The Best Comfort Shows to Watch When Life Is Doing Its Thing

Q: What's the best comfort show when you're sick?

King of the Hill . It's slow, every episode is self-contained, you can miss ten minutes walking to the kitchen and not lose the plot, and nobody ever dies. That's the exact spec for a sick day.

Q: What's the best comfort show after a breakup?

Season 1 of Ted Lasso . It's ten episodes, it takes kindness seriously, and it will make you cry in a productive way instead of the bad way you were already crying. If that's too on the nose, Schitt's Creek — a show about a family rebuilding from zero hits differently when you are rebuilding from zero.

Q: Are there any short comfort shows I can finish in a weekend?

Derry Girls is 19 episodes at 22 minutes. You can watch the whole thing in a day and a half. Detectorists is similarly tight. Both end cleanly, which matters — there is nothing worse than finding comfort in a show and discovering it got cancelled on a cliffhanger in 2019.

If you want the answer and you want to close this tab: put on Bob's Burgers. Start with Season 3, Episode 1 ("Ear-sy Rider"). It's the perfect comfort show because nothing truly bad ever happens, the family loves each other in a way your family probably doesn't, and the jokes are dense enough that you can half-watch it while crying into a bowl of cereal and still laugh. Twelve-plus seasons deep. Hulu and Disney+. You could die inside it.

The rest of this list is for the person who wants options — different flavors of comfort for different disasters. I've split them into tiers so you're not scrolling past five shows you already watched. Short version: Must-Watch is the stuff that works on almost anyone in almost any mood. Worth Your Time is the next tier. Only For Fans means it's a specific flavor, don't force it. And I put one Actual Skip at the end because comfort shows are the most lied-about category in streaming and someone has to tell you.

Quick framing. Comfort TV is not about quality. It's about a very particular chemical feeling: low stakes, warm tone, characters who don't betray each other for sport, and a house style the brain can predict three seconds ahead. Prestige TV will kill you in this state. You do not need to watch a man slowly lose his soul in Season 4 of Succession while you have the flu. You need King of the Hill.

Tier 1: Must-Watch

Bob's Burgers (2011– , 14 seasons, Hulu / Disney+)

Start with: Season 3, Episode 1, "Ear-sy Rider." If you don't laugh at a nine-year-old girl running a biker gang out of a burger joint, this show isn't for you and you should skip to the next one. Who'll love it: anyone who wanted The Simpsons but with a family that actually likes each other. Who'll bounce: people who need every joke underlined. Bob mumbles half his best lines. Time: 22 minutes an episode, 250+ episodes, effectively infinite. Status: ongoing, also a movie exists, nobody watched it but it's fine. Why it works right now: the Belchers are broke, stressed, behind on rent, and still fundamentally okay. That's the whole appeal. You are watching a family with worse problems than yours laugh through it. Louise alone is worth the subscription.

King of the Hill (1997–2010, 13 seasons, Hulu)

Start with: anywhere. Try Season 2, Episode 1, "How to Fire a Rifle Without Really Trying." Who'll love it: anyone who has ever stood in a driveway and said "yep" three times to a neighbor. Who'll bounce: people who need plot. This show is about a man who sells propane and is quietly disappointed in his son. Time: 22 minutes, 13 seasons. A month if you pace it. Status: ended, with a revival reportedly coming, which will probably ruin it but that's a problem for later. Why it works right now: it's the slowest show on this list. The pace is a valium. Hank Hill cares deeply about lawn care and doing the right thing and nothing terrible happens to anyone for 250 episodes. If you are sick on the couch this is the one. I will die on this hill.

The Great British Bake Off (2010– , 14+ seasons, Netflix)

Start with: the earliest season Netflix has — the Mary Berry years are warmer than the current ones. If you can find Season 5 (the "Nadiya" season), start there. Who'll love it: anyone, including people who hate reality TV. This is the only nice one. Who'll bounce: people who need stakes. The stakes are a cake. Time: 60 minutes, roughly 10 episodes a season. A weekend per season. Status: ongoing, cycled through several hosts, each slightly worse than the last but the format is bulletproof. Why it works right now: contestants compliment each other, help each other, and when someone cries the judges look genuinely sad about it. It is the only show on television where nobody is trying to win by destroying somebody else. In 2024 that is essentially a fantasy genre.

