Sense 8

Legion

Scavengers Reign

Most have been mentioned here so I’ll name some others that stuck with me

Travelers - great time travel show Lie to Me - short lived pseudo science show Limitless - one of the few series reboots from movies I enjoyed. Also short lived

I personally don’t know anyone who has watched any of these.

Kevin Can Fuck Himself.

Told from the wife’s perspective, in 2 different styles. One is her perspective from living in a sitcom where her dumb husband’s hijinks get laughs as she rolls her eyes, full with laugh track. Behind the scenes it’s shot as a drama with all the characters living with real world ramifications of his stupidity and stress from it. It really builds into this dark dramedy of not living your true self and what people can drive you too. Super cool concept that has acting and writing to back it up.

Sense8. A tv series about 8 strangers across the world who suddenly become empathetically linked to each other. Incredible storytelling by the Wachowskis. Only 2 seasons but it wraps up well and had me ruminating for weeks after.

Kaos. Jeff Goldlum plays a paranoid Zeus. That’s pretty much all to need to know, but the cast and writing are both incredible

Letterkenny

I always expect people to have heard about it but no one ever seems to. Hilarious look at small town Canadian life with a fucking great music selection. Equally fun for those of us in the states if we have a good sense of humor when they’re making fun of us.

I never hear anyone talk about Leverage. Was a great show if you were into the original Mission Impossible!

Whites

One season, six 30-minute episodes.

British comedy set in a hotel kitchen starring Alan Davies, Darren Boyd, Katherine Parkinson. It’s witty, silly, and has a ton of charm.

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Father Ted, best irreverent show. The lead actor died of a heart attack so the show was canceled but the 3 or so seasons that exist are fantastic.

The Patriot (series) on Amazon Prime. Incredible dark comedy. For fans of arrested development type humor (but admittedly darker)

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3rd Rock From the Sun, my favorite 90s sitcom. Not exactly unknown, but I barely ever hear people talk about it. Created by Bonnie and Terry turner who also did Coneheads and That 70s Show. And the cast is just brilliant, especially John Lithgow.

Also Wellington Paranormal. New Zealand spinoff about the cops in the movie What we do in the Shadows.

Mrs. Davies is a very hilarious and weird Show about a nun riding a motorcycle.

Honestly, a lot of anime, but anime still has a stigma; one, of being “a cartoon” and thus “I’m too old for that”; two, of having controversial themes (like focusing on high school age characters). Or by leaning too far into fantasy, like isekai (lit. “other world” as in you’re stuck there, the first example being Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and the most popular isekai anime being Sword Art Online) or super powers (like My Hero Academia, which fundamentally does the same thing as The Boys, but is slightly less edgy).

It’s not easy to recommend anime to people who are predisposed to not wanting to watch it.

My two favourites are one-and-done, as in, when their season was over, the story was over, so they’re relatively low commitment. The shorter one is Erased, with only 12 or 13 episodes. It’s about a guy who is involuntarily thrown back in time a little while when someone around him dies, and he time loops until he can fix it. One day he finds his mother murdered, and he gets thrown back 18 years, and comes face to face with a little girl who was murdered when he was a kid, and he correctly guesses he must save her to save his mom. That’s basically the first episode. Pay attention to the aspect ratio cluing you into whether you’re in the present or a rewind. Also pay attention to the opening, it slightly changes a couple times (particularly near the end).

The other is Your Lie in April. A guy who used to play piano but stopped after his mother died, meets a violinist who wants a partner to play piano with her. She’s going out with his best friend, but spends 20-odd episodes trying to get him to love music and life again. The lie in the title is hers, but it’s not revealed until the very end, and it’s not what you think. You’ll be trying to call the ending, but the nature of the lie is a secondary twist that’ll throw you for a loop even if you guessed the other thing. And the music is awesome — not just the themes (that’s true of both of them) but also the music they actually play.

Bonus: if you liked those, Orange is a pretty easy recommendation. Plot similar to Erased, but plays with your emotions like Your Lie in April. It’s about a girl who gets a letter from the future, telling her about her day before it happens, but it tells her to not invite the new boy out with her and her friends. Even though the letter is accurate, she does so anyway. At the end of the first episode, the friends, now grown, mourn the loss of the guy and contemplate how they could possibly get a message back to the past to change things. It’s a heck of a ride with each episode ending in a cliffhanger. Something like 12 or 13 episodes and it’s done.

Yes, when it comes to live-action stuff, I absolutely loved LOST, Wayward Pines, and currently enjoy FROM, Severance, and Silo — in case you’re wondering. Similar energy on the live-action side. Emotional rollercoasters where you’re wondering where it goes next. My bread and butter. Maybe one day I’ll write one of my own.