Please recommend me your favorite TV show(s).

[E-Rocker]

Like the title says, please recommend me your favorite TV show(s) and tell me what you like about them. Thanks!

Bonus points for shows available on Netflix, Hulu, Xfinity Cable, or plain ol' network TV.

 

[Bunch]

Like the title says, please recommend me your favorite TV show(s) and tell me what you like about them. Thanks!

Bonus points for shows available on Netflix, Hulu, Xfinity Cable, or plain ol' network TV.

Hulu
The Great - period comedy about Catherine the Great. Lots of joking about sex, murder and court intrigue.


Prime (not in your mentioned group)
The Expanse. Just a good sci Fi series. My favorite part is how you can see how the character came out of an RPG campaign. Everyone has random combat skills. One guy clearly min maxed for combat with charisma as a dump stat all setup to murderhobo. They all get deeper backstories as the series goes on but you can see the origin.

Netflix
I liked Dark Matter. Sci Fi series again based as I recall on someone's RPG campaign. Six or seven folks wake up on a ship with no memories but all their considerable skills.

Money Heist. Robbing the Spanish mint. Good premise and fun cast of characters. More drama than humor.

Vikings - watched the first few seasons. I like the various character interaction in this period pseudo historical.

 

[Stan]

I liked Dark Matter. Sci Fi series again based as I recall on someone's RPG campaign. Six or seven folks wake up on a ship with no memories but all their considerable skills.

This was a fun ride. The only downside is that it was meant for 5 seasons and got 3 so it ends on a big cliff hanger.

Other Netflix:

Arcane is a recent one - League of Legends characters but, unlike most series based on games, it takes the time for back stories to make character driven action.

The Witcher - classic fantasy tropes, nice action, cool monsters, morally gray. Season 2 is definitely better than season 1.

Stranger Things - great, weird plotting, D&D playing dorks.

Altered Carbon - kinda cyberpunk. The AI like Edgar Allen Poe is my favorite part.

Castlevania - over the top animated action, with vampires.

I've watched quite a bit of kids stuff with the kids, they can be relaxing and fun:
Avatar, the Last Airbender; Legend of Korra. Character growth, action, humor. Uncle Iroh.

The Dragon Prince - a bit cliche with opposite sides coming together but fun fantasy story.

Hilda - modernish kid is into fairies and other monsters but also growing to gain human friends.

Centaur World - goofy with lots of singing but with occasional darkness.

She-Ra - nothing like the original but is it's own thing. Fun story, personal drama with world wide stakes.

Netflix also had a decent selection of K Dramas. Most are romantic fluff but some have decent drama. Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung has romance, period drama, and bits of comedy built around the first set of female historians in the kingdom. Mystic Pop Up Bar has ghosts and the spirit world, which is common in K dramas; it is heavy on romance but has a mix a of humor and drama.


Hulu:

What we Do in the Shadows. Extremely funny if you like the style of humor. Being a vampire doesn't automatically make you cool.

Not done yet but Only Murders in the Building is shaping up to be a decent murder mystery featuring Martin Short and Steve Martin.

Drunk History for light viewing. I love how the re-enactors incorporate the stupid stuff as well.

 

[Voros]

Hannibal - The first season is close to killer-of-the-week but does a very good job pushing the format into the realms of surrealism never seen before but the second half develops an unexpected arc and from there the second and third seasons get progressively stranger as it mixes and matches elements from the books and films into new shapes.

Great cast, clever writing that mixes horror and humour and a truly go-for-broke cinematic style in the later seasons

The strangest TV network show for sure, only topped by Twin Peaks: The Return but that was for cable.

 

[PolarBlues]

Things on Netflix I remember enjoying.

I loved the Marvel Netflix. I am a Marvel guy anyway, but the Netflix series were blessed with really great acting, the depth you just did not expect to see in a superhero media at the time. Daredevil and the 1st season of Jessica Jones are generally considered the among the better ones. Opinions vary over the other series.

Travellers doesn't seem to get much attention. It's a science fiction, thriller which, like the Marvel Netflix shows, is really brought to life by amazing performances.

Kingdom is a South Korean medieval zombie epic. I am not the normally drawn to shows with subtitles, especially for genre fiction, but this show was as beautiful as it was gripping.