Schitt's Creek (2015–2020, 6 seasons, Hulu / Prime Video)

Start with: Season 2, Episode 1. Season 1 is fine but the show figures itself out in Season 2 and if you bail on the pilot you're bailing for the wrong reason. Schitt's Creek is also on Prime Video if Hulu isn't in your life. Who'll love it: anyone who liked Parks and Rec but wants it meaner for the first ten episodes and then softer than anything you've ever seen by the end. Who'll bounce: anyone who can't handle cringe in early episodes. Push through. Time: 22 minutes, 80 episodes. A long weekend. Status: ended cleanly, which almost no show does anymore. Why it works right now: it's a show about a family who loses everything and slowly discovers they actually love each other. If you are freshly dumped, this one will wreck you in a good way. Moira Rose's vocabulary alone is medicine.

Tier 2: Worth Your Time

Parks and Recreation (2009–2015, 7 seasons, Peacock / Prime Video)

Start with: Season 2, Episode 1. Season 1 is six episodes long and bad. Everyone says this, it's true, skip it. Available on Parks and Recreation on Prime. Who'll love it: people who need a workplace that's pathologically optimistic. Who'll bounce: people who found Leslie Knope exhausting the first time. She is still exhausting. Time: 22 minutes, 125 episodes. Two weeks. Status: ended, with one pandemic reunion special that we're all pretending didn't happen. Why it works right now: Ron Swanson. That's the whole pitch. A man who wants to be left alone to eat breakfast food is the patron saint of the sick day. The political satire has aged into a weird period piece about a time when people thought local government was a funny premise, but the friendships hold up.

Ted Lasso (2020–2023, 3 seasons, Apple TV+)

Start with: Season 1, Episode 1. The pilot actually works on this one. Who'll love it: anyone freshly dumped, anyone who works for a boss who hates them, anyone who needs a pep talk from a fictional man with a mustache. Who'll bounce: people who found Season 2 too sappy. They are correct but Season 1 is close to perfect. Time: 30 to 45 minutes, 34 episodes. A week. Status: ended, then un-ended — there's reportedly a Season 4 coming, which I have feelings about, but the original three seasons stand on their own. Why it works right now: it's the only recent show that takes kindness seriously as a subject. Not as a joke, not as irony. As the actual point. If you are mid-breakup, Season 1 of Ted Lasso is the medicine. If you are not mid-breakup, watch Season 1 anyway and skip the last four episodes of Season 2.

Derry Girls (2018–2022, 3 seasons, Netflix)

Start with: Season 1, Episode 1. Twenty-two minutes, you'll know. Who'll love it: anyone who had a group of weird friends in high school and misses them. Who'll bounce: anyone who can't handle a thick Northern Irish accent. Turn subtitles on and relax. Time: 22 minutes, 19 episodes total. A Saturday. Status: ended, perfectly, on its own terms. Why it works right now: it's set during the Troubles, which sounds like the opposite of comfort TV, but the show is really about five teenagers being idiots in a small town while history happens in the background. The finale is one of the best last episodes of any show this decade. Short, funny, warm, done.

Detectorists (2014–2022, 3 seasons + specials, Prime Video)

Start with: Season 1, Episode 1. It's slow on purpose. Who'll love it: anyone who wants a show about two men walking around a field looking for old coins and having quiet feelings about it. That sentence is the entire show. Here it is on Detectorists. Who'll bounce: anyone who needs plot momentum. There is none. That's the feature. Time: 30 minutes, 19 episodes plus a special. A long weekend. Status: ended, with a special in 2022 that served as a proper coda. Why it works right now: this is the off-the-beaten-path pick I want you to actually try. It's the most soothing show ever made. The theme song alone has probably saved lives. If King of the Hill is a valium, Detectorists is a warm bath. Almost nobody in America has seen it and that is our loss as a country.

