Since beginning the quarantine and watching my social life disappear not-so-slowly, I’ve been relying on what HBO, Hulu, and Netflix have to offer. While settling into my new identity as a serial binge-watcher, I’ve become obsessed with a few new TV series, all mostly dramas. If you’re anything like me, and find yourself desperate to live vicariously through the quarantine-free characters in a TV series, here are five short-seasoned shows I recommend checking out.
- Big Little Lies
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Okay, so fine—this isn’t my first time watching. I watched BLL in the fall for the first time, and became completely obsessed with it. This HBO 2-season drama follows the story of five women who find themselves entangled in problems involving relationships, motherhood, and even murder. It’s a great show if you’re looking for something deep, dramatic, and a little mysterious. I watched the series for the second time, mostly because I couldn’t resist the killer cast, which includes Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley, and Nicole Kidman, but also because the show itself is super intriguing. I definitely recommend this one if you’re looking for something good to watch!
- Sharp Objects
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This series on HBO starring the one-and-only Amy Adams is actually adapted from a Gillian Flynn (author of Gone Girl) novel. I read this book last summer, and it was so good that when I saw this 8-episode season on HBO, I didn’t hesitate to begin watching. The story follows a journalist who returns to her hometown to cover the disappearance of a young girl, while being forced to reconnect with her troubling family back home. This show is quite dark, as it follows a murder investigation, but it has so many twists and turns throughout the plot that make it a super fun watch—the book is even better, too!
- Euphoria
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I had a pretty weird experience watching this next show. I watched the first episode, and though I knew I loved Zendaya, I was unsure if I was going to keep watching. I found the show to be very heavy at first. They cover some serious topics in this show—substance abuse, mental illness, and sexuality, just to name a few. That being said, the more I watched, the more I fell in love with each character, and I became very invested in the show as a whole. Now having finished the season, I highly recommend watching it if you can, as the heaviness of it makes for an extremely meaningful, touching, and brutally realistic portrayal of the plight of complex teenagers going through high school.
- Cheer
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Okay, this is probably the lightest of the shows I’ve listed here, but it’s not lacking in drama at all. This show is a docu-series on Netflix that centers around the cheer team at Navarro College in Texas. In the show, we meet all of the members of the team and watch them on their journey to compete in College Nationals in Daytona, Florida. This show gave me a whole new level of respect for cheerleaders and cheer coaches, and it was also interesting to learn about their personal lives, too. (I now follow most of the cast on Instagram). It’s a pretty short series, but definitely worth the watch!
- Little Fires Everywhere
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So this show is a Hulu original starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, and I have been completely obsessed with it. So far there are only 6 episodes out, but the season will consist of 8 episodes, which release every Wednesday. The show follows the uncomfortable dynamic between a white family in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and a single black mother and her daughter who have just moved to town. The series is based off of a novel by Celeste Ng, and it takes place in the 90s. It’s full of relationship drama, the struggle with race prejudices, and of course, some crime of arson that the show centers around. I highly recommend starting this series if you have Hulu!
After finishing all five of these series, I have since moved on to watching at least 10 episodes of “Sex and the City” every day, and yes—I reccommend that too.