Trollhunters is a Guilhermo del Toro cartoon. It is aimed toward younger viewers but it is so well done, got really into it. It has a very personal world building and attention to detail. The spin-off series I did not enjoy as much.

Outside of Netflix, I second The Expanse. And though I don't know if or where it is available for streaming, I would call out the Syfy series Defiance. It has the most interesting aliens since Babylon 5 and is perfectly roleplaying fare.

 

[Nobby-W]

There's a load of anime on Netflix, some of which is quite good. I binged quite a bit of it earlier in the year and some of the highlights are:

• Puella Magi Madoka Magica - a sort of rip on magical girl tropes. It's quite dark and surreal, and pretty good.
• Most of Studio Ghibli's films - 'nuff said, really.
• Various of Shinichiro Watanabe's efforts, most notably Cowboy Bebop, but also Samurai Champloo, Space Dandy and Carole and Tuedsay.
• Beastars - high school murder mystery with furries; actually not bad.
• Way of the house husband - short, just 5 episodes, but quite funny.
• Parasyte - protagonist gets infected by an alien parasite.
• One punch man - ripping on shonen martial arts manga. A sort of illicit love child of Dragonball and The Tick.
• The Great Pretender - about a group of con artists.
• Inuyasha - comedy done by the same woman who wrote Ranma-1/2. Just one season, unfortunately. Netflix should get Ranma-1/2 - it's fabulously silly.
• Black Lagoon - rather violent and somewhat cartoony, but not bad by the standards of such things.
• Violet Evergarden - steampunk fantasy featuring an attempt at an autistic protagonist.
• Various other feature length items such as Your Name and This Corner of The World.

Aside from the truckloads of anime, I also liked:

• The Spy - Sacha Baron Cohen plays a deep cover agent in the 1960s.
• Bodyguard - quite a good thriller with an iconic assassination attempt sequence.
• Queen's Gambit - child prodigy becomes a chess champion in the face of 1950s-60s social mores about women.
• Giri/Haji - one of the Beeb's better efforts in recent years. Will Sharpe's performance in this picked him up a BAFTA.
• Narcos and Narcos Mexico. Wagner Moura's performance as Pablo Escobar was top notch.

As Stan mentions above, there's also a lot of Korean dramas, which Mrs. Nobby-W likes. I binged one called Hotel Del Luna the other day, which is a ghost story about a woman cursed to run a hotel for ghosts who need to sort stuff out before they move on. At the moment I'm just starting on It's OK not to be OK.

 

[Picaroon Jack]

I also vote yes for the following above:

• Defiance
• The Expanse
• Stranger Things
• What We do in the Shadows

Those are some of my favorite shows.


I also like these, but I'm not sure where they are these days:

• Penny Dreadful (seasons 1 and 2)
• Harlots
• Ripper Street
• Counterpart
• The Mandalorian (it's on Disney)

I am a big fan of the following HBO series:

• Rome
• Deadwood
• Watchment
• Westworld
• Band of Brothers

 

[Voros]

The new HBO Max mini-series Station Eleven, based on the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning sf novel is so far (7 episodes in) excellent.




It is truly novelistic in its New Wave literary conceits and rich characterizations with a large cast of characters and complex interweaving timelines.

 

[David Johansen]

MASH available on Disney plus. It's a comedy about war doctors in Korea.

The West Wing in which an outsider Democratic president of the United States fights tooth and nail to do good and might even succeed at times.

Downton Abby in which a notable British noble house gets smacked upside the head with the twentieth century. Great period drama and soooo funny at times. On Netflix

The Charmings first season I dunno where you'd find it. Snow White and Prince Charming wake up in the modern world and fail to fit in. It's old and obscure but it always cracked me up. I don't know what happened with the second season but it sucked.

Dark Matter sounded a bit off putting and stupid, just a hard core badasses show, but it was actually really good.

 

[Dammit Victor]

Things on Netflix I remember enjoying.

I will second every single show in this post.

I will also recommend The Witcher and Stranger Things and GLOW on Netflix. If you're also taking movie suggestions and don't mind subtitles, Koi... Mil Gaya is "what if we remade The Karate Kid, but replaced Miyagi with E.T. and Daniel with Forrest Gump?"

