows with self contained episodes. Nor will they have big reactions to shows with relatively low risk cliffhangers/plot lines. No, it’s got to be death of name characters to move the needle.
We started to watch There She Goes with David Tennant.
Listed as a comedy-drama. Nope. Full on downerville.
Barely made it thru 1 episode.
Increasingly the phrase “dark comedy” just means “no comedy at all”.
I would definitely second Lucifer, it sounds like it would be a fairly serious show, but it’s definitely fun and has a lot more light moments than dark. And you really look forward to the dark ones where Lucifer gets to spread his wings.
Try “Atypical” on Netflix. It’s a family drama/comedy series that deals sensitively with Autism. There’s been two season so far, and the cast is great. I also recommend “Sex Education” and “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”. The latter has a dark premise, but really is very light (abnormally so, which is part of its charm).