77 Best TV Shows Similar to The Simpsons
Franklin
SimilarA Fortunate Life, A Little Princess, Anna Karenina, Återkomsten, Atomic Train, Cleopatra, Dexter, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl, Intruders, Jack the Ripper, Jewels, Monarch of the Glen,
Planet of the Apes Pride and Prejudice Scully, Son of the Morning Star, Tales from the Neverending Story, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Phantom of the Opera, The Shining, The Sun Also Rises, Unterleuten: The Torn Village,
StudioApple Studios,
Michael Douglas's career so deeply connects him to as specific kind of late 20th/early 21st Century man. As a result, throwing him back to the 18th Century and into the body of Benjamin Franklin feels deeply counterintuitive. It is not surprising that Franklin—an adaptation of the book A Great Improvisation by Stacy Schiff—is one of the few period projects Douglas has done, joining the likes of The Ghost and the Darkness and those flashback scenes in the Ant-Man films. What is surprising, and to the series’ credit, is how quickly that strangeness recedes. It isn’t that Douglas manages to fade into the role of Franklin until he disappears entirely, but he does manage to recede enough that he doesn’t disrupt the show’s reality.
In some ways, Douglas proves a surprisingly apt selection. No stranger to playing womanizers on screen, Douglas easily finds the correct valence to portray Franklin’s specific flavor of late 18th-century skirt chaser. The metacommentary works in his favor as well, an aging icon who retains much of his skill but perhaps can no longer command the same buzz or box office returns embodying an aging icon whose mind remains sharp but whose body—and possibly will—has been beaten up by life and time. While almost a decade older than the Franklin he’s portraying, Douglas also excels at the moments where the audience witnesses the statesman energized like old times.
Thibault de Montalembert has neither the time nor the interest in your lame attempts at Call My Agent/Dix pour cent joke attempts. (AppleTV+)
Still, the script too frequently hamstrings the actor. Not bad by any means, the writing still suffers for trying to match Franklin’s reputation. It’s the old conundrum of trying to build a series, film, or play around a singular piece of art. How does a creator convince the audience that someone is singing the most fantastic song ever without truly writing the most fantastic song ever? Similarly, how do writers provide dialogue to what is, by historical reputation, one of the greatest wits in American History without simply quoting his greatest hits? Continue Reading →
X-Men
Regardless of what one thinks of nostalgia—a toxic force or a pleasant refuge from the chaos that is existence—there’s no denying its significant role in shaping and guiding our pop culture. Rather than simply rallying against it, we must, from time to time, acknowledge it and evaluate its accuracy. The launching of X-Men ’97 gives The Spool a unique opportunity to look back at ’97’s progenitor, the early 90’s series X-Men, also commonly known as X-Men: The Animated Series.
However, this is not a task for one person. An objective of this size requires a team-up, in the Merry Marvel Tradition. Tim Stevens, The Spool’s steadfast TV Editor, whose stoicism conceals a maelstrom of doubt and rage, much like ruby quartz holds back optic blasts, tackled the first half of the series. Then, Justin Harrison, our near-feral writer with a gift for mentorship and a head full of implanted memories, closes things down with his take on the second half of season 3 and all of seasons 4 and 5.
With that, there’s no time to waste. Hop in the Blackbird and come with us for a look at the highlights—and occasional lowlight—of the X-Men! Continue Reading →
X-Men '97
SimilarBatman, Batman: The Animated Series, Birds of Prey, Captain Midnight, Captain Star, Deadly Class, Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes, Flash Gordon, Gekisou Sentai Carranger, GoGo Sentai Boukenger, Inazuman, Invincible,
Justice League Mirai Sentai Timeranger, Ninpuu Sentai Hurricaneger, Power Rangers, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Seijuu Sentai Gingaman, Silver Surfer, Sonic the Hedgehog, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, Spider-Man: The New Animated Series, Super Crooks, Tales from the Crypt, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Avengers: United They Stand, The Flash, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men: Evolution,
As the saying goes, only '90s kids will remember the severe cultural impact X-Men: The Animated Series had on a particular strain of latchkey millennials. For many, the show, which ran from 1992-97 on the Fox Kids programming block, was the arguable apex of the Marvel superhero team's on-screen representations. It was thrilling, exciting, and for the time, surprisingly mature in its handling of the sociopolitical issues that spawned the comics in the first place -- racism, xenophobia, homophobia. It carried an element of serialized storytelling that was rare for kids' TV and took its characters and their respective issues seriously. Plus, that theme song just slammed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQjdm8BdJO4
Disney+, in its infinite wisdom, knows how to keep the franchise going while they anxiously figure out how to incorporate the X-Men into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Deadpool & Wolverine should give us a portent, however grim) -- and to keep the '90s kids satiated with a heaping helping of nostalgia while we wait. So goes X-Men '97, a straightforward continuation of The Animated Series that updates its "too sophisticated for kids" remit all the way to the present day and lands on something interesting, if far from perfect, in the process.
