In this piece · 14 sections+
If you only click one thing on this list, make it Planet Earth II on Max. David Attenborough is 97 years old and still narrating a sloth swimming across a river like it's the most important thing that has ever happened, and when you're stoned, he's right. It is. The footage is in 4K, the sound design is insane, the stakes are life and death for a lizard, and you don't have to follow a plot because there isn't one. It's the consensus pick for best shows to watch high for a reason. The rest of this list is for after you've done that and you're looking for something weirder.
What follows is 11 shows that actually reward the stoned brain — slow pacing, dense visuals, comedy that loops back on itself, worlds you can fall into. I've skipped the obvious played-out picks. No Rick and Morty. You've seen it. Everyone has seen it. The fandom ruined it and honestly the back half of the show did too. No Family Guy either. If you're 34 and watching Family Guy high, I'm not going to stop you but I'm also not going to help.
Here's what actually works.
Planet Earth II
Why it works stoned: Every frame is engineered to look like God directed it. Slow, wide, absurd animal behavior. Attenborough's voice is a weighted blanket. No plot to lose.
Where to watch: Max
Start with: "Islands" — episode 1. The iguana vs. snakes sequence is the one your friend was yelling about.
This show is so good it makes you feel like a better person for 50 minutes. You will text someone you haven't talked to in a year. You will consider donating to something. Then the episode ends and you order food. Balance.
I Think You Should Leave
Why it works stoned: Sketches are three minutes long. Each one is a small escalating nightmare. Perfect sober, unhinged high.
Where to watch: Netflix
Start with: Season 1, Episode 1. The hot dog car sketch. You already know.
Tim Robinson is the only person on television right now who seems genuinely insane in a useful way. The show operates at one volume — screaming — and somehow that's the right volume when you're on the couch. Watch two episodes. Any more and your brain starts rewriting itself.
Joe Pera Talks With You
Why it works stoned: Slowest show on television. A soft-spoken middle school choir teacher in Michigan tells you about breakfast foods and the rat race. It is the opposite of anxiety.
Where to watch: Max (for now, who knows what they'll call it next week)
Start with: "Joe Pera Talks You Back to Sleep" — Season 1, Episode 4. Or the one where he hears Baba O'Riley for the first time. Life-changing.
Cartoon Network canceled this show because of course they did. It was quiet, gentle, and had nothing in it for the engagement metrics. So obviously it had to go. Watch it and be sad about the state of everything, but like, in a nice way.
Nathan For You
Why it works stoned: The premise is simple and the execution is insane. Real small businesses. Real people. One Canadian weirdo with a business degree ruining their lives for your entertainment.
Where to watch: Paramount+ (it moves around, check it)
Start with: "Dumb Starbucks" — Season 2, Episode 5. Or the finale, "Finding Frances," which is actually a two-hour movie and one of the best things made in the last decade.
Nathan Fielder is operating on a frequency that the human ear was not designed to pick up. When you're high, you can hear it. The long pauses. The way he stares. The moment when a real person realizes they've made a terrible mistake trusting him. Art.
The Rehearsal
Why it works stoned: It's Nathan but with an HBO budget and existential dread. He builds full-scale replicas of real bars and rehearses conversations. Then it gets much weirder.
Where to watch: Max
Start with: Season 1, Episode 1 — "Orange Juice, No Pulp." You have to start from the beginning.
The second season has a fake airplane and an actual cliffhanger about commercial aviation safety. I am not making this up. You will think you're imagining it. You're not. HBO gave a man millions of dollars and he used it to stage human psychology experiments and sing to a baby. Incredible country we live in.
The Curse
Why it works stoned: Visually it's shot like the camera is watching the characters through a window from across the street. Deeply uncomfortable. Weirdly hypnotic. Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder ruining a town in New Mexico.
Where to watch: Paramount+ / Showtime
Start with: Season 1, Episode 1 — "Land of Enchantment." Yes you have to commit.
The ending of this show will be the only thing you think about for 72 hours. I'm not going to spoil it. I'll just say: watch it with someone. You're going to need to process it. Possibly with a therapist. Not a stoner pick in the traditional sense, but if you're the type who wants your brain rearranged, this is the one.
Community
Why it works stoned: Dense jokes, deep character work, entire episodes that are parodies of other genres. The paintball episodes. The Dungeons and Dragons episode. Comfort food for people who used to post on Tumblr.
Where to watch: Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video — it's everywhere
Start with: "Modern Warfare" — Season 1, Episode 23. If you love it, start over from the pilot.
Dan Harmon is a lot of things but the man knows how to write a sitcom. The first three seasons are a masterclass. Season 4 is the dark year. Seasons 5 and 6 pull it back. Six seasons and a movie — the movie is finally actually happening, which is funny because the joke used to be that it never would.
