38 Best TV Shows Similar to Family Guy (Page 2)
The Sex Lives of College Girls
NetworkHBO Max,
SimilarStar and Sky: Star in My Mind,
Despite sounding like something one might hesitate to Google outside of a private browser, HBO Max's The Sex Lives of College Girls is a fairly wholesome dramedy about four young women starting off their adult lives as freshmen in college. Admittedly, yes, college freshmen who do have sex, but wholesome just the same. Created by Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble (who also write many of the episodes) TSLoCG quickly overcomes the gimmicky nature of its title. Continue Reading →
Scream: The TV Series
KinoKultur is a thematic exploration of the queer, camp, weird, and radical releases Kino Lorber has to offer.
Pretty Peggy Johns (Sian Barbara Allen) wants to do her best for the environment. Yet while she rides her bicycle, bell-bottoms billowing, through the California hills to Elliot Mansion in Scream, Pretty Peggy (1973), the most ecological thing she does is star in the film, which is assembled entirely from recycled plots and recycled stars.
Scream, Pretty Peggy and The Screaming Woman are two new-to-Blu-ray TV-movie thrillers from the early 1970s starring dames of Classical Hollywood. Each is a knowing hodgepodge of different Hollywood horror tropes that, instead of languishing in “hagsploitation” hell, allows its special guest star to shine. Continue Reading →
Kin
Kin, AMC+’s new crime drama, follows in the footsteps of those underworld sagas that came before it. Set in Dublin, mostly in the homes of members of the Kinsella family, Kin focuses on warring Irish families deep in the drug trade. While its story rarely exceeds expectations for subject matter, brutality, or surprise, its performances are excellent, thanks to a team of veteran actors who have numerous scenes full of ample, chewy dialogue to showcase their talents. Continue Reading →
Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes
StudioHBO Documentary Films, World of Wonder,
HBO’s six-part docuseries Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes doesn’t have any shocking new revelations or unheard evidence. Some might ask what was the point of rehashing a story that broke in The New Yorker, which then became a book, which then became a podcast. Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato’s take on Ronan Farrow’s already well-trod ground is clearly just for those folks who prefer visual media over books and podcasts (hey, no judgments) or for those obsessed with the investigation into Hollywood monster Harvey Weinstein. Continue Reading →
Lucan
Disney/Pixar's latest, Luca, is a deeply charming fish-monster-out-of-water story about two buddies, a Vespa, and the freedom to follow your path. It's a low-stakes tale about embracing your individual identity and the differences of the collective, with more than a few cute moments to sell its engaging atmosphere. It also suffers from a lack of clarity, which frustratingly keeps Luca from staying fully buoyant. Continue Reading →
Penguin Town
The Patton Oswalt-narrated Netflix docuseries tells a compelling story about the endangered birds' life during their molting and mating season.
“Six hot months! One wild colony! No rules!” With this reality show-esque tagline, Netflix’s Penguin Town appears to be a quirky, comical twist on nature docuseries. They even pulled in comedian Patton Oswalt to narrate. Penguin Town follows the adventures of a wild cast of African penguins. As the series progresses however, dramatic events unfold, pulling the audience in for an emotional trip alongside the endangered birds.
The series follows the journey of African penguins as they hit land on the shores of Simon’s Town, South Africa. Here the birds live it up amongst the “giants” (aka humans) of the town, molting their feathers, hooking up with their mates, and hopefully raising some hatchlings before they depart. This may sound like spring break for penguins, but their time at the beach is anything but a vacation. These penguins fight off predators on land and in the sea, attempt to survive catastrophic weather events, all in the hope their species will survive and thrive. Continue Reading →
Marvel's M.O.D.O.K.
SimilarBatman, Birds of Prey, Family Guy, Marvel's Spider-Man, Power Rangers, Static Shock, Ultraman Tiga,
StarringSam Richardson,
M.O.D.O.K. isn’t set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but it is firmly set in the newest trend in adult-sewing American animation. Popularized by Rick & Morty and BoJack Horseman, these cartoons put on an exterior dick jokes and fart gags but are actually about deeper explorations of weighty turmoil’s. Considering this phenomenon has produced shows like Horseman and Harley Quinn, it’s one of the better TV trends out there. The best parts of M.O.D.O.K. exemplify why. There’s something enduringly impressive about balancing out raunchiness with genuinely insightful drama. Continue Reading →
Death and Nightingales
SimilarFate/Apocrypha, Jack the Ripper, Jewels, Monarch of the Glen,
Pride and Prejudice Tales from the Neverending Story, The Family Game, The Far Pavilions, The Strain,
On the heels of The Luminaries, Starz brings us another dramatic import, this time the Irish 3-episode miniseries Death and Nightingales, based on Edmund McCabe’s book of the same title and adapted/directed by Allan Cubitt. Set and filmed in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, Death and Nightingales is one of those rare sunny day thrillers, a gorgeously filmed but raw story of a young woman trying to save herself amidst family secrets, Irish Nationalism, and an increasingly untenable homelife. Continue Reading →
Pride
Despite it being mid-May, the first signs of summer are already upon us. No, I’m not talking about rising temperatures or the release of tentpole blockbusters, I’m talking about my local PetSmart setting up its pride section. In recent years, gay pride month has gone from niche celebration to a new sort of corporate holiday, with major brands such as Target, McDonald’s, and the aforementioned PetSmart creating advertisements and apolitical merchandise designed to invoke a sort of fun that’s a far cry from the anger that sparked the Stonewall riots. (And let’s not forget how many corporations spend money on both pride floats and homophobic politicians.) Continue Reading →