Picking up months after the original series' finale, X-Men '97 shows a world reeling from the death of Charles Xavier in the final episode of the animated series: Mutants are mistrusted more than ever, and a growing fifth column of right-wing human militants called the Friends of Humanity are gathering up mutants and taking them down with stolen Sentinel technology. Naturally, it's up to the X-Men to stop them -- if they can pull themselves together and work as a team. Scott Summers (Ray Chase) is the next natural choice for leader, but he's torn between his duty to his fellow X-Men and his desire to start a family with Jean Grey (Jennifer Hale), a move that has ol' Wolverine (Cal Dodd) itching with jealousy. Continue Reading →
The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin
SimilarFamily Guy, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, The Sound of Your Heart,
StarringNoel Fielding,
There is perhaps no more annoying phrase to hear from someone recommending a TV series in the streaming age than, “It’s very good, but you do have to wait a few episodes.” Regretfully, this writer nonetheless must employ it in reviewing The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin. When the series finds its footing, it is equally adept at the goofy gag and the droll declaration. It’s just that it doesn’t settle into that groove until the third of six episodes provided to critics.
The premise revolves around a decidedly ahistorical take on the British outlaw Dick Turpin (Noel Fielding, late of The Great British Baking Show). For those not steeped in 18th-century English criminal lore, Turpin was a highwayman who became something of a legend after his execution at the age of 33. Fans of new wave pop star Adam Ant may recall the singer briefly made Turpin a sartorial touchpoint with the inclusion of a tri-corner hat in his rotation.
In co-creators Claire Downes, Ian Jarvis, and Stuart Lane’s The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin, Fielding’s interpretation of the character hardly reflects the historical or legendary figure. Rather Turpin patrols the lawless outskirts of the Georgian era as a thoroughly modern man. A vegan who’s terrible with a gun and worse with his fists, he seems more drawn to the theatrics of criminality than the violence or even the money. As a result, he frequently confounds the odds through his stubborn insistence on making unusual choices and a healthy dose of good luck. Continue Reading →
Lion Country: Night and Day
Season 4 of True Detective wasn't perfect, but it treated a hard subject with empathy & realism.
(CW: suicide. Spoilers ahead.)
The finale of True Detective: Night Country aired this past Sunday, and it was met with the usual measured response. Those who liked it thought it was pretty good, those who didn’t were convinced it was the worst thing to ever happen to eyes. Nic Pizzolatto, the original creator of the series, was particularly petty and uncharitable, taking to Instagram to repost some of the harshest criticisms of the season, which, unsurprisingly, he was not involved in. Continue Reading →
Far North
NetworkAMC+,
StarringTemuera Morrison,
The New Zealand crime dramedy can’t wrangle its disparate tones into a satisfying whole.
In some ways, Far North offers viewers three shows in one. There’s the harrowing tale of a quartet of Chinese women, Bi (Xana Tang), Jin (Xiao Hu), Hui (Nikita Tu-Bryant), and Ling (Louise Jiang), trapped in a boat off the coast of New Zealand. They’re under the thumb of Cai (Fei Li), a capricious crime middle manager whose corner-cutting and incompetence have left them stranded and facing death by dehydration and starvation. Unfortunately, rescue is almost as unpleasant a prospect as dying. To be saved, Cai demands they either “pay” for the rescue by sinking themselves deeper into debt and servitude or killing one of their own.
