Best Shows to Watch When You Just Moved: 11 Picks to Fill the Empty Apartment

Start with Severance on Apple TV+. Specifically season 1, episode 1. You just moved. Your brain is split in half already — the you who signed the lease and the you who has to assemble the IKEA bed at 11 p.m. A show about a man whose work self and home self have been surgically separated is the exact frequency you're vibrating on right now. It's also actually good, which matters because your attention span is cooked and you can't afford to waste a night on something mid.

Moving does a specific thing to a person. The apartment echoes. You don't know which drawer the forks are in. Your old routines are gone and your new ones haven't shown up yet. You need television that fills the room without demanding too much of you, because you've already used today's decision-making budget figuring out which wall the TV goes on. Below are eleven shows calibrated for that exact state. Some are great. Some are comfort food. A couple are weird on purpose.

Tier 1: Drop Everything (if the Wi-Fi's hooked up)

Severance (2022, 2 seasons, Apple TV+)

Starter episode: Season 1, episode 1 — the pilot is the show. If the fluorescent-lit office hallway doesn't hook you in twenty minutes, bail. Who'll love it, who'll bounce: If you liked Lost and Mad Men had a baby in a Brutalist office park, yes. If you want anything resolved quickly, no. Time commitment: 19 episodes, roughly an hour each. Two long weekends or three slow weeks. Status: Ongoing, season 3 is in production. Adam Scott plays a guy whose work self and home self never meet, which is roughly how you feel unpacking a box of kitchen stuff at midnight. The show's whole aesthetic is sterile empty rooms with weird lighting. You know what else is a sterile empty room with weird lighting? Your new apartment. The match is cosmic.

🏆 DROP EVERYTHING

The Bear (2022, 3 seasons, Hulu)

Starter episode: Season 1, episode 1 — twenty-eight minutes, and by the end you know if you can handle people yelling in Chicago kitchens. Who'll love it, who'll bounce: If you liked Uncut Gems or anything where the characters' blood pressure is yours by the end of the episode, yes. If you need calm, this show is a stress aneurysm. Time commitment: 28 episodes, mostly half-hours. A real week. Status: Ongoing, season 4 confirmed. Carmy inherits his dead brother's sandwich shop and tries to drag it into fine dining while everyone screams. The show is about broken people trying to build something in a space that doesn't work yet. If you squint, that's your apartment. Season 2's episode 6, "Fishes," is one of the best hours of television of the decade and will make your family seem functional by comparison, which is a service.

🏆 DROP EVERYTHING

Tier 2: Worth It

Fleabag (2016, 2 seasons, Prime Video)

Starter episode: Season 1, episode 1. Twenty-four minutes. If Phoebe Waller-Bridge talking directly into the camera about her sex life isn't your frequency, you'll know fast. Who'll love it, who'll bounce: If you liked Catastrophe or any British comedy that's secretly a grief show, yes. If you need the fourth wall intact, bounce. Time commitment: 12 episodes, 25 minutes each. A single sad Saturday. Status: Ended, perfectly. Season 2 is one of the few seasons of TV that justifies the word "perfect." A woman who runs a failing guinea-pig-themed café in London processes grief by sleeping with inappropriate men and glancing at the audience. The reason it works for the just-moved mood is she's also alone in a space that doesn't fit her, surrounded by family she can't tolerate, trying to invent a self. You have twelve hours. You have the time.

🏆 DROP EVERYTHING

Reservation Dogs (2021, 3 seasons, Hulu)

Starter episode: Season 1, episode 1 — thirty minutes and the whole tone is there. Who'll love it, who'll bounce: If you liked Atlanta or Letterkenny, you're home. If you need plot engines, this show meanders on purpose and that's the whole point. Time commitment: 28 episodes, half-hours. A long weekend. Status: Ended after three seasons, on its own terms, which almost never happens anymore. Four Indigenous teenagers in rural Oklahoma plan to leave their small town for California, except the show is actually about why you don't leave, and when you do, what you carry. You just moved. Watch a show about the gravity of the place you came from. It's funny, it's sad, Sterlin Harjo doesn't waste a frame, and nobody in it talks like a press release.

✅ WORTH IT

Patriot (2015, 2 seasons, Prime Video)

Starter episode: Season 1, episode 1. If you aren't on board by the second folk song the main character sings into a tape recorder about assassinating a nuclear engineer, this isn't for you. Who'll love it, who'll bounce: If you liked Barry or Fargo (the show), yes. If you need jokes with telegraphed punchlines, you'll be lost. Time commitment: 18 episodes, 45 minutes each. Two weeks if you're pacing. Status: Cancelled after season 2, which is a crime, but it ends in a reasonable place. Nobody watched this show. That's the pitch. Amazon forgot it existed, which is on-brand for Amazon. It's about an undercover intelligence officer with crippling PTSD who processes everything by writing acoustic folk songs about his missions. It's hilarious and bleak and shot like a Wes Anderson movie that got sad. Watching an orphaned prestige show while you yourself live in an apartment nobody has visited yet is spiritually correct. Start a Prime Video free trial if you need the push.