The Crime of the Century
SimilarNightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King, The Gangster Chronicles, Tiger Lily, 4 femmes dans la vie,
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
A running joke in early episodes of The Simpsons was McBain, an action hero parody. In one scene, a group of rich people celebrate their new product SWANK (a product 10 times more addictive than marijuana), and end with a toast: “To human misery!” After watching Alex Gibney’s two-part documentary, The Crime of the Century, it’s hard to not think this scene was based on Purdue Pharmaceutical’s owners, the Sackler family, toasting the creation of OxyContin. Continue Reading →
Hemingway
There isn’t a lot of revelation to be found in Ken Burns & Lynn Novick’s extensive 3-part documentary on Ernest Hemingway. Those dads and grandpas tuning in will already be well-versed in his adventurous life, his tumultuous relationships, his legacy of violence, and self-aggrandizement. But Burns & Novick manage to put together a narrative that suits the author’s legendary machismo. If there’s one person who’d love Hemingway, it’s Hemingway. Continue Reading →
Worn Stories
SimilarPope John Paul II,
After eight years of itchy, bland Catholic School uniforms, I was ready for a change. When I entered high school, I switched to one of the only public schools in the state of Louisiana that didn’t require a uniform. Now that I could dress how I wanted, I needed to make a splash. I wanted to show everyone exactly who I was and what I brought to the table. My 13 year old brain decided the best way to do that was wearing this t-shirt featuring the logo of Mr. Sparkle, the Japanese laundry detergent that uses Homer’s head as inspiration in the Season 8 episode of The Simpsons, “In Marge We Trust." Continue Reading →
Тайны следствия
The death of the brilliant, award-winning Swedish journalist Kim Wall made a worldwide headline in 2017, mostly because the details of her murder were so gruesome that it almost felt like a work of fiction. But in Tobias Lindholm’s The Investigation — a grim six-part miniseries based on the killing of Kim Wall — the brutality of that crime is never the main focus. Instead of trying to exploit the drama behind this tragedy, Lindholm chooses to focus on the other side of the story: the hard work and determination shown by the team of police who worked together to seek the justice that Kim Wall and her family deserved to have. Continue Reading →
The Long Song
NetworkBBC One,
SimilarAround the World in 80 Days, Santa Evita, The Gold Robbers, Three Days of Christmas, White House Plumbers,
On Christmas Day in 1831, tens of thousands of slaves in Jamaica rebelled against their masters, burning acres and acres of sugar cane. By the end of the first week of January, the rebellion had been brutally quashed by Britain. But from that point on, it was clear that the days of slavery in the colonies were coming to an end. In 1833, that’s exactly what happened. The Long Song tells the story of July (Tamara Lawrance), a slave woman who lives through this transitory period as the primary maid to Caroline Mortimer (Hayley Atwell), the mistress of the plantation. The series frames these events through the narration of an older and wiser July (Doña Croll), decades after the events of we're witness to. Continue Reading →
Painting With John
StudioHyperobject Industries,
The first thing you need to know about Painting With John is that you won’t come away from it learning how to paint. Host John Lurie admits in the second episode that, because most of his art is intuitive, he doesn’t know how to teach it, nor does he think just anyone can paint. You won’t learn anything about the history of painting, or the process, or even what supplies one needs to pick up painting as a hobby. This show is strictly about vibing, and somehow, it works. Continue Reading →
Tiger
It’s one of the most well-documented sports stories of all time: widely regarded as one of the greatest to ever pick up a golf club, Tiger Woods has spent much of the last three decades under the intense media spotlight, where everything from his meteoric professional rise to his disturbing downfall has been chronicled—and scrutinized—in painstaking detail. With the help of investigative interviews with people from Woods’ past, directors Matthew Heineken and Matthew Hamachek attempt to pull back the curtain on the golfing great’s extraordinary journey in their new HBO docuseries, Tiger. Continue Reading →
繁华似锦
Viewers expecting the season finale to have an exciting climax will be disappointed, as characters and grim reality drive the ending.
Warning: don’t read until you’ve seen the episode!
I’m just going to come right out and say it: I know I’m going to be a lot easier on “Must/Can’t,” the finale of The Outsider, than other people. With the last few episodes a whole lot of nothing (well-acted nothing, but nothing all the same), expectations that the show would end with a horror movie-like confrontation between heroes and monster were high. Well, surprise -- it’s over barely halfway through the episode, and not the most action-packed ten minutes or so of television you’ll ever see. Despite its spooky, supernatural themes, The Outsider ended up being less about monsters and more about people, for better or worse.
But let’s move on and take a look at the casualty list that’s racked up before we even get to the opening credits. Deader than disco are Alec, Detective Andy (sad face!), Howie, and Seale. So, basically everybody you expected to get killed. Yunis (Yul Vazquez) is wounded, but alive. Also in very bad shape is Jack (Marc Menchaca) who, after successfully killing off more than half the team, is rewarded for his trouble with multiple rattlesnake bites. There are bosses from Hell, and then there’s El Cuco. Continue Reading →