On the mainland, a different kind of crime story is unfolding. A group of less-than-competent criminals working for Blaze (Fay Tofilau) believe they’re about to get the score of their lives. Employed by her to take in the meth the Chinese women are transporting, they think it’ll be as easy as loading up a camper and driving it a few towns away. Alas, between the delays and their lack of skills, complications rapidly arise. Continue Reading →
The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!
NetworkPeacock,
Similar'Allo 'Allo!, Batfink, Family Guy, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Gekisou Sentai Carranger, KONOSUBA – An Explosion on This Wonderful World!, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Tales from the Crypt, The Wallflower, Thunderbirds,
StarringJ. Smith-Cameron,
Peacock’s claymation sitcom is at its best when it skips the satire for the strange, but “best” is grading on a curve.
To its credit, In The Know resists dropping the term “woke” to describe its characters. Unfortunately, in a fairly disastrous opener, that’s the only “those silly sensitive liberals” signifier it lets go past. The premiere’s big joke, one it repeats OFTEN, centers on the proper terminology for someone without a place to live. Because, of course, it's a goofy waste of time to worry about language. Only Zach Woods’ ever-increasing profane frustration at being corrected by Fabian (Caitlin Reilly) saves the bit. His voice performance as “NPR’s third most popular host” Lauren Caspian is just sly enough to make it unclear if his anger comes from his inability to remember the correct term, someone having the nerve to interrupt him, or the thought that someone in the office might be more progressive than him.
It isn’t that mocking blowhard radio hosts can’t be a rich comic vein. Just check out the original Frasier series, a show with a strangely intense cross-generational appeal that persists even over 19 years after the final episode aired. It’s centering that mockery on NPR, particularly an NPR that has more in common with a conservative’s fever dream of what the company is like rather than anything resembling reality, feels like a weak tea. Fortunately, things improve for In The Know as it quickly moves beyond what initially seems like an exercise in sticking it to those caricatures of public radio employees. Continue Reading →
Jul i Blodfjell
When you’re done watching the usual stuff, consider one of these very bizarre attempts at holiday cheer.
When AMC released their holiday programming lineup this year, it seemed like an attempt at a joke: in addition to a handful of aging comedies that have nothing to do with Christmas (or any other holiday for that matter), like Uncle Buck and Caddyshack, the now-ubiquitous Elf was scheduled to air no less than sixteen times in thirty days, and that wasn’t counting the December 2nd “anniversary celebration” marathon. Second to Elf was National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, scheduled to air twelve times. Filling out the remaining time not occupied by Elf or National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation was woeful C-tier fare nobody enjoyed the first time around, like Christmas With the Kranks and Fred Claus.
In the era of streaming, finding Christmas entertainment now requires keeping track of who has the rights to show what special or movie at any given time. Gone are the days of CBS airing A Charlie Brown Christmas every year for decades: now it's under the sole domain of Apple TV+. Its former companion How the Grinch Stole Christmas is available only on Peacock, and all manner of Muppet-related programming is exclusive to Disney+. If the pickings aren’t slim, then they’re disbursed like so much reindeer feed across multiple platforms. Continue Reading →
American Horror Story
A quick overview of the high highs and middling disappointments in horror this year.
With the social media app formerly known as Twitter now a shell of its former self, horror fans have been forced to return to Facebook to continue such interminable debates as “What does or doesn’t qualify something as ‘horror’?” “What the hell is ‘elevated horror,’ anyway?” “Are remakes inherently bad?” “Have horror movies gotten too ‘woke’?” “Were we wrong for letting women make horror?”
