The Most Breathtaking Series to Watch Tonight

Not everyone has time for long series with a dozen seasons. And many people believe it’s more meaningful to play at PlayAmo or read a book instead. But that’s no reason to give up on multi-series shows. Here are 6 shows you can watch in one sitting.

Over the Garden Wall

The brothers Wirth and Greg are lost in a magical forest. They are accompanied by a talking bird and a mysterious old woodsman. On their way home, the heroes encounter monsters, fairy tale characters, and other inhabitants of the thicket.

When working, one of the creators of Adventure Time, Patrick McHale, was inspired by 19th century European fairy tales and his nightmares.

The series is made up of opposites: it can be funny in one scene and frightening in another. Even the characters are complete antipodes. The boyish Greg is constantly getting into trouble, singing about potatoes and sweet-talking with fairy tale baddies. And Wirth, voiced by Elijah Wood, expresses unchildish thoughts about life and loneliness.

Time

A teacher, Mark Cobden, goes to prison for involuntary manslaughter. Rather than become part of the system and participate in drug trafficking, he decides to reform himself.

In doing so, warden Eric McNally faces a difficult choice. Inmates learn that his son is serving time in another prison. For the child’s safety, Eric cooperates with criminal bosses and smuggles contraband into the cells.

Time isn’t an adventurous thriller about escape and shady prison life, but a conversational drama about moral choices. Realistic sets, artless camerawork, and slender theatrical dramaturgy are all understated in a British way.

The main actors are Stephen Graham and Sean Bean. One plays a prison guard who made a deal with his conscience and became a criminal. The other, on the contrary, from a drunk driver and a killer turns into a high-spirited, resilient man.

Living With Yourself

Copywriter Miles suffers setbacks at work and in his personal life. On the advice of a colleague, he participates in an experiment. After the experiment, Miles gets a clone that is more focused and successful than the original.

The star of “Ant-Man” Paul Rudd returns to his comedic roots. In the “Little Miss Lucky” series, he plays two roles at once: the arrogant and complex Miles and charming Miles number 2.

High Fidelity

A small vinyl store owner named Robin is great at music, but she can’t get her personal life together. She decides to reconsider her relationships with her five previous partners: four men and one girl.

The first adaptation of Nick Hornby’s famous novel Hi-Fi was released in 2000. Since then not only has the gender of the protagonist changed – the hipster played by John Cusack has turned into the intellectual Zoe Kravitz – but also the tone of the narrative.

Sometimes the heroine breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience just like Phoebe Waller-Bridge. There are more pop culture references in the dialogues: while watching it, we recommend not letting your phone out of your hands so you can Google what the characters are talking about.

Staged

Actors David Tennant and Martin Sheen are bored in their homes during the pandemic. They decide to rehearse an upcoming play on Zoom to brighten the dreary self-isolation somehow.

The action in “Staged” is limited to the computer screen: don’t expect a sharp plot or large-scale filming. The beauty is in the quippy dialogues of two terrific actors, who quarrel and argue hilariously.

In the second season, the show goes further and turns into a meta-comedy. The characters break the fourth wall and discuss the supposedly upcoming American remake of Staged, where Tennant and Sheen weren’t invited for some reason.

Good Omens

The angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley must see to it that the Earth-born Antichrist brings about the end of the world. Both Heaven and Hell are waiting for this. Except that Aziraphel and Crowley have lived among humans for thousands of years and have had time to get used to them. The heroes don’t obey the orders of their superiors and do everything to prevent the biblical apocalypse.

Comedy fantasy based on the novel of the same name by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman surprises with absurd British humor. In Crowley’s car, any CD becomes a collection of Queen’s greatest hits, members of an ancient order of witches walk around modern Britain. And the sinister Antichrist accidentally finds himself in a nice English family, where he grows up to be an ordinary child.

Gaiman and Pratchett have written a satirical story that is hard to spoil. Alas, the series doesn’t even come close to the level of the original novel. But as a stand-alone work, “Good Omens” is well worth watching. You can watch it for the brilliant duo of David Tennant and Michael Sheen, who play Crowley and Aziraphel.