35 Best TV Shows Similar to The Big Bang Theory (Page 2)
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An often-overlooked decade for horror gets the spotlight, & we’ll tell you what to watch & what to skip.
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the work being covered here wouldn't exist.
Hurry up and finish watching everything in the Criterion Channel’s High School Horror collection, because they’re doing it again with a brand new one devoted to 90s horror, starting today. Unlike last year’s expansive 80s Horror offering, there’s just eleven films in this collection, with three more coming in November and December. That’s cleverly reflective of the state of horror in the 90s, as are some of the selected films stretching the definition of “horror.” Continue Reading →
Still Up
SimilarAll Creatures Great & Small, American Dragon: Jake Long, Chicken Nugget, Cooking Crush, Men Behaving Badly, My School President, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, The Boondocks,
Night owls and insomniacs will tell you it's special being awake while most of your family, friends, and community slumber. How sometimes weightless and creative you can feel when everyone else strives for that healthy rest. They’ll also often tell you how lonely and frustrating it can be. Wandering your home or the world outside all alone because their bodies’ circadian rhythm actually makes sense. Continue Reading →
The Golden Girls
NetworkNBC,
Similar'Allo 'Allo!, Alice, Astro Boy, Catterick, Complete Savages, Fawlty Towers, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace,
Great News I Dream of Jeannie, Joey, LA to Vegas, Men Behaving Badly, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Off Centre, Peep Show,
Red Dwarf Supernova, Taxi, That '70s Show,
The Cara Williams Show The Comeback,
The John Larroquette Show The Munsters, The Simpsons, 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
SimilarFull Circle,
Gossip Girl Kate & Allie, New Amsterdam, Nine: Nine Time Travels, Nothing Remains the Same, Off Centre, Person of Interest, Rescue Me, Sweetbitter, Tarzan, Taxi, The Alienist, The Beat, The Comeback, The Equalizer, The Many Faces of Ito, The Strain, You,
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 →
Mission: Impossible
From De Palma's series launcher on, Cruise has used the tales of Ethan Hunt to ponder the nature of cinema as performance, perception, and manipulation.
The Mission: Impossible movies begin in perhaps the most inauspicious fashion possible: a computer tech, played by Emilio Estevez, watching security camera footage of clandestine crime scene clean-up. One of the men he's watching happens to be Tom Cruise in heavy prosthetics and a wig. It's an odd opening for an eight-film mega-franchise, a globe-trotting stunt spectacular that has attracted some of the world's biggest stars and most interesting actors—America's answer to Bond movies. But as the opening to a Brian De Palma movie, it's a no-brainer. Of course it starts with a dorky guy in a cramped little room watching unappealing CCTV footage of a crime of passion. That's De Palma.
Though Robert Towne wrote the script (he and Cruise were friends and artistic confidants; Cruise produced his 1998 movie Without Limits), the film is thoroughly De Palma's, never more so than when indulging in its covert operations. He films the opening sting from Cruise's POV, and its dizzying effect is rather like the opening to Dario Argento's Opera or its fellow perverse Italian horror thrillers. It is always disconcerting when movie characters address us but speak to someone else when we see what the hero sees see but cannot control what they do. We are seeing a performance from the inside, knowing that if the scene doesn't go off without a hitch, it could mean death for the man whose eyes we've been given for the duration. The Mission: Impossible movies have since changed directors four times, but their central tenet remains: they are about performance. They are about making movies to make sense of a senseless world. Continue Reading →
Mulligan
SimilarAmerican Dad!, Family Guy, The Boondocks, The Simpsons,
StarringSam Richardson,
Mulligan may be an animated comedy about a ragtag group of survivors of an alien attack on Earth. However, Hardcore 30 Rock fans will quickly discover Netflix’s new animated series feels pretty familiar to the early-aughts sitcom. First, there’s the fast-paced comedic timing, a signature of producers Robert Carlock, Tina Fey, and Sam Means. Next, both series feature the infectious, bouncy music of Jeff Richmond. Finally, both got off to a bit of a rough start. Still, just like hang gliding over an apocalyptic alien attack, Mulligan’s an amusing, wild journey that rewards viewers who hang on for the ride. Continue Reading →
Extrapolations
SimilarMurder Most Horrid, Pope John Paul II, Santa Evita, The Gold Robbers, Three Days of Christmas, White House Plumbers,
Much of the pre-release buzz about AppleTV+’s new original series Extrapolations was concerned with its potential to be preachy. In much the same way this writer doesn’t mind a bit of emotional manipulation in entertainment, I can be fine with preachiness. Some things are worth preaching about. Extrapolations’ flaw isn’t that it has a soapbox and is using it. It’s that it’s such a mess. Continue Reading →
Mythic Quest
SimilarCatterick, Men Behaving Badly,
Red Dwarf Studio3 Arts Entertainment,
One of the hardest things in television is creating the impression of change without breaking the show or making it feel like half-assed window dressing. That’s the problem facing Mythic Quest at the start of Season 3. Continue Reading →
Bad Sisters
SimilarCatterick, Murder Most Horrid, The Summer I Turned Pretty, Three Days of Christmas,
StudioABC Signature,
From Promising Young Women to Big Little Lies, we’re in a golden age of female revenge stories. Looking to add to the ranks is AppleTV+’s new series Bad Sisters. It follows the tight-knit group of sisters who slowly turn on their prick-ish brother-in-law after years of misogynistic torture. It’s a dash of thriller Big Little Lies with a sprinkle of the comedy of 9 to 5, all set in a coastal Irish town. Continue Reading →
I Love That for You
NetworkShowtime,
StudioShowtime Networks,
Vanessa Bayer, known for her time on SNL, joins the ranks of recent alums hitting the TV market with her own show, I Love That For You. Writing and starring, Bayer plays Joanna Gold, a Midwestern woman chasing her dream. At the start, she breaks free of her coddling parents and Costco career. She then achieves her dream of becoming a host on QVC-esque Special Value Network (SVN). Continue Reading →
Dr. Death
NetworkPeacock,
SimilarAre You Afraid of the Dark?, Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King,
Dr. Death borrows its tantalizing title from the Wondery podcast, which similarly breaks down a harrowing true story about a neurosurgeon who — for whatever reason — keeps killing or permanently harming his patients on the operating table. Continue Reading →
Resident Alien
NetworkSyfy,
SimilarDoom Patrol, Il Mondo di Yor, V Wars, Wizards vs Aliens,
Syfy’s new show Resident Alien starts out with a bang: an alien crashes on Earth and hides out in the sleepy town of Patience, Colorado. The alien takes the human form of Dr. Harry Vanderspeigle (Alan Tudyk) in order to fit in and complete his as-yet-unclear mission. However, when the town doctor is found dead, local Sheriff Mike Thompson (Corey Reynolds), Deputy Liv Baker (Elizabeth Bowen), and Mayor Ben Hawthorne (Levi Fiehler) rope Harry into the murder investigation. Continue Reading →
BoJack Horseman
As TV’s best series about mental illness and addiction comes to an end, our hero BoJack doesn’t get closure, exactly (because there’s really no such thing), but is further down the road to self-awareness and real insight than he ever was. He may end up making yet another bad decision based both on self-loathing and selfishness, but there has to be some reason he keeps getting another chance, another hit at the reset button. If you’ve ever struggled with depression and/or addiction, then you know how both wonderful and absolutely terrifying that feels. Though the final season stumbles a bit with extended bits on cancel culture and open relationships, it ends on a subtle, melancholy note: “Life’s a bitch, and then you go on living.” [Gena Radcliffe] Continue Reading →