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Looking for TVShows to watch when feeling down to help you feel better?
(If a post like this has already been made, please point me to it and I'll delete this thread. I was not able to find a thread specifically for this.)
Hello, I'm requesting recommendations for shows and movies that work to help cheer you up when you're feeling down. Also, as many shows can have the same or very similar names, please give a small basic description (eg. IT Crowd, a comedy about IT workers, British).
Please no dramas and no romances.
Thank you <3
My feel good show recently has been Schitt’s Creek!!! It’s Canadian. Watching rich people lose all their money and have to move to a small rural town is funny but also heart-warming when they learn to stop being so self-absorbed.
I recently got into this too. The first few episodes weren’t great because they had to do a lot of work setting the scene and establishing the characters’ starting point as entitled rich people (because a large part of the show is how they change). Initially I gave up at that point but then I went back to it and found it gets really good later. Good fun and low intensity, just what the OP is looking for, I think.
I’m now watching it for the second time; it’s just so relaxing.
Thank you for the response! I'll check it out, it sounds funny. :D
I love Schitt's Creek, but never finished the last season after Dan Levy praised Chase Strangio on twitter. I simply couldn't bring myself to watch another episode after that happened. :(
The Office, US edition. British edition is genius but save it for when you're really in a bad place.
Silicon Valley. US comedy about men in competition. No romances.
The Crown. Nothing brings me up more than watching rich people suffer.
Victoria. Ditto, but with better costumes and more horses.
Firefly. 13 episodes + one movie. Witty space western with mystical pixie girl fight scenes. This series is the reason why Season 7 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer sucked so bad.
Gentleman Jack. You said no romances, but these aren't your usual romance characters, and not just because they're both women.
Thank you for all the responses! Gentleman Jack is always acceptable ;)
Community, a sitcom about a community college study group. It can be mean sometimes, especially in the beginning, but it's very funny -- even for someone like me, who probably missed out on a lot of intertextual jokes about other TV shows.
From Wikipedia > [Dan] Harmon based the premise of Community on his own real-life experiences. In an attempt to save his relationship with his then-girlfriend, he enrolled in Glendale Community College northeast of Los Angeles, where they would take Spanish together. Harmon got involved in a study group and, somewhat against his own instincts, became close friends to the group of people with whom he had very little in common. "I was in this group with these knuckleheads and I started really liking them," he explains, "even though they had nothing to do with the film industry and I had nothing to gain from them and nothing to offer them." With this as the background, Harmon wrote the show with a main character largely based on himself. He had, like Jeff, been arrogant and emotionally distant to the extreme before he realized the value of understanding other people.
I love The Good Place! It always warms my heart. It's an american comedy about the afterlife, and treats a lot of philosophical questions. I think it's super funny and very appropiate when you want to cheer up.
Edit: typo
My teenage kids and I loved this too and watched the whole thing about three times. It’s funny, imaginative and with the bonus of an overtly philosophical dimension.
That was before Jameela Jamil started spouting about what a great idea it is to trans children etc and now I’m not sure if I can watch her without feeling irritated.
I also was very disappointed. I loved her character. I found her funny, relatable and also quite original. I've thought I would like the actress too so I've followed her on twitter until I saw all the queer stuff. First thing I've thought is that she's like her character but without the charm.
There are probably some drama and romance plots in everything but they're not the focus.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine - sitcom about a police station
Horrible Histories - pretty silly history show with some comedy skits and musical numbers
Ghosts - some of the same people as HH playing ghosts in a haunted house
Upstart Crow - brit comedy about Shakespeare
Black Books - brit sitcom about a guy who owns a bookshop
Avatar: The Last Airbender - animated series about a young boy and his friends who have to save their world
Grace and Frankie - sitcom about two very different older women living together after their husbands leave them for each other
The Golden Girls - older show about a group of women in their retirement years
Nostalgia kids shows like Kim Possible, TMNT, Hey Arnold, The Wild Thornberrys, etc. Depends what was on when you were watching at that age.
I second a few things other people have mentioned too.
OMG GHOSTS is my FAVORITE feel-good show. I watched the season on a loop 24/7 when I was going through a rough patch. Are we ever getting a season 2??
Toast of London, a surreal comedy about a struggling actor (starring the boss from The IT Crowd What We Do in the Shadows, a mockumentary about vampires living in Staten Island (there's a movie too) That Mitchell and Webb Look, sketch comedy by British comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb Santa Clarita Diet, Netflix series about a woman who becomes a zombie Portlandia, a sketch comedy series about Portland, starring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein I Think You Should Leave, sketch comedy written by and starring Tim Robinson
30 Rock, some misogynistic overtones but occasionally TIM jokes happen because freedom of speech back then
Scrubs is a medicatv series that is hilarious and actually pretty accurate at times.
House is similar but bot as realistic
I like to watch concerts of artist I love. You can find a lot concerts on YouTube.
Girl Trip w/ Tiffany Haddish.
The Lego Movies are pretty funny.
White Collar if you like Art and Art Direction that looks like it came out of Architectural Digest.
House of Lies- You get to see get a taste of what Business Consultants do. They look at Corporate clients the way strippers look at their clientele: $$$$$$
If you want visual cartoons: Shoot 'Em Up, John Wick Series, Taken Series, and Olympus has Fallen. They are all very visually beautiful as you watch a ballet of bullets and various ways of killing people.
Frazier can be really funny. Highly educated brothers with a sibling rivalry whose retired cop father doesn't understand how they can be so fussy.