In a year when both David Gordon Green and M. Night Shyamalan released new movies, the horror discourse was especially spicy, and that’s before we get to the really interesting stories, like the surprise viral success of Skinamarink, which, with the way time seems to be passing nowadays, feels like it was released five years ago. Both indie and mainstream horror made daring choices, not looking to appeal to as broad a range of audiences as possible, and treating the genre as a serious art form, as opposed to just a machine that prints money. But the biggest surprise came in October, with the release of Saw X, the tenth film in a seemingly unkillable franchise, which ended up being one of the best, most coherent entries in the entire series. Continue Reading →
Goosebumps
Similar2Moons: The Series,
Agatha Christie's Poirot Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor, Amazing Stories, Are You Afraid of the Dark?,
Black Books Brimstone, Cruel Summer, Cybersix, Dark, Dark Winds, Dexter, Fate/Apocrypha, From, Further Tales of the City, Game of Thrones, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Gossip Girl,
HIStory M*A*S*H, Metal Hurlant Chronicles, Monarch of the Glen, More Tales of the City, Mr. Mercedes, Murder Most Horrid,
Planet of the Apes Sherlock Holmes Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan, Tales from the Crypt, Tales from the Neverending Story, Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills, The 4400, The Alienist, The Family Game, The Moon Embracing the Sun, The Shining, The Strain, The Twilight Zone, The Wimbledon Poisoner, ThunderCats, Tientsin Mystic, Troubles, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, Witchcraft,
Do we need another live-action Goosebumps adaptation? After a ’90s Fox Kids series and a pair of 2010s films, one would assume that the ground of turning Slappy the dummy and other frightening beings into flesh-and-blood creations has been well-trodden. Continue Reading →
Frasier
NetworkNBC,
Similar'Allo 'Allo!, Catterick, Fawlty Towers, Here and Now,
HIStory I Dream of Jeannie, LA to Vegas, Lost in Space, My Hero, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Off Centre, Red Dwarf, Sons of Tucson, Taxi, That '70s Show, The Bride of Habaek, The War at Home,
StudioParamount Television Studios,
When Frasier premiered in the fall of 1993 it had massive shoes to fill. That's probably an understatement. Its parent show, Cheers, was a critical and commercial monster in a way that can only happen when there are only three shows for two hundred million people to choose from. It was nominated for almost two hundred Emmys over the course of its eleven-year run, and its series finale aired to 90 million people (40% of the country’s then population) three months before Frasier’s start. So yeah, expectations were pretty high, and Frasier ended up pretty much meeting them all. While never as popular as Cheers (nothing has been as popular as Cheers since Cheers), it was nevertheless a solid commercial hit that carved out its own identity and won more Emmys than its parent show over the course of its own eleven-year run. A lot of that success was rooted in Frasier’s ability as its own, independent show with its own characters and rhythms instead of being Cheers 2.0. Continue Reading →
Quantum Leap
NetworkNBC,
Similar4400, A Returner's Magic Should Be Special, A Step Into The Past, Amazing Stories,
Battlestar Galactica Ben 10: Omniverse, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century,
Caprica Dark, Doctor Who, Future Man, Go Back Couple,
HIStory I Dream of Jeannie, Jin, Life on Mars, Live Up To Your Name, Lost Love in Times, Love, Timeless, Love, Victor, Manhole, Mirai Sentai Timeranger, More Tales of the City, My Holo Love, Nine: Nine Time Travels, Odd Squad, Phil of the Future,
Planet of the Apes Prehistoric Park, Red Dwarf, Samurai Jack, Somehow 18,
Star Trek: Voyager Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The 4400, The Dead Zone, The Girl from Tomorrow, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Thunderstone, Torchwood,
After averting the Apocalypse and stopping a more militaristic Leaper from the near future by leaping into his own past, Ben (Raymond Lee) and everyone else at Quantum Leap expected him to leap home. Instead, he was nowhere to be seen. Continue Reading →
The Goldbergs
NetworkNBC,
Similar'Allo 'Allo!, Astro Boy, Catterick, Fawlty Towers, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace,
Great News I Dream of Jeannie, LA to Vegas, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Off Centre, Red Dwarf, Taxi, That '70s Show,
The Cara Williams Show The John Larroquette Show The War at Home, Two and a Half Men,
In 1983, a group of crooks broke into a vault at the Heathrow International Trading Estate in London, patrolled by Brink’s Mat security conglomeration. The Brinks company was already famous for a famous robbery, one that was carried out in the '50s in the North End in Boston, an incident that turned into a charmingly strange movie by William Friedkin in 1978. Continue Reading →