Speaking of The Karate Kid, holy shit, Cobra Kai is so much better than it has any right to be.

And then, Koi... Mil Gaya's sequels, Krrish and Krrish 3 are straight-up big budget Bollywood superhero blockbusters, and if there's anything the MCU movies are missing, it's extended song/dance sequences. Hrithik Roshan is an amazing performer.

Disney Plus is a massive service: leaving aside legacy content, The Mandalorian is damned good, the new DuckTales is good, the new MCU shows are good...

 

[Bunch]

Mandalorian and Downton Abbey are both good.

 

[Simlasa]

I'm not sure where to watch it (turns out it's on Prime), but instead of Downton Abbey I'd recommend the much older version, Upstairs, Downstairs.
Not nearly as pretty or pleasant as Downton, and its characters are not as charming. But I feel like it (mostly) gives a much more honest depiction of folks during that era of change. Downton is the candy-coated version of the tale.

Another show I love, which I've rewatched a few times on Prime, is The Lost Room. Originally 6 hour-long episodes on Scifi... it's been put up as 3 movie-length segments. A little bit reminiscent of Roadside Picnic crossed with Unknown Armies. It can be clever and funny and dark all in the same moment, and despite being a native of Scifi it's held up to three viewings without fading in my appreciation of it.

 

[TristramEvans]

Hmm, here's a few from across my lifetime...

Alice in Borderland - A Japanese series where three friends wake up to discover they are in a Tokyo where the entire population has seemingly disappeared in an instant, and find they are forced to play deadly puzzle games to stay alive.

Arrested Development - the story of the dysfunctional Bluth family is a complex farce that challenges the viewer as it goes on to keep up with it's labyrinthine absurdist interwoven plots and callback humour.

The Avengers - no, not those Avengers; this is the 1960's psychedelic British spy adventure show that blends surrealism with enough understated sexual tension to cut a crumpet.

Black Books - Bitingly dark British comedy about an alcoholic Irishman who runs a small bookstore, and the only two people damaged enough to call him friend.

The Boys - An exceptionally dark comedic parody of superheroes that managed to craft a genuinely entertaining television show out of a barely-readable comic book.

Breaking Bad - Despite all the hype surrounding this series, it is an undeniably good show that takes one deeper and deeper into the dark underside of society through the eyes of high school science teacher turned drug dealer turned supervillain Walter White, as we watch his rise and fall after a cancer diagnosis turns his atypical suburban life upside down. It ends as strong as it starts and the follow up series/spin-off, Better Call Saul is possibly just as good.

Cadfael - A crusader-turned-monk that solves mysteries in the Middle Ages based on the popular book series by Ellis Peters, each episode is completely self-contained but highly entertaining.

Community - perhaps the best live-action sitcom ever made, from the creator of Rick & Morty, blending farce, social satire, and pop culture references, in a deconstruction of sitcom tropes that takes viewers further an further down a surreal rabbithole.

Covington Cross - A90's family comedy-drama set in the late Middle Ages that sadly never found it's audience at the time and is now primarily remembered by a cult fandom.

Daredevil - While I enjoyed all Netflix Marvel shows to some degree or another, Daredevil is heads above the rest of the pack, taking cues from Frank Miller and Bendis' legendary runs on the comics, weaving an in-depth psychological character study of a hero and his archvillain.

Dexter - One of the most unique television crime dramas of all time, presented from the PoV of a serial killer that's been raised to hunt other serial killers in order to focus his sociopathic tendencies. The first season is a masterpiece, and while it never quite manages to live up to that again, seasons 2 through 4 are still some of the best television of the last two decades, providing a very appropriate and satisfying ending that they unfortunately couldn't leave well enough alone and proceed to jump the shark HARD with season 5 onwards up to what is widely considered the worst final episode of a television series of all time (even beating out Game of Thrones' awful final season). Currently a reboot is doing a decent job of correcting that mistake.

Doctor Who - I'm really only recommending the Russel T. Davies' era, that rescued and revitalized the classic British scifi series, first by deconstructing it, then reconstructing it into one of the greatest adventure series of all times.