Tier 3: Only For Fans

Gilmore Girls (2000–2007, 7 seasons, Netflix)

Start with: Season 1, Episode 1. Who'll love it: people who like fast talking, small-town New England, and can forgive the show for being a little insane about coffee. Who'll bounce: men, mostly, and anyone who can't handle the show's politics, which are the politics of a rich girl who thinks being quirky is a personality. Still good. Time: 45 minutes, 153 episodes. A serious commitment. Status: ended, plus a Netflix revival in 2016 that everyone agrees ended on the wrong four words. Why it works right now: the dialogue is so dense your brain has something to do while the rest of you recovers. Also, the autumn-in-Connecticut of it all is basically a scented candle in TV form.

Frasier (1993–2004, 11 seasons, Paramount+ / Hulu)

Start with: Season 3, Episode 1. The first two seasons are good but the show peaks mid-run. Who'll love it: anyone who likes jokes constructed the way Swiss watches are constructed. Who'll bounce: anyone who finds the whole premise — two pretentious radio psychiatrist brothers — too theater-kid. It is theater-kid. Time: 22 minutes, 264 episodes. Endless. Status: ended, then revived in 2023 for a version we're all choosing not to discuss. Watch the original. Why it works right now: it's one of the last sitcoms that was actually written like a play. Every episode has a farce structure. You can put on an episode from 1996 and your brain will not have to work at all. It is the sitcom equivalent of chicken soup, and I mean that technically.

The Great Pottery Throw Down (2015– , 7+ seasons, HBO Max)

Start with: any recent season. Who'll love it: anyone who loved Bake Off and wants the same energy but with a judge who cries every single episode. Who'll bounce: anyone who is not already on board with British competition shows where everyone is nice to each other. Time: 60 minutes, 10 episodes a season. A weekend. Status: ongoing, bounced networks, currently on HBO Max in the US. Why it works right now: Keith Brymer Jones, a large bearded man who judges ceramics, weeps openly when he sees a nice teapot. That's the show. He cries, you cry, we all cry, it's fine. Off-the-beaten-path pick number two.

Actual Skip

Emily in Paris (2020– , 4 seasons, Netflix)

I know it's on every comfort list. I know you've seen the thumbnails. No. This is not comfort. This is content — the kind of algorithmically generated visual noise Netflix makes when they want something to autoplay while you scroll your phone. It looks like comfort because it's bright and there are croissants. But the characters don't like each other, nothing is at stake, and the jokes do not land. Watching Emily in Paris while sick will make you more sick. I'm saving you. Put on Derry Girls instead.

FAQ

What's the best comfort show when you're sick?

King of the Hill. It's slow, every episode is self-contained, you can miss ten minutes walking to the kitchen and not lose the plot, and nobody ever dies. That's the exact spec for a sick day.

What's the best comfort show after a breakup?

Season 1 of Ted Lasso. It's ten episodes, it takes kindness seriously, and it will make you cry in a productive way instead of the bad way you were already crying. If that's too on the nose, Schitt's Creek — a show about a family rebuilding from zero hits differently when you are rebuilding from zero.

Are there any short comfort shows I can finish in a weekend?

Derry Girls is 19 episodes at 22 minutes. You can watch the whole thing in a day and a half. Detectorists is similarly tight. Both end cleanly, which matters — there is nothing worse than finding comfort in a show and discovering it got cancelled on a cliffhanger in 2019.

Why don't you have The Office or Friends on this list?

Because you've already seen them fourteen times and you don't need me to tell you. If you haven't: The Office Seasons 2 through 5 on Peacock, Friends on HBO Max, you know what they are, go.

What to watch tonight

Stop scrolling. Put on Bob's Burgers, Season 3, Episode 1. It's 22 minutes. If you hate it, you've lost 22 minutes and you can try King of the Hill next. If you love it, you have 250 more waiting. That's the whole plan. Close the tab, order something with cheese on it, and let the Belchers handle the rest of the night.

The Best Comfort Shows to Watch When Life Is Doing Its Thing

Stop watching slop.