I’m more than a little bit in love with TV. My mom could tell I was fascinated from a young age, and tried to ration my access to it, with hour-per-day limits that she rarely enforced. “You’re going to turn into a vidiot,” she would say solemnly, which she thought would sound like a scary fate, but seemed to me like a sexy, futuristic thing to aspire to.
When I got older, and our family was into Jesus, my mom wouldn’t let me watch MTV because it was full of “lewd” images that would, I don’t know, expose me to the idea that butts existed. But because I was desperate to hear the hot tunes, we reached a compromise: I could put on MTV, but I had to turn the picture off. So I would sit on the floor next to our giant blacked-out Sony, just vibing to TLC. Related: When I was 16, I announced that I was no longer going to church, which was met with concerned resignation; then my whole family stopped going. I’ve always been a trendsetter!
Now I’m an adult—legally at least—so I’m allowed to consume all the TV I want. I think my family assumed that someday when I had unfettered screen access, I would binge and then get over it, like how working in an ice cream shop will allegedly put you off ice cream. But instead, metaphorically, I bought the ice cream shop. This is all my ice cream now.
Here are a few of the shows I’ve been into lately—I only picked ones that seem under-watched, since there’s no point in recommending the mainstream swill that my partner and I also love. (I’ve been a fan of American Idol pretty much since it started, and no, I have no plans to stop and yes, I believe that Jena Irene and Michael J. Woodard were robbed, and wait, what was the question.)
Stath Lets Flats
A mixture of physical comedy, The Office-style cringe, and excruciatingly British slang, Stath Lets Flats needs to be rewound constantly, because you’ll laugh through important dialogue. It was created by Jamie Demetriou, starring as a Greek real estate agent in London who is flop sweat in human form and a debacle both at work and socially. (Him showing an apartment to a potential tenant: “As you can see, there’s a...absolutely...shower.”) The writing is as tight as the seal on a vitamin bottle, it’s perfect.
I’ve been semi-obsessed with Jamie since he played the “Bus Rodent” on Fleabag—the guy with wonky teeth who approaches her at a bus stop. (Though TBH, that whole thing felt very dentally ableist to me but I got past it.) And if you doubt my taste, SLF won a bunch of BAFTAs in 2020, including one for Best Scripted Comedy, beating out Fleabag and Catastrophe. Wait, you’ve seen both Fleabag and Catastrophe already, right? If not, do those first. Also, Stath features Jamie’s real-life sister Natasia Demetriou, who’s astoundingly good on the TV version of What We Do in the Shadows. Wait, you’ve seen that, right? You might have to cancel your weekend plans, you need to catch up.
Avenue 5
I felt a little meh about the first episode of Avenue 5, but I stuck with it and in retrospect, it’s one of the best, funniest shows I’ve finished during the pan pizza. The takeaway is that when people say, “You really need to watch three episodes of this,” they are correct and you should listen. Also, people are saying we need to floss in the morning now? So that’s another thing we should all probably do, even though it makes little sense to me from a logical perspective.
This is set in a mostly recognizable future, in which we take cruises through space instead of around the Bahamas. But partway through this trip, the navigation system gets jacked-up, stranding the passengers and crew on this floating hotel/casino/buffet for way longer than they’d planned. Food gets scarce, there are violent-in-a-hilarious-way uprisings, and Hugh Laurie switches back and forth between British and American accents so expertly that it feels like a magic trick. This show premiered in January 2020, a few months before we all got locked down into locations we were suddenly unable to leave. WHAT DID THEY KNOW AND WHEN?
The Wilds
Planes are pretty much my biggest fear—besides not living up to my full potential. [stares at a poster with the word “SUCCESS” in 36-pt font] So it’s no surprise that I gravitated toward this show, which kicks off with a plane crash that leaves a group of teenage girls stranded on a tropical island. (My fear leads me to frequently Google air disasters and black-box recordings, which I think is normal? I don’t go to therapy, so I have to DIY my own coping mechanisms. So crafty!)
The Wilds is not jokey at all, but it does focus nearly every scene on women, which is one of my favorite characteristics in a piece of entertainment. Each ep delves into the semi-traumatic but fascinating backstory of one character, and some of the acting is not, uh, virtuosic but the plot lines are handled deftly. Also, it lets you ponder what you’d do if you had to subsist on snack packs of peanuts and get your period in the woods. Nearly every actress is a relative newcomer, and some of them will def get famous later, so if you watch you can say you knew about them before everyone else. Is there any better feeling?
What are you into lately?