Netflix & Chill (the tv recs thread)

House Hunters

That's it, that's ALWAYS my recommendation

and i've been watching Nailed It! recently

 

A lot of people have seen it, but as a general rec: The Haunting of Hill House is great for when you want a complete one season story. Horror with family drama and well done characters and character relationships.

 

sorry! when i'm active, i'm pretty fast at replying

although i will check out your recommendation and will agree that i am a ninja of sorts

 

The Rain on Netflix got a second season recently and I found the first one absolutely fantastic. Good story beats, good character relations--if you do watch it on Netflix and you're in the US though, strongly in favor of swapping back to the original Danish with subs. The dub isn't bad, but the mouth noises coming out of kilter with mouth movement was a bit unsettling.

On HGTV (which Moony and I were watching ad nauseaum while he was recovering from surgery), the show Fixer Upper is genuinely delightful? We started calling the couple that stars in it Our Favorite Heterosexuals because they've got a wonderful marriage, absolutely none of the forced cattiness that other Married-Couple-Fixes-Houses shows have, their design aesthetic was 100% up our alley, and there's not really any producer meddling created drama either. It's just a good show.

 

I recently LOVED Tales From The City. It's such a well crafted story that's only one season (it's a mini series) and it has beautiful aesthetics <3

 

There's a good miniseries called cooked that I adore on Netflix, it follows the elements fire, water, air, and earth to describe how food can be transformed from good to great. My favorite episode is the fermentation one because of course it is. Features a nun with a biochem degree if that sweetens the pot for anyone, she's neat.

And I've just started good omens literally an hour ago and I am hooked. It's on Amazon prime and it's Very Good

 

I have a weakness for specialty art competitions (e.g. face off, Ellen's design challenge, project runway) and Netflix's newest creation, blown away, is a blast! Glassblowing is so neat

 

Blown Away is really awesome, it really showcases the skills without using a bunch of drama as filler, as much of these programs tend to do.

 

Cartoon recs? Cartoon recs. I'll add more later because I have a lot, but here's a few for now.

Steven Universe: Obviously. Follows the adventures of the titular boy and his magical sentient rock alien guardians, which I promise makes sense in context. Incredibly rich characterization and an intricately-woven plot; I seriously cannot recommend it highly enough. Five seasons so far; first four are on Hulu.

Gravity Falls: Twin siblings Dipper and Mabel go to the titular Oregon town for the summer, and discover that it harbors a lot of strange supernatural secrets. Plot-heavy with delightful characters, and rather accurately described by the creator as "Twin Peaks meets The Simpsons." Two seasons (complete), both on Hulu.

Disenchantment: A fantasy show from the creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, about a princess, an elf, and the princess' literal personal demon. Actually has a running plot, unlike Matt Groening's other shows (not that I don't highly recommend those two as well, of course--it's just different!), and while it's early yet it's intriguing! One season so far (season 2 to be released September 22nd I believe), Netflix original.

 

If you need something soothing and/or background watching/listening may I reccomend:

Queer Eye: More Than a Makeover
Can be uneven episode to episode with how much confrontation happens between the guys and the make over-ee, but the second and third season are chill.
Four seasons, I haven't watched the fourth. Netflix

Tidying up with Marie Kondo
Watch people go from hoarders to happier people with places for their stuff. Marie speaks Japanese a lot, so there are times you do have to read the screen.
One season, Netflix

Love Your Garden
"Martha has bones made of glass and is doing her best despite it. Her garden is a patch of dirt with a single tree because she's so busy going to doctor's appointments. We're going to give her the best garden for her in one weekend!" British
Eight seasons, 50 episodes total, one season on Netflix

 

MORE CARTOONS.

Futurama: A pizza delivery boy gets cryogenically frozen by accident (or WAS it?) on New Year’s Eve, 1999, and awakens a thousand years in the future. One of the funniest—and most emotional—shows I’ve ever seen. Heads-up that the last few seasons are a bit inconsistent, but they still have a lot of good episodes! (If you don’t wanna worry about the quality being a bit hit-or-miss, you can stop at The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings, but yeah.) Complete; not sure how many seasons Hulu claims it has, as the ordering and such is wonky on there (though since it’s pretty episodic that’s not a huge deal), but it’s all on Hulu.