The Morning Show
SimilarGossip Girl, Nine: Nine Time Travels, Off Centre, Tarzan, Taxi, The Alienist, The Beat, The Strain,
StarringJon Hamm,
Aaron Sorkin learned the hard way that no one takes TV as seriously as TV people. When he followed up his critically acclaimed The West Wing, a show about the inner workings of the White House, with Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip he discovered that you can’t treat everything with the gravity of a cabinet meeting and the wit of a theater major who gets straight Bs. His backstage drama about a fake sketch show pleased no one. When he tried to course correct with The Newsroom he tried to portray the American news media out to be brave warriors for the cause of truth. Both shows have lived rich second lives as meme generators about what Andrew Sarris would call "strained seriousness." Continue Reading →
Strange Planet
SimilarA Returner's Magic Should Be Special, Family Guy, Flower Boy Next Door, Go Back Couple, Invincible, The Bride of Habaek, The Sound of Your Heart,
StudioApple Studios,
Continue Reading →
City on Fire
Similar2Moons: The Series,
Agatha Christie's Poirot Around the World in 80 Days, Dexter, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl, Helltown, No Escape, Santa Evita, The Alienist, The Summer I Turned Pretty, Wycliffe,
StudioApple Studios,
As an act of nostalgia, City on Fire has plenty to offer anyone who lived or spent lots of time in New York City in the summer of 2003. The new series, created by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, evokes the era matter-of-factly. Besides nailing the look of early 21st Century Manhattan, it captures the sense of a city in transition. The groundwork for the gentrification that swept across Manhattan and Brooklyn had just been activated. Mayor Bloomberg was taking what Giuliani had begun and pushing it farther and faster than “America’s Mayor” ever managed. And while the series eventually stomps the theme into the ground, the tendency to wonder if every adverse event was evidence of terrorism was very alive. Continue Reading →
Fatal Attraction
SimilarBroadchurch, Luther,
StudioParamount Television Studios,
Fatal Attraction is an interesting study of how a controversial movie’s takeaway message can completely change, largely because audiences have changed. It’s a stylish, well-crafted film that spawned dozens of lesser imitations, and comes off as totally different when viewed from a 21st-century perspective. The carefully delineated roles of “hero” and “villain” are something murkier: we now understand that protagonist Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) isn’t entirely clear with Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) that their torrid fling is just that, a no-strings-attached encounter that means nothing to him. We see that Alex is done dirty with a script that depicts her as a one-note monster who must be defeated in the name of preserving the nuclear family. When even the YouTube commentariat largely agrees that Dan leads Alex on, you know the tide of public opinion has turned. Continue Reading →
Dead Ringers
When it comes to prestige limited streaming series, horror movies (especially of the more grotesque persuasion) don’t tend to be common fodder. But with Rachel Weisz at the helm, Prime Video’s latest thriller series, Dead Ringers, looks to David Cronenberg’s 1988 film of the same name. Though undoubtedly a formidable showcase for Weisz, who pulls double duty as twins Elliot and Beverly, Dead Ringers struggles to remain fresh and interesting, often overstaying its welcome and retreading familiar territory. Admittedly, swapping the genders of its protagonists makes for an interesting approach to the subject matter. But Dead Ringers lacks the killer instincts and stylistic flair that makes the film so fondly remembered. Continue Reading →
Tiny Beautiful Things
SimilarAgatha Christie's Poirot Around the World in 80 Days, Helltown, No Escape, Santa Evita, The Summer I Turned Pretty, Wycliffe,
StudioABC Signature,
If you belonged to a certain group of very online Millennials around 2011, then the chances that a Dear Sugar letter changed your life or permanently lodged itself in your brain are high. I know it’s certainly true for me. That means I’m carrying a certain degree of baggage to Hulu’s newest series, Tiny Beautiful Things, based on the book of the same name--a collection of Dear Sugar’s best advice columns)--and Sugar herself, Cheryl Strayed, who stepped forward as the columnist in 2012. Continue Reading →
Servant
Haunted house stories have always been my favorite. There's something so thrilling and unsettling about a place that feels and reacts to the people that occupy it. As I got older, I learned that haunting could mean many things. It could mean memory. It could mean joy, despair, humor, or fear soaking into the brick and mortar or reflecting our experiences back at us. If you look at it that way, isn't every house haunted? Continue Reading →