As you may have read in all the news, the COVID-19 (a.k.a. novel coronavirus) pandemic is changing the way we live: Conventions are being canceled; sporting events are being played without spectators; and experts are recommending “social distancing.”
If you’re finding yourself spending more time at home and running out of ways to distract yourself, take advantage of the forced downtime to sink into some good TV-series binges. Here’s a list of 25 you can start with, including content warnings for material that might make you anxious in our current moment.
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9-1-1: Lone Star (2020-)
Fox’s reliably batshit, L.A.–set first-responder procedural 9-1-1 spun off this Austin-based brand extension in January, and now that it’s just aired its two-part season finale, you can race from catastrophe to catastrophe—from a fatal explosion at a fertilizer factory to multiple bachelorette casualties at a male strip club, with everything in between—and spare yourself the agonizing wait those of us who watched live had to endure.
Content Warning: Fire captain Owen Strand (Rob Lowe) is living with lung cancer, which may remind you of the respiratory difficulties that are a hallmark symptom of coronavirus.
What We Do in the Shadows (2019-)
Taika Waititi’s 2014 feature film was the inspiration for this spin-off series about four vampires—all from different countries of origin and eras in history—who’ve ended up rooming together in a large house on Staten Island. Guest stars include Beanie Feldstein, Vanessa Bayer, and many more I won’t spoil.
Content Warning: All these vampires, rubbing their immortality in your face.
Ramy (2019-)
Comic Ramy Youssef created and stars as the titular lead of this dramedy series, about a family of Egyptian immigrants in New Jersey. As the season progresses, we watch Ramy reconcile his desire to observe the tenets of his Muslim faith with the temptations of present-day secular America.
Content Warning: Ramy’s ablutions before prayer might make you anxious about your own hand-washing technique.
Homecoming (2018-)
Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail adapted this series from the narrative podcast of the same name, and cast Julia Roberts as social worker Heidi Bergman, who barely remembers her time working with returned veterans at a privately-contracted facility called the Homecoming Transitional Support Center. The timeline cuts back and forth to tell the story of how Heidi lost those years, and the true nature of the work she did with her clients.
Content Warning: An ostensibly beneficial quasi-governmental program that turns out to be extremely shady and treats its participants as disposable may hit too close to home.
Vida (2018-)
Estranged sisters Emma (Mishel Prada) and Lyn (Melissa Barrera) return to their childhood home in Boyle Heights following the death of their mother, bar owner Vidalia. Though Emma, a successful business consultant, is determined to sell the property and forget her painful past, when she starts to learn some of the secrets her mother had been keeping from her, she decides she and Lyn should stay and run Vida’s bar themselves.
Content Warning: While joyful sex, across all orientations and honoring all kinks, is a hallmark of Vida, an orgy in the season two premiere may be more than your social-distancing nerves can take.
Deal or No Deal (2005–2009 for this iteration)
Deal or No Deal is one of the simplest game shows ever conceived. Its soporific rhythms—there’s not so much as a single trivia question to challenge either the player or the viewer—may be just the thing to soothe the anxious viewer to sleep after a long day of uselessly worrying. You may also spot future ex-princess Meghan Markle among the briefcase models!
Content Warning: Famously germaphobic host Howie Mandel does not shake hands, which could make you wistful about how little we respected his beliefs and foresight.
Catastrophe (2015-2019)
American Rob (Rob Delaney) and Irish Sharon (Sharon Horgan) have a whirlwind week of hookups in London and expect never to speak again, until she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, and they decide to see if they want to get to know each other and possibly stay together to raise the baby. Horgan and Delaney cocreated the bitterly hilarious series together and are savagely honest about the often ugly reality of later-in-life marriage and parenthood.
Content Warning: Rob and Sharon eventually have two children, doubling the number of disease vectors in their home.