Rick And Morty: An alcoholic asshole mad scientist and his awkward grandson go on adventures. Has a ton of REALLY interesting concepts, applied very well—I’m especially fond of how it uses multiverse theory! Three seasons so far, all on Hulu.

 

Fire Force is a series made by the guy behind Soul Eater. Its anime adaptation just started and it is beautiful as shit. Like Soul Eater it has a weird and cool looking setting, a fun fighting system, and a cast of characters that wobble back and forth between goofy and serious. Its main character's fighting style can be best described as violently breakdancing in midair while actively burning. Someone else uses the same principle behind how refrigeration works to turn fire into giant fucking icicles that he launches out of a tuba gun. The manga is also cutting to the chase and not waffling for 100 chapters regarding its mysteries. So if you get frustrated by waffling about with the plot threads then Fire Force's pacing might be to your liking.

Also the anime just started. There's only two episodes out now. Soon to be three. So it'd be very easy to hop into it now and watch this shit unfold in extremely pretty animation. Like, one thing that stands out to me is that. Given how mobile Shinra is due to how his powers work (he shoots fire out of his feet and create explosive blasts if he charges it up which can launch him any which way) it's really important to capture the dynamic fluidity and violent explosiveness to how he fights. And they're making real good use of like. The sort of cgi that lets ufotable's fight scenes be so dynamic and flowing on their small budgets. And lovely closeups mixed with bursts of sound to drive home the feel of 'oh man. he's revving the fuck up.' Shinra looks and feels how he should in animation. And it looks really, really rad.

And I mean it's a series by Ohkubo about magical pyrokinetic fire fighters battling demons spawned from spontaneous human combustions for the safety of Neo-Tokyo and also for the Sun God. It's weird, it's fun, it's touching. It's just good shit.

Dr. Stone also just started an anime series. Which if you've ever wanted your shonen protagonist to not be a meathead and instead a fucking nerd who can explain to you how to make various kinds of acid and what those can be used for. Then Dr. Stone may be what you're looking for. The premise is that the Earth just kind of. Got hit by a meteor or something and suddenly everyone turned to stone, save things like lions. After thousands of years two boys manage to burst out of their stone prisons and have to kickstart the development of humanity with science. We're gonna fucking speedrun to smart phones while dealing with another boy of very questionable morals and absurd amounts of strength. I've not read too far into the manga yet, but from what I hear it's a fun and interesting romp so far. And also I mean. It's just so different in concept from how a lot of popular shonen are. We don't have a hyper physically competent hero. We just have a fucking nerd who knows how to make and use gunpowder. And he's up against the sort of villain you'd want to throw a Goku at. That's weird and different. As with Fire Force its anime just started recently. So you don't have to work a huge backlog of episodes.

 

Fire force also has a protag that grins when nervous/scared/grief stricken, and goddam if that's not relatable

 

Ok so I'm not sure where else to put this so I am going to put it here for right now. So Sealed Only Yugioh is a youtube series by Nhymnim where he plays Yugioh with a few basic rules. First rule? Only sealed product. Can't buy singles. Second rule? No trades. It'd be too easy to trade for stuff he needs. Third rule? 40 dollar budget for each week. His end goal? To top YCS. Aka one of the big boy tournaments. The problem is he's limited to just sealed product and he's starting off how a lot of kids started off with Yugioh: Buying three copies of a structure deck.

The series has some pretty nice production values on it. Nice editing and cinematography, good music. But like the big appeal of it is like...It's the heart of the cards. Like he's going out there playing Yugioh like how a lot of kids played the game. Buying sealed product and praying that they get the cool shit they wanted. And there's an extra sort of excitement to the pack opening aspect of it because holy shit that's the only way he can get stuff. The videos themselves consist of pack opening, deck rearrangement and talking about the general gameplan, going to locals and taking it for a spin, and a final talk about how the deck's doing right now based off the locals results.

Overall it's a really cool series with like a narrative and stuff and it's just kind of harrowing to see. Like holy shit dude you pulled off a win with a deck that's just three structure decks stapled together? DUDE.

 

I Found these on youtube, they were made by the BBC:
The [Era] Farm series featuring Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn, and usually Alex Langland. There is also a Caste and Pharmacy series. All of these have historians and archaeologists working on a farm with period appropriate materials and basically seeing how they fare.