✅ WORTH IT

Shōgun (2024, 1 season, Hulu)

Starter episode: Season 1, episode 1. The ten-hour commitment announces itself in the first twenty minutes. Who'll love it, who'll bounce: If you liked the first three seasons of Game of Thrones when it still cared about politics, yes. If you need the cast to speak English, bounce — most of this is subtitled Japanese and better for it. Time commitment: 10 episodes, an hour each. A long weekend if you lock in. Status: Season 1 ended cleanly; FX ordered more, but you can stop there. An English navigator washes up in feudal Japan and gets used as a pawn by a shogun playing a long political game. It's prestige television that doesn't lecture you — the themes live inside the plot where they belong. For a just-moved mood: the whole show is about being a stranger in a space you don't understand yet, which should feel familiar when you can't find a working outlet in your bedroom.

✅ WORTH IT

Tier 3: Background TV (the Boxes-Aren't-Unpacking-Themselves Tier)

The Great British Bake Off (2010, 15+ seasons, Netflix)

Starter episode: Any season 3 through 7 episode. The Mary Berry years. Avoid the Prue Leith era until you're hooked. Who'll love it, who'll bounce: If you need to lower your heart rate, yes. If you need stakes, there are none, that's the point. Time commitment: Infinite. Each episode is an hour. Put it on, assemble a shelf, come back. Status: Ongoing forever. People say nice things to each other, then one of them cries about a tart. The tent is in a field. The music is a flute. This is the single best show on television to have on in the background while you figure out which box the toilet paper is in. There's a reason every anxious person on earth defaults to it.

✅ WORTH IT

Taskmaster (2015, 18+ series, YouTube/various)

Starter episode: Series 7, episode 1. Series 7 is the gateway drug — Kerry Godliman, James Acaster, Rhod Gilbert. Then go backwards or forwards. Who'll love it, who'll bounce: If you liked panel comedies or Whose Line, yes. If you can't track British comedians by name, you adapt by episode three. Time commitment: Hundreds of hours exist on YouTube for free. Watch forever. Status: Ongoing, immortal. Greg Davies and Alex Horne make five British comedians do stupid tasks for a trophy. The whole show is on YouTube officially, which is a miracle. For a just-moved mood this is ideal because every episode resets, there's no plot to track, and you can take a phone call in the middle without losing anything. Also it's the funniest show on earth and nobody in America knows this.

✅ WORTH IT

Letterkenny (2016, 12 seasons, Hulu)

Starter episode: Season 1, episode 1 — six minutes of two guys on a porch arguing about hockey tells you if you're in. Who'll love it, who'll bounce: If you liked Trailer Park Boys or any show where regional dialect is the engine, yes. If you need urban, bounce. Time commitment: Short episodes, mostly 22 minutes. You can watch one between unpacking a box and lying down. Status: Ended, with a sequel series called Shoresy that's also good. Small-town Ontario farmers, hockey players, and skids insult each other at a thousand words per minute. There's no serialized story to speak of, which is the point. You can drop in anywhere, laugh for twenty minutes, close the laptop, go look for your toothbrush.

🛋️ BACKGROUND TV

Tier 4: Only for Fans

Dark (2017, 3 seasons, Netflix)

Starter episode: Season 1, episode 1. German, subtitled, do not skip to the dub. Who'll love it, who'll bounce: If you liked Twin Peaks: The Return and want to take notes while watching TV, yes. If your brain is fried from moving boxes, this will defeat you. Status: Ended, planned as a trilogy, which it actually completed. Time commitment: 26 episodes, roughly an hour each. A month. Four families in a small German town get tangled up in time travel across three generations, and the plot is so dense people make flowcharts. The reason this is in the "only for fans" tier for a just-moved person is you probably can't give it the attention it needs. But if you've got one empty week before the new job starts, lock the door and go.

✅ WORTH IT

The Rehearsal (2022, 2 seasons, HBO Max)

Starter episode: Season 1, episode 1 — the premise locks in by minute fifteen. Who'll love it, who'll bounce: If you liked Nathan For You, you already know. If you've never seen Nathan Fielder work, start with that first. Time commitment: 12 episodes, roughly 45 minutes. A couple of nights. Status: Ongoing. Nathan Fielder builds elaborate real-world simulations to help real people rehearse difficult conversations, and then the show eats itself. Season 2 is about airline pilot safety and somehow becomes the strangest hour of television of the year. For the just-moved mood: you are also, in a sense, rehearsing a new life in a new apartment. The show makes that feel less insane.

🏆 DROP EVERYTHING

FAQ

What's the best show to watch alone in a new apartment?

Fleabag, season 1, episode 1. Twenty-four minutes, a woman alone in a space that doesn't fit her, talking to you. It's calibrated for exactly this state.

I'm too tired to focus. What should I put on?

The Great British Bake Off or Taskmaster. Neither requires continuity. Both lower your heart rate. You can wander off, come back, and still enjoy them.

What's a short show I can finish in a weekend while I unpack?

Fleabag (12 episodes, 25 minutes each) or Shōgun season 1 (10 one-hour episodes) if you want prestige. Fleabag wins if you only have Saturday.

Any good shows nobody's heard of?

Patriot on Prime Video. Two seasons, cancelled, forgotten. The main character sings folk songs about his assassination targets. If you watch it, you will text one friend about it, and that friend will not watch it, and that is part of the experience.

Start Severance Season 1 Episode 1 Tonight

If you've read this far, you don't need another option. You're sitting on a couch in a room that isn't fully yours yet. Put on Severance season 1 episode 1 and don't check your phone for 48 minutes. Tomorrow you'll find your forks.

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