Adventure Time
Why it works stoned: It's an 11-minute cartoon that looks like a kids' show and is secretly a meditation on mortality, heartbreak, and the end of the world. The world-building is insanely deep. The colors are great.
Where to watch: Max
Start with: Honestly, just start at Season 1, Episode 1. It gets weirder and better as it goes.
If you haven't watched Adventure Time as an adult, you're missing one of the most quietly ambitious shows of the 2010s. A cartoon about a boy and his dog becomes, over ten years, a post-apocalyptic epic about what's worth preserving. And they did it on a Cartoon Network budget while the executives weren't looking.
High Maintenance
Why it works stoned: Literally made for this. Each episode is a vignette about New Yorkers, connected by a weed delivery guy on a bike. No plot carries over. Low stakes. Funny, sad, human.
Where to watch: Max
Start with: The HBO pilot, or if you want to go back, the original web series is on Vimeo and it's free.
This is the thinking person's stoner show — and I mean that as a compliment. It's about loneliness and connection in a city where everyone's on their phone, and it happens to be framed around a guy selling weed. Nobody yells. Nobody gets a dramatic monologue. It just is.
BoJack Horseman
Why it works stoned: The visual jokes in the background of every frame. The world-building (everyone's an animal and nobody comments on it). The way it starts as a silly cartoon and ends up being one of the most honest depressions ever put on screen.
Where to watch: Netflix
Start with: Pilot. You have to earn the later stuff. Season 1 is slow — push through.
By season 4 this show is doing things no other animated series has done. The underwater episode. The eulogy episode. The one that's just a monologue. It's the rare prestige animation that actually uses the medium. Also — fair warning — do not watch the last three episodes high. You will not recover.
Our Flag Means Death
Why it works stoned: Gentle pirate comedy. Taika Waititi. Rhys Darby. Lush costumes, bright colors, jokes that work on a six-second delay. Low stakes in the best way.
Where to watch: Max
Start with: Season 1, Episode 1 — "Pilot."
Max canceled this one too, because that is what Max does. They make a show, find an audience, build goodwill, and then a guy in a suit decides the line on a spreadsheet is wrong and kills it. Watch it anyway. It's one of the warmest shows of the last five years, and we are not getting a season three, so savor it.
A few more that belong on any honest list of stoner TV shows
If you've done all of the above: Atlanta (FX on Hulu) for the dream-logic vibes, Mr. Show if you can find it for the sketch canon, The Great British Bake Off (Netflix) because watching people make bread is medicine, and Twin Peaks: The Return (Paramount+ / Showtime) if you want to be genuinely unsettled and see what David Lynch does when Showtime gives him $80 million and says don't worry about it.
FAQ
What's the best show to watch while high?
Planet Earth II on Max. It's the universal answer for a reason — the pacing is slow, the visuals are immaculate, Attenborough's voice is a controlled substance unto itself, and you don't have to track a plot. If you want comedy instead, I Think You Should Leave on Netflix. Sketches are short, the escalation is insane, and there's zero homework.
Are there good shows for a first-time high?
Yes — avoid anything with heavy plot or psychological horror. Your brain is going to be working harder than usual and then also not at all. Go with something visually lush and low-stakes. Planet Earth II, Joe Pera Talks With You, or The Great British Bake Off. Do NOT start with Twin Peaks: The Return, The Curse, or the last season of BoJack. You will have a bad night and blame me.
What's better to watch stoned — dumb comedy or prestige drama?
Honest answer: neither, if we're being strict about it. The best TV for when you're high is usually in the middle — shows with real craft that don't require you to lock in. Nathan For You, Community, Adventure Time. Pure dumb comedy gets boring fast because your attention is actually elevated, not lowered. Pure prestige drama is too much work and you'll pause it seven times to ask what just happened. Aim for the middle.
Any good anime to watch high?
The canonical pick is Mushishi (Crunchyroll / various) — episodic, painterly, folklore vibes, nothing bad really happens. Samurai Champloo holds up for the hip-hop score alone. Mob Psycho 100 is visually out of its mind. Skip the long shonen stuff unless you're deep in it already. Nobody wants to start One Piece at 11pm on a Tuesday.
Are there any new shows worth watching stoned right now?
The Rehearsal Season 2 if you want to feel unhinged. The Curse if you want to feel worse. Otherwise the streamers are in a bit of a slump — most of the new stuff is algorithm-generated slop, which I write about weekly, mostly as a coping mechanism. The classics on this list are classics for a reason. They were made back when people still tried.
One more thing
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