Dollhouse - Joss Whedon's masterpiece, a true science fiction story that takes a single piece of futuristic technology, and explores in-depth all the various ramifications of it to society. It's a show that starts as one thing, then becomes something else, then become something else, and gradually evolves into something epic.

Farscape - A dark take on Buck Rogers from the Jim Henson company that is sometimes hit or miss, but when it hits, it hits harder than any other scifi series of the time.

Flight of the Conchords - an incredibly quirky and offbeat musical-comedy about a New Zealand band trying to make it in New York City.

Frasier - one of the few 90's sitcoms that stands up over time, a clever comedy of errors spun off from Cheers that focuses on the social circles of the would-be social elite of Seattle.

Get Smart - the show that made Mel Brooks a household name about an incompetent secret agent's ability to fail forward through cold war shenanigans.

Hannibal - Bryan Fuller's dark re-imagining of the Hannibal Lector books that transcends any of the critically-acclaimed films.

House M.D. - Sherlock Holmes as a medical analyst is a pretty brilliant twist on the classic Arthur Conan Doyle character, with Hugh Laurie putting in a career-defining performance. The first 4 seasons are fantastic, then it jumps the shark and is hit or miss, with more misses accumulating until it limps to an ending.

The Invisible Man - An extraordinarily entertaining series from the turn of the century about a cat burglar who takes an experimental invisibility formula as an alternative to jail time and is blackmailed into working as a secret agent for the Bureau of Fish & Game.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - A satire about dysfunctional bar owners and family members that pushes every boundary of good taste.

The Mandalorian - The only Star Wars to capture the feel of Star Wars since the original trilogy.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 - A cable access show that captured the hearts of a generation of geeks, based on the premise of a space janitor and his robot companions being forced by a mad scientist to watch bad movies.

Parker Lewis Can't Lose - Early 90's avant garde high school meta-comedy that holds up surprisingly well. Think Ferris Bueller mixed with Fletch.

The Prisoner - The greatest television series of all time, bar none, about a secret agent taken to a place known only as "The Village" when he tries to resign without giving a reason, and the multiple social and mental battles that ensue between him and his jailers.

The Punisher - After Daredevil, the strongest of the Netflix Marvel shows, with season 2 being at least as good as any season of DD.

Pushing Daisies - a twisted fairytale-like supernatural mystery-romance about a boy born with the power to bring the dead back to life with a touch, with certain specific caveats...

Red Dwarf - Classic British SciFi comedy about a blue collar mining ship worker who is frozen in time for 6 million years after a radiation leak on the eponymous space ship and newly awakened is trying to find his way back to earth, accompanied by a hologram of the most annoying human being who ever lived and a lifeform that evolved from his pet cat.

Robin of Sherwood - a deeply atmospheric 1980's BBC adaption of the classic Robin Hood folktales interwoven with Celtic mythology.

Scrubs - a wacky comedy taking place in a hospital that is surprisingly accurate on the medical front and manages to stealth insert some heart-tearing melodrama that leads to some of the best single episodes of ANY TV series I've ever seen, at least in the first 3 seasons. It gets less impactful after that, but is till a competent comedy up until reaching what is widely considered the greatest finale to a TV comedy of all time (if you ignore the attempted soft reboot that they tried to pass off as "Season 9").

Sherlock Holmes - The overall title given to the series of adaptations produced by Granada Television between 1984 and 1994, considered the ultimate adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's everlasting creation. Jeremy Brett is impeccable in his portrayal, and the attention to detail in recreating the Victorian-era setting is masterful, just as the iconic theme is as perfect to the character as the John Williams Superman theme. The more recent Sherlock that made Benedict Cabbagepatch a star is also entertaining enough, but disappears up it's own ass by the third season.

The Squid Game - a story of people in financial debt agreeing to compete in a series of sadistic versions of playground games for an ungodly cash prize. Episode 6 will break you.

Twin Peaks - there is no way to adequately summarize this Lynchian puzzlebox of a series revolving around the mysterious murder of a high school girl and it's rippling effect on a small community. It was finally concluded just a few years back with Twin Peaks: The Return, though "conclusion" doesn't mean easy answers.