Humans (2015–2018)
In the England of the not-so-distant future, labor ranging from child care to custodial work to shipping fulfillment is performed by “synths”—hyper-real androids that are nearly indistinguishable from human beings except for the shade of their irises. What might happen if the engineer who developed the technology created a small run of synths who could experience the full range of human emotion? The series dramatizes the fallout (and stars Crazy Rich Asians alumna Gemma Chan).
Content Warning: Synths are subject to indignities of all kinds, but you definitely don’t ever see them cough.
The Last Man on Earth (2015–2018)
Phil Miller (Will Forte) is apparently the sole survivor of a global pandemic. After spending a year searching for any other living humans—and spectacularly goofing off in a consequence-free environment—he’s about to die by suicide when he sees smoke from another survivor’s fire. Eventually he assembles a small band of hardy humans, but continues getting himself into the kind of trouble only a total idiot can.
Content Warning: ...Fine, all of it.
Younger (2015–)
After her husband reveals that he’s a gambling addict who lost all their money, Liza Miller (Sutton Foster) has to return to publishing, the career she left more than a decade earlier to raise their daughter full-time. However, as a 40-year-old, she isn’t being considered for junior positions, so she takes advantage of her extremely youthful looks to pass herself off as a 20-something and start her life over again.
Content Warning: Liza spends a lot of time canoodling with her on-again, off-again love interest Josh (Nico Tortorella), a tattoo artist whose sanitizing procedures you may not be able to stop thinking about.
Difficult People (2015–2017)
Underemployed writer Julie (Julie Klausner, who also created the show) and actor Billy (Billy Eichner) get through the challenges of life in New York largely by mocking and abusing everyone who crosses their paths, often including each other. A deep bench of guest stars includes Andrea Martin, Lin-Manuel Miranda, John Mulaney, and Nathan Lane, among many others.
Content Warning: Maybe the thing you’ll miss most while self-quarantining is roasting strangers with your best/worst friend.
You’re the Worst (2014–2019)
After meeting at a wedding of mutual friends they can barely stand, Gretchen (Aya Cash) and Jimmy (Chris Geere) embark upon a marathon one-night stand that lurches into a real relationship, despite both partners’ constitutional inability to deal with their own feelings, never mind the feelings of others. (Full disclosure: the show was created by my friend Stephen Falk.)
Content Warning: One of Gretchen and Jimmy’s many dumb fights arises from her disclosure that she never washes her legs, so one may assume both of them are riddled with disease.
Outlander (2014–)
While her husband is on a research trip in 1946 Scotland, former World War II combat nurse Claire (Caitriona Balfe) is transported back in time to 1743, where she meets Jamie (Sam Heughan), a rebel Highlander resisting English rule. Claire and Jamie’s fortunes rise and fall over the years, through the centuries, and even around the world, but one thing never changes: They remain horny as hell for each other.
Content Warning: The most recent episodes (spoiler!) find Claire trying to bring medical science she knows from the 20th century with her into the late 18th—a struggle that may take you out of what is otherwise generally a sexy escapist fantasy.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013–)
What started as a star vehicle for a post–SNL Andy Samberg has become one of TV’s best ensemble comedies, with the highest joke-per-minute ratio since 30 Rock. (It’s also grown increasingly critical of policing and the carceral state over the course of its run, in contrast to most other reflexively conservative cop shows on the air.)
Content Warning: Once you realize that neither Hitchcock (Dirk Blocker) nor Scully (Joel McKinnon Miller) has probably intentionally washed his hands since the late 1960s, it may be all you can think about.
Happy Endings (2011–2013)
After Alex (Elisha Cuthbert) leaves Dave (Zachary Knighton) at the altar, they must figure out how to remain cordial for the sake of their extremely close-knit group of friends: Her sister, Jane (Eliza Coupe); Jane’s husband, Brad (Damon Wayans Jr.); Jane and Alex’s childhood friend Penny (Casey Wilson); and Dave’s college friend Max (Adam Pally).
Content Warning: The much-memed moment of Alex covered in barbecue rib sauce while sobbing at the movies may have already informed your decision to stay away from the cinema until the virus outbreak has passed.
