Gentle TV shows

I treasure a truly gentle TV show. With low stakes, low cringe, low action. This is a list of some of my favorites. I'm (mostly) leaving out shows targeted to kids or families; there are so many, and you probably don't need someone to tell you about Bluey or Peanuts specials.

I find brown tones deeply comforting, and you'll see a lot of brown in these shows. The browner the show, the gentler. By contrast, Succession? Succession is gray. Not even a little brown. The Bear? The Seven Fishes episode was brown, but that was a TRICK! HA HA! That show is not brown. It is white and gray, and sure, sometimes yellow, but not in a way that is brown.

Midnight Diner

This subtitled Japanese television gem might be my ultimate favorite gentle TV show. For some reason the intro, with its Japanese cover of an old Irish folk song, transports me to the late, late nights in my 20s, when I'd be driving home from a nightclub with the top down on my convertible, going the long way home so I could drive around Green Lake and soak up the last bit of the night, usually with a dopey, happy grin on my face.

The show takes place in a small diner in the Shinjuku neighborhood of Tokyo, tucked in a crowded alley of shops, that doesn't open until midnight each night, catering to the night owl crowd, run by a kind but gruff, taciturn man. While there are some recurring characters, each episode stands alone, usually focused on a character who has come in for a meal and won't be back again.

It is very brown.

You can watch it on Netflix. They also have a revival version, "Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories."

Detectorists

This sweet, sweet show. Another one with a perfect muscle relaxant of an intro song. It's a BBC series, created, written, and directed by Mackenzie Crook, who many Americans may only know as one of the comic relief pirates from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. He and Toby Jones, who is always, always adorable, play friends who spend hours out scanning remote fields in Essex, looking for treasure – like fishing, only with metal detectors. They have a group of misfit friends in their local club of fellow detectorists, and not much else. Go hang out with them in the English countryside doing nothing in particular. It's perfect.

This show is brown, but in a tan kind of way.

Check to see where you can find it, it's on a bunch of different slightly oddball streaming services.

Joe Pera Talks with You

Joe Pera Talks with You has episodes that are only 11 minutes long, which helps the "not much of consequence" vibe we're going for. In each episode, Joe Pera talks to you, the viewer, about something he's interested in, while taking you around his local community of Marquette, a small town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Joe Pera is so sweetly earnest, I spent the first few episodes waiting for the other shoe to drop, for it to turn into a skewering satire... but it's not. It actually is sweet and earnest.

This show is brown, and yellow, but yellow in a brown way.

You can watch it on Max.

Somebody Somewhere

This HBO show stars Bridget Everett, and takes place in her real-life hometown of Manhattan, Kansas. In real life, Everett is an ebullient cabaret star in the other, bigger Manhattan. But in the show, she's lonely, insecure, and adrift, trying to find her place in the world after moving back to her small hometown in the aftermath of her sister's death. She finds her people, though, and it's fun and heartwarming to watch them be lonely and adrift together.

To me, though, this is the Murray Hill show. He is the best thing about it, which is saying something, because it would be amazing without him, too.

I'll be honest, this show is gray, but it manages to feel cozy anyway. That's talent!

You can watch it on Max.

How To with John Wilson

I've only watched a few episodes of this one, I suppose I'm sort of saving them. It's a documentary series, sort of. I think John Wilson just goes out into New York City with his camera and films and films and films, observation of everyday life, and edits it together into a sort of exploration/meditation that's only been half-guided by some sort of goal. It's weird, and sometimes weird is cozy because it means we've just dropped expectations; weird can feel like a relief that way. No one is really steering, steering is unnecessary.

This show is gray, but give it a chance anyway.

You can watch it on Max.

The Durrells in Corfu

This BBC series is based on the life experiences of British naturalist and animal conservationist Gerald Durrell, covering the time his family spent on the Greek island of Corfu in the late 1930s. He's the youngest child in a dysfunctional, broke family, trying to rebuild itself in a new country. By the end, you'll mourn for the actors that they ever had to leave the island behind, it looks like the best time.

This show is sepia because sepia is the brown of the past.

You can watch it on PBS, as part of the Masterpiece series.

Ghosts

This BBC show got remade into an American version, which I haven't seen. But I hope it's successful, because I want these guys to get stoopid-rich, they've earned it. Wanda and I already knew all of these guys from the BBC children's educational series Horrible Histories. The writers & cast used all of those years of immersion in absurd history and turned it into a very silly show about dead people. We love it to bits.

This show is brown, but also colorful.

You can watch it on Paramount.

Still Game

Everything I know about Scotland, I learned from Still Game. Two elderly pensioners, lifelong best friends and both widowers, live out their twilight years in their fictional broken-down community of Craiglang, in Glasgow. The two pensioners are played by young comedians in old person drag, so it may not be the most insightful portrayal of elderly life, but dang if it isn't funny, and sometimes quite poignant. I had to watch it with subtitles. But I learned so much Scots language!

This show is brown. I mean, look at that pub! Those tweeds!

You can watch it on Netflix.

Over the Garden Wall

This one is cheating a bit. I didn't want to include kid shows, and it actually has some tense moments, but it's so otherworldly and special, and it belongs on this list. It's so very brown, you see. Two brothers are lost in a strange forest, and encounter increasingly odd characters. The art design is incredible. It's required viewing in the fall.

It is the brownest.

You can watch it on Hulu.

Honorable mentions: Schitt's Creek, Ted Lasso, Murder She Wrote, The Golden Girls. (These are just as gentle as the others, they're just more obvious choices so I didn't want to spend too much time on them.)