The X-Files - heavily influenced by Twin Peaks, this 90's phenomenon about two FBI agents investigating unexplained phenomena still holds up well, with the caveat that the show really shines in it's one-off "monster of the week" episodes, while it's overarching plot ends up being nothing but a shaggy dog tale that never resolves itself satisfactorily.

 

[PolarBlues]

What this thread proves is what we've ll known for some time; there is just way too much good television for a mere mortal to keep up with. Whatever you do, however you try, you will miss out on some really great shows.

There is no dishonour in that.

 

[warwell]

Oldies but goodies:
Black Adder
Red Dwarf

 

[Agemegos]

Blackadder. An hilatious series of outrageously un-historical British period comedies that poke savagely sarcastic fun at British historical golden ages. In the first season Prince Edmund “Blackadder” is the stupid, cowardly, ambitious and unscrupulous second son of Edward IV, who inadvertently kills the (victorious) Richard III just after the Battle of Bosworth. (I told you, outrageously unhistorical.) In the second season Lord Blackadder is a clever, ambitious, unscrupulous, but poor and desperately unlucky courtier at the court of a totally insane version of Elizabeth I (played brilliantly by Miranda Richardson), In the third season, Mr Edmund Blackadder is the scheming butler to an absolutely idiotic version of the Prince Regent (played brilliantly by Hugh Laurie). In the fourth season Captain Blackadder is a British infantry officer stuck in the trenches in World War One and conniving constantly to get out. All the Edmund Blackadders are played by Rowan Atkinson, all of his dogsbodies, S.O. Baldrick, are played by Tony Robinson. In each series Blackadder gets smarter and more sarcastic, his situation gets more hopeless, everyone around him gets stupider and more insane, and the writing gets sharper and sharper.

Burn Notice. A fun series of fixer procedurals set in Miami in the recent past, in which a “burned” spy uses his special forces and secret-agent training to fix problems for civilians having trouble with mostly gangsters and scammers. There is also an arc plot, but that is rubbish. Stylish, with strong performances from four leads, and with a lot of great material for roleplayers playing in thrillers and scam adventures, with the central character Michael Westen explaining what he’s doing in voice-over.

Edge of Darkness. I’m really showing my age here. Mid-Eighties Cold War anti-nuclear pessimism and paranoia. Gripping thriller, very tense.

The Sandbaggers. Really good late-seventies British spy drama, a stale-beer and cheap cigarettes antidote to James Bond glamour, very cynical. It went down in quality in the last season, after the original writer disappeared.

Ultraviolet. (1997 TV miniseries), Very stylish modern vampire story, a tense thriller with psychological-thriller elements. Strong performances, especially from Susannah Harker and Idris Elba.

 

[Picaroon Jack]

I would add some heck yeahs!! to the above mentioned

• Squid Game
• Downton Abbey
• Flight of the Conchords
• The Boys

And add the Newsroom.

 

[Giganotosaurus]

Person of Interest: a Techno-Thriller about a n Ex-CIA Assassin hired by a man who doesn't exist to save people that are going to die base on their social security numbers.

 

[Ronin]

Person of Interest: a Techno-Thriller about a n Ex-CIA Assassin hired by a man who doesn't exist to save people that are going to die base on their social security numbers.

I'm going to second this. No to spoil any of it, but its more than Gigantosaurs's description. I starts as a crime drama, that evolves into a techno thriller. Which was super high tech for 2016. But now you look at it and think, "Yeah, I could see that happening".

 

[Tommy Brownell]

Like the title says, please recommend me your favorite TV show(s) and tell me what you like about them. Thanks!

Bonus points for shows available on Netflix, Hulu, Xfinity Cable, or plain ol' network TV.

Justified - Based on the works of Elmore Leonard, it's a modern day western featuring Timothy Olyphant just absolutely full of swagger as Deputy US Marshal Raylan Givens, returning home to Kentucky to deal with his old frenemy Boyd Crowder (and Walton Goggins damn near steals the show in the role).

LOST - Amazing, sprawling cast. Impossible to skip an episode without missing something crucial. Unlike some, I thought the ending made perfect sense, and haven't wavered on that with any rewatch.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Whedon's best work, IMO, and it's not close. Sarah Michelle Gellar's as well. A masterclass on writing an ensemble, at least for the first five seasons.