See if you hadn't ruled out Drama/Romance I would have told you to binge watch Jane Austin movies.
Workin’ moms is hilarious. It’s a Canadian show produced by a woman and her husband who are in the show as well. It’s about a group of friends who met in a moms group trying to navigate careers. One is a married lesbian. It’s really funny even if you don’t have kids. There is a lot about feminism and female friendships b
What kind of shows do you like? I personally like cartoons, so my first thought was We Bare Bears. It's a very safe option if there's something you're feeling bad about in particular because there's unlikely to be anything triggering or heavy.
Cartoons are perfectly acceptable. I usually watch movies rather than tv shows, so I do not know much about shows, but I am very open to new things as long as they're generally uplifting. I only specified no drama or romance because drama usually has those awkward scenes that makes me feel very uncomfortable (same as most comedy movies/ every Adam Sandler movie) and romances generally just have me hating every male character because they're completely irredeemable personality-wise.
I'll give We Bare Bears a go; it sounds cute. Thank you :)
I always watch The Spy Who Dumped Me when I'm down. It's a movie about a woman (Milna Kunas) who gets ghosted by a spy. He comes , dies and tasks her with completing his mission. This leads her and her best friend (Kate McKinnon) to go to Europe and do spy shit. Really it's about female friendship and two women finding their places in the world. There is a romance subplot, but it is really minor and toward the end. There is brief male nudity which is (rightly) played for comedy. There is A LOT of graphic violence. But I have had to pause this movie so I didn't piss myself laughing. I think it's the funniest movie ever. I will randomly text my friend the words "unbaked croissant" and we'll both end up in tears laughing so hard!
For a show Seinfeld is my go to. It's a show about nothing. There is dating, but it's really about how selfish and petty the main characters are. It's also really nice to watch an older show like that, everything is more slowly paced and it fills the time very nicely.
Bob's Burgers is my go to for a lighthearted show. It's all episodic so theres no overarching plot; you can put any episode on and just chill out.
I love Gravity Falls.
A Disney Channel animated show about twin teens who spend the summer with their great uncle in the pacific northwest. The town he lives in is pretty strange...
It's hilarious. That's all I have to say about it!
Off the top of my head I'd say Letterkenny, arrested development, unbreakable kimmy schmidt, never have I ever, limmy show, parks and rec, 30 rock, brooklyn 99, santa clarita diet, I also like a lot of adult swim cartoons like squidbillies, super jail, xavier renegade angel, metalocalypse, sealab 2021, I'm probably missing something, but my go to is usually Letterkenny or arrested development, I've seen them both literally dozens of times. I'm like a walking arrested development encyclopedia bc I've been watching it for over a decade. I have all the DVDs with all the commentary from the cast and whatnot, which knowing how they wrote the show makes it extra funny. I love it so much. Well, except the new seasons, they're not funny 😬 and also season 7 of Letterkenny isn't funny so I just skip it.
I love Letterkenny because it's so lowbrow. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy the later seasons as much as the earlier ones, but it's still enjoyable.
Arrested Development is so good! I also have the DVDs 😂
I haven't seen the newest season of Letterkenny yet but thinking about it makes me want to watch it and if it sucks then I'll just go rewatch seasons 1-6 😆
I second the Arrested Development suggestion. One of the best comedy series I've seen so far.
Parks and Recreation - Workplace comedy about an ambitious government worker and her friends and coworkers. An inferior version of The Office at first, but it becomes its own thing in later seasons.
The Good Place - Comedy about people who've died and gone to the afterlife.
Derry Girls - Comedy about teenage girls living in Derry, Northern Ireland in the 1990's.
The Mandalorian - Star Wars space Western following a bounty hunter and a child he has chosen to protect. I'm a big Star Wars fan, and this show is the best Star Wars property to come out in a while.
When it comes to movies, I like to rewatch childhood favorites like Lilo and Stitch.
That's all I can think of right now. Are there any specific genres or narratives you tend to enjoy in your shows and movies?
I second Parks and Recreation. It does get off to a slow start but once it gets going it’s really fun. I like how it does to an extent break away from sex stereotypes. The very fact that it’s about an ambitious woman making her way in local government, for whom her work is her priority - while still being very human, caring and fallible - is refreshing.
Thank you for the response. I've heard some good things about Derry Girls, so I'll definitely give that one a go. A trope that I love a bit too much and always have enjoyed is the concept of friendship, and especially between two or more female characters. I do also love supernatural elements, though I do not consider that important for enjoying a show. One tv series I really enjoyed when introduced to it was Buffy.
Derry Girls is phenomenal - I originally came here to rec it. The only show I have ever shown someone that had them literally rolling on the floor laughing.
I was actually debating recommending Buffy! I figured it might be too much drama... I love watching tv shows and movies, but my tastes can run kind of dark and melodramatic. I'll be sleeping on this in case I come up with other recommendations! I think Taika Waititi is a great director for movies that cheer you up. A favorite is "What We Do In The Shadows", a mockumentary about vampires. That movie actually spawned a television series that is also a lot of fun!
Ah, I see how My post could have been not clear enough, whoops. Nah, when I said "no dramas" I meant rubbish shows like Home and Away, and that Houswife one, stuff like that. Show that contain dramatic scenes and such are perfectly fine, as long as the story is good and, overall, enjoyable. So, sorry about that. :)
I loved What We Do in the Shadows movie, so I will definitely check out the series. Thank you!