Downton Abbey (2010–2015)
In the early 20th century, the aristocratic Crawley family marvel at the pace of social change occurring around them, including amongst their large staff of remarkably devoted servants. If you make it through all six seasons, great news: You can cap off your marathon with last year’s feature film spin-off!
Content Warning: A run of episodes take place during the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918–1920.
Justified (2010–2015)
U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) returns from a posting in Miami to his native Harlan, Kentucky, to join the fight against the gangland crimes of the Dixie Mafia—an organization that encompasses virtually not only all his closest childhood friends, but his estranged father (Raymond J. Barry) too.
Content Warning: This one might actually be pretty safe? People do cough, but it’s because they’re dying of ailments related to digging coal all their lives as opposed to any communicable contagion.
Terriers (2010)
Since it only got one season, FX’s shaggy PI dramedy Terriers may seem an odd choice for a list of binge-able TV series. But it remains one of the most beloved one-and-done shows of the 2010s, and has only become available to stream on a subscription platform this month, with the launch of FX on Hulu. Drive up those numbers and maybe we’ll get another season! (Hey, it worked for Veronica Mars! Uh...briefly!)
Content Warning: Any show set in sunny California may feel like a personal attack, depending on where you’re currently self-interned.
The Good Wife (2009–2016)
After a powerful male politician is publicly disgraced in a sex scandal, what happens to his wife? That’s the starting point for this long-running drama, in which stay-at-home mother Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) must revive her career as a lawyer when everyone she meets knows her husband, former Cook County State’s Attorney Peter (Chris Noth), cheated on her with sex workers.
Content Warning: The STIs to which Peter may have exposed Alicia could be the least of her problems.
Party Down (2009–2010)
In Los Angeles, every person aspiring to a career in a creative field has a day job to pay the bills; this sitcom is about a whole bunch of them—a would-be screenwriter (Martin Starr), stand-up comic (Lizzy Caplan), and actors (Jane Lynch and Ryan Hansen)—who’ve been thrown together on the crew of a catering company with one ex-actor (Adam Scott) who’s bitterly sworn off the business.
Content Warning: There’s very little social distancing at catered parties!
Monk (2002–2009)
Following a devastating personal loss, retired police detective Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) survives his trauma and returns to work as a private investigator and consultant to the San Francisco police department’s homicide unit—to which he’s uniquely well suited since his obsessive-compulsive disorder has the side effect of making him extremely observant.
Content Warning: Monk’s OCD might exacerbate your panicky disinfecting.
The Wire (2002–2008)
HBO’s boundary-breaking cop procedural takes viewers deep into Baltimore’s drug business, both inside a criminal operation and alongside a special task force trying to dismantle it. Subsequent seasons turn that deep focus on human trafficking, city politics, public education, and local journalism.
Content Warning: All those drugs probably aren’t prepared in sanitary labs.
The Amazing Race (2001–)
Two-player teams compete against each other to complete a variety of tasks—some physically challenging; some mentally taxing; some just silly and publicly humiliating—in a literal race around the world, with the last-place team eliminated from play at each episode’s closing “pit stop.”
Content Warning: Remember air travel?
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994)
As CBS All Access’s Star Trek: Picard draws toward its first-season finale, you can go back and reacquaint yourself with its titular character (Patrick Stewart) in the series that originally introduced him, along with the Enterprise crew members who’ve been popping up to cameo in his new adventures.
Content Warning: Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) would have whipped up a whole ship’s worth of tests from her replicator and isolated any infected patients within minutes of a viral outbreak on Jean-Luc Picard’s vessel; we are not so lucky.
Magnum, P.I. (1980–1988)
Forget the current remake of the same title and go straight to the original, in which Vietnam veteran Thomas Magnum (Tom Selleck) runs his private-eye business out of the guest house on a palatial beachfront estate on Oahu, owned by the mysterious pulp novelist Robin Masters and overseen by supercilious majordomo Higgins (John Hillerman).
Content Warning: If you’ve had to cancel travel to a tropical destination, this one might hurt.
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