Angel - Buffy spin-off. I actually like it more than Buffy, especially when you add in the final two Buffy seasons. I barely consider it a Whedon show, though, because he launched it and then largely neglected it. This was glaringly obvious when he would stop in and do an episode and everyone felt completely out of character.

Cobra Kai - Four seasons in and this is tracking to be one of the best shows I've ever watched. They took three fun, but kinda paperthin, 80s movies and have added a tremendous amount of depth to the characters while adding to the mythology, and they poke fun at the weirdness from those movies without ever outright mocking them.

True Detective - Each season is a standalone mystery. I love all three. The first season is the best 8 hours of TV I've ever seen, with no wasted moment. Brilliant performances from Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey.

Santa Clarita Diet - Aside from having Netflix syndrome (cancelled on a cliffhanger) this is a fantastic grossout comedy starring Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant as a married couple who deal with "for better or for worse" when Drew becomes a zombie.

The Shield - Cop show that does a really nice job of giving you a bunch of unlikable characters, but tells a gripping enough story that you still want to see what happens.

Reservation Dogs - Both hilarious and sentimental, and an utterly authentic look at modern Native American life.

Big Shot - My favorite show on Disney+. John Stamos kills it as a basketball coach. The premise of the basketball loving coach being forced to take a job at an all girls school where he learns there's more to life than basketball is cliched and sappy, but the performances across the board are earnest enough that it works.

Hill Street Blues - Groundbreaking cop show that set the stage of TV drama after it, with a brilliant ensemble. I actually watched it for the first time in the last few years and Captain Frank Furillo became one of my favorite TV characters of all time, and it gave me a retroactive crush on Veronica Hamel, who plays the hard-nosed public defender.

Edit:

Scrolled up and saw a couple I missed, as well as realizing I left my favorite comedy off of here:

Stranger Things - It really is as good as it's made out to be, at least so far. Brilliant young cast, the adults are great, the sense of foreboding and mystery is always there, and the performances keep the characters at the forefront.

Twin Peaks - You either like David Lynch, or you don't. And that's doubly true of the sequel series, Twin Peaks: The Return, which is just gonzo as fuck.

MASH - Gotta love a show that not only eclipsed the movie it was based off of, but the real life war it was based off of. Again, brilliant ensemble, even with the shifting cast over the years (and the cast arguably got stronger over time).

Letterkenny - My favorite comedy. I cannot be distracted watching this show, because the rapid fire delivery will make me miss something. And holy shit, this little Canadian comedy has a knack for the eye candy.

 

[Picaroon Jack]

I forgot to mention the Umbrella Academy on Netflix.

 

[David Johansen]

I'm not sure where to watch it, but instead of Downton Abbey I'd recommend the much older version, Upstairs, Downstairs.
Not nearly as pretty or pleasant as Downton, and its characters are not as charming. But I feel like it (mostly) gives a much more honest depiction of folks during that era of change. Downton is the candy-coated version of the tale.

I'd argue that Downton Abbey is a specific genre or style of story, much like a Jane Austen novel, really. Even the villains are basically decent and relatable on some level. Still, it's mostly set-up for the dowager dutchess's epic put downs.

 

[Simlasa]

I'll add Rectify... which I never hear anyone speak of.
It's about a man who has been in prison for murder since he was a teenager, getting released back into the world and trying to figure out his past/present/future... and the ongoing scars that such a crime leaves on a community.

 

[Simlasa]

I'd argue that Downton Abbey is a specific genre or style of story, much like a Jane Austen novel, really. Even the villains are basically decent and relatable on some level. Still, it's mostly set-up for the dowager dutchess's epic put downs.

I was initially entranced by it... but as it went on I could see how much of a hagiography it was and how it was stuffed full of modern sentiments about issues people of that era would have dealt with quite differently.
I ended up disliking it for the same reasons I can't stand Gone With The Wind.

 

[David Johansen]

Admittedly at the end of season three I just about hurled the remote at the TV.

 

[Voros]

I'll add Rectify... which I never hear anyone speak of.
It's about a man who has been in prison for murder since he was a teenager, getting released back into the world and trying to figure out his past/present/future... and the ongoing scars that such a crime leaves on a community.

