I and the missus recently finished the final season of Modern Family, and it’s left a void in our casual TV watching experience. We tried to fill it with a series of shows but nothing has come close to the wonderful nature of Modern Family – funny, yet familial.
We tried watching The Office and Parks and Rec, but we’re both not really fans of this style of comedy. MF was an interesting exception, because it focused more on the story than on the explanation. We’ve tried to watch Community separately before, and didn’t ever feel like we want to watch it.
We binged on Mirzapur (on Prime Video) and it is a horrible show. I can’t believe that the entire premise is just shock and gore. There even is an instance in the show where a character waits for a second, before shooting someone in the head and then commenting, partly to the audience as much as to the other characters in the scene, “that he was waiting to give everyone false hope”. Just a crass show overall. The ending was a nod to The Godfather, but while the story is good, the direction falls much, much short of what you’d expect from this sort of a tale.
We watched a show called Hunters, and it’s good, with quirky asides (a la The Good Fight), and casual references to comic books, but it’s a sad show overall. Clearly, our hope of replacing Modern Family with another feel-good show is failing miserably.
We watched the latest season of West World, but anything from HBO has become nothing more than a ritual. After what they did with Game of Thrones, any time they produce a good show, there’s that underlying wonder of how they’ll tank this one.
We tried to watch the latest season of Dead To Me (Netflix), but it’s just a sad show – a shell of what the first season was. Also, we’ve had enough of irritating characters from another show we’re watching – Station 19. It’s good for the most part, but their lead character is just horrible, selfish, and best kept off-screen for the most part. We’re both in agreement on that. Hence, when such a character surfaced in Dead To Me, we stopped watching the show.
We also watched the latest season of Four More Shots Please, but again, it’s more ritual than active watching, because while the story is feel-good in moments, those moments are fleeting.
Finally, we’ve landed on two shows which will give us a short-lived happy-time – Kim’s Convenience, and Derry Girls, both are on Netflix, and both are funny, quirky, and wholesome.
Anybody have any good recommendations, please?
We enjoyed watching Panchayat and Special Ops(Mostly because of Menon). Believe both were on Hotstar.
Thank you Srikanth! I’ve got to see Special Ops – have heard from a few people about it. Will check out Panchayat too!
@nitinkhanna We liked Catastrophe on Prime. The characters are not likeable per se but they don’t pretend to want to be liked. I loved Kim’s Convenience too. Tried Sex Education and Never Have I Ever on Netflix? We too are nowadays preferring shows that live in their own little quirky world untethered to the reality that’s increasingly difficult to cope with aka escapist fare.
@pratik Never Have I Ever was a lot of fun! I loved that the ABCD voice was so well represented through the eyes of, of course, a teen 😄
I watched Season 2 of Homecoming on Amazon for the past two days. A very, very good season! I was expecting this to be a “setup” season, but they definitely dropped a great bombshell towards the end! Loved it!
Catastrophe was fun, but I think I can have only so much of that kind of comedy for a while! 😄
Sex Education is very Never Have I Ever-ish?
@nitinkhanna Agree about Catastrophe so was glad about its length. Sex Education is similar to Never Have I Ever in a way but obviously set in different location. Season 2 was just as good as Season 1 so that was encouraging. I think you’ll enjoy it. We’re also watching The Expanse now.
@pratik I think my wife is allergic to SciFi 😄
@nitinkhanna My wife is similarly affected, poor thing! but we are watching Sense8 and love it.
@nitinkhanna Ha! I can understand. Basically, we’re also craving for what we used to call the USA Network type shows – seem serious but are really not. The Psych, Royal Pains, White Collar, Monk, etc. types, you know.
@amongthestones you know… things Netflix throws at us, we still gobble up. Sense8 was fun! I think it’s because it hid the “it’s SciFi” very well, behind a human story. Basically, whenever the action or SciFi gets too real or too long, Sense8 shifts to party mode! 😄
I think her aversion to mass produced SciFi like Star Wars and Trek is the same as mine to pulp fiction – I’ve never been able to read any story of Robert Ludlum or Jeffery Archer, or the likes.
@pratik I loved Psych and White Collar. Couldn’t get into Monk. His act was too similar to grumpy old Larry David and his crass Curb Your Enthusiasm. As brilliant Sienfeld was, CYE and Monk feel too much (though I think I’ve seen a good two seasons of it before giving up).
I also love watching Lucifer (and the missus hates it)!
@nitinkhanna I can see that about Monk although we are now rewatching the series with our son right now and oh boy, he gets so mad (in a good way) at Monk watching it. I never saw Curb Your Enthusiasm.
@pratik Curb your Enthusiasm is funny in a cringeworthy kind of way. Nothing to see with kids though.
@odd cc: @nitinkhanna