Chillin’ Island
Super dumb and non consequential but goddamn if its not mellowing. Perfect show for any kind of burnout or blahs
How It’s Made
Vice Grip Garage (YouTube)
James May The Reassembler (YouTube)
One more vote for How its Made. So relaxing.
And informative
The other James May series Manlab? I think are also pretty good.
Damn, I loved how it’s made
The detectorists, very gentle comedy but not in a shit way.
One of my favorite shows ever!
Super low stakes show, it’s so peaceful and fun. Except when Becky is yelling at Andy.
I always liked No Reservations when I wanted to zone out. Anthony Bordain not being here anymore bums me out though.
Edit: Community , Shaun the sheep, and Good Eats
Britbox has a category called Cozy Mysteries. They’re all formulaic and easy watching.
Death in Paradise
Beyond Paradise
Murder in Suburbia
Father Brown
Sister Boniface
Agatha Christie’s Marple
The Mallorca FilesLove Father Brown
Nice list, I watch most of these.
The Good Place
When I was having long term medical problems Shark Tank helped me survive. Every episode is exactly the same and nothing really bad happens.
Here’s a list:
- Shark Tank (didn’t want to leave it out)
- Taskmaster which has full episodes on YouTube
- Pawn Stars (uncountable numbers of episodes)
- Forged In Fire
- Lego Masters
Taskmaster, every season has 5 comedians complete a set of tasks and be judged on them by The Taskmaster. All so they can win a golden effigy of the Taskmasters head.
Very good show Season 18 just wrapped up. There are some other countries that did good spinoffs like New Zealand and Australia, and others that didn’t America.
Forged In Fire. Each episode 4 blacksmiths compete to create a blade with limited time which each round someone being voted off by judges. When the last 2 are remaining they are sent home for a week to make a historical weapon to be tested by the judges.
Very wholesome, judges are kind and will explain how it went wrong and how they can improve their techniques. One of the early winners even goes on to become a judge.
Not sure if anime fits your bill here but Mushi-shi is incredibly relaxing and even though i don’t really watch anime anymore it still jumps out to me when i think of chill/mellow/relaxing. Traveler investigating forest spirits and whatnot, soft Japanese music score, taps hard into those nature vibes, more of a rainy day relaxing though not really happy-chill.
Jinny’s Kitchen, which is on Amazon right now. It has different titles depending on the cast member’s name they want to use for the season. It’s basically a bunch of Korean actors/celebrities that are tasked to run a pop-up restaurant for a week. I like that there are no egos and they actually hunker down and do the work. No American tv show style drama. It’s a good show if you just want to watch something and not want to think or understand plotlines or dialogues.
I usually just go track down Bob Ross episodes streaming in a thousand different places nowadays.
Mortimer and Winehouse gone fishing.
Want a seat next to two comedy legends as they enter their chill years and ponder things while fishing? Look no further
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b0b7r2k6/mortimer-whitehouse-gone-fishing
This is the one. It’s a perfect relaxation show.
Antiques Roadshow is pretty relaxing and always interesting.
Maybe a little out of left field, but the animated show Star Trek: Lower Decks. I’m not much of a Trekkie at all, but Lower Decks is funny, endearing, and even though each season has an overarching plot, much of the episode plots are relatively self contained.
Highly recommend it.
I don’t know if it’s “weirdly” relaxing given how chill it’s supposed to be, but Joe Pera Talks With You is perfect.
Shrinking is pretty chill. Kind of reminds me a little bit of Ted Lasso in that people aren’t total pieces of shit and try to learn from their fuck ups. Also, Harrison Ford.
Actually, I was going to say both those shows.
The Mentalist. Weird I know
I love procedural dramas but I definitely cant be in an overburdened/overstimulated state before I tune in heh
I like them too, but Jane just doesn’t give a damn (but still cares for the team…most of the time ;)