This show is first class, easily one of the best acted and written shows for TV I've ever seen.

 

[E-Rocker]

Thanks for all the recommendations, folks. Looks like I've got enough to keep me busy for a good long while.

 

[remial]

you are going to recommend Hill Street and not Saint Elsewhere? WTF?

 

[Nobby-W]

A couple of recent ones I saw on Netflix -

• Giri/Haji - one of the Beeb's better efforts in recent years. Will Sharpe picked up a BAFTA for best supporting actor as Rodney Yamaguchi. You'll know it when you see it.
• Queen's Gambit - Girl genius chess prodigy story set in the 1960s.

Some I've liked but not seen here yet -

• Montalbano - Italian cop show set in Sicily, based on a series of novels. It's very good and um .. very Italian. Made by RAI (a sort of Italian Beeb) and their biggest export outside of Italy.
• Peaky Blinders - up to 5 or 6 seasons now. Very stylish and peak Cillian Murphy.

 

[Simlasa]

you are going to recommend Hill Street and not Saint Elsewhere? WTF?

I love both those shows, but I've noticed that Saint Elswhere puts some people off... maybe because it dips into... fantasy? surrealism? sometimes... and the ending of the series is a love it/hate it sort of thing.

 

[Bunch]

A couple of recent ones I saw on Netflix

• Queen's Gambit - Girl genius chess prodigy story set in the 1960s.

Accurate but leaves put sooo much. Let's say family life is interesting and drugs are a feature.

 

[Brock Savage]

Arrested Development. A brilliant comedy about a family of nouveau riche fools from Orange County, CA. All the episodes are funny but watching them in order is recommended. Thinking of this show always brings a smile to my face.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Dark comedy about dangerous idiots and psychos. I love it. You don't need to watch them in order but S2 E1 "Charlie Gets Crippled" or S2 E3 "Dennis and Dee go on Welfare" are decent starting points.
Maniac. It tells a great story in ten episodes with no filler and it's done. Beautiful.
Squid Game. It tells a great story in nine episodes with no filler and it's done. Beautiful.
Smarter people than I can explain why you should watch True Detective and Twin Peaks

 

[remial]

I love both those shows, but I've noticed that Saint Elswhere puts some people off... maybe because it dips into... fantasy? surrealism? sometimes... and the ending of the series is a love it/hate it sort of thing.

yeah, the ending of the last episode bugged me too. Up to that point it was great, but I don't judge it by that alone. OTOH, all these years later any movie or TV show i see actor David Morse in, I assume he is the bad guy after his character stabbed and almost killed Howie Mandel's character.

 

[UnplayedRanger]

Lots of good stuff. I’ll just add “Longmire” to the list. It’s on Netflix, and along with “Luther” is one of the best cop shows I’ve ever watched.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Lots of really good shows mentioned here. I'll throw out a few that haven't yet been mentioned.

The Wire- this is one of the best ensemble TV shows of all time. Each season it gets broader, incorporating new elements of the city and showing how they all interact. Few shows belong in the same conversation as this one. You can watch it on HBO Max, or you can rent or buy it through Prime.

Dark- this German show is so incredibly well crafted. It starts in the present day in a small city and some strange events that happen that seem eerily similar to ones that happened 28 years prior. Where it goes from there there's no way to predict. It's really ambitious, and I admire that. It's an incredibly intricate show that weaves multiple stories together across its three seasons. You can catch it on Netflix in the US.

 

[Chaotic Wooster]

Bojack Horseman is the best show I've seen in years. I'm bitter as hell Netflix insisted on squeezing the last two seasons into one, but I suppose I should be grateful it wasn't just cancelled on a whim.

 

[Lychee of the Exchequer]

Dark- this German show is so incredibly well crafted. It starts in the present day in a small city and some strange events that happen that seem eerily similar to ones that happened 28 years prior. Where it goes from there there's no way to predict. It's really ambitious, and I admire that. It's an incredibly intricate show that weaves multiple stories together across its three seasons. You can catch it on Netflix in the US.

I second that The Dark is really good.
It's also freakingly depressing - I'm convinced that the Germans have a gift for that sort of stories.