Our Favorite TV Shows We’ve Watched Together
I don’t love watching movies.
There are certainly movies that I love, but generally the idea of sitting down to watch a movie sounds like FOREVER to me and it’s almost never how I’d choose to spend an evening (Bart, on the other hand, loves movies).
But a television show? Those I love.
I like the shorter length, since 45 minutes sounds much more feasible to me than 2 or 2.5 hours.
I like getting to know characters over a long period of time and watching a story play out with much more detail than a movie would allow.
And I love watching an episode of our current show with Bart before we go to bed.
If we’re home and don’t have any pressing work or house projects, we watch an episode almost every night.
Over the past 13 years, we’ve worked our way through a lot of TV shows (including many where we’ve watched 1-2 episodes and called it quits). These are some of our favorite tv shows we’ve watched together.
Our Favorite TV Shows We’ve Watched Together
White Collar
If I had to choose an all-time favorite show, it would be this one about an art forger who comes to work as a confidential informant for the FBI after he escapes from prison to pursue the girl who promised to wait for him and has now disappeared. I LOVE the crisp, bright feel of the show, the witty dialogue and especially the pitch-perfect relationship between Neal and Peter. And all the supporting characters are SO GOOD too. Bart and I watched the whole series together and then I re-watched the whole thing over the course of a month or so when I was nursing newborn Star.
All Creatures Great and Small
Bart and I actually started watching this one together and then after the first season, we knew our girls would LOVE it too, so we’ve watched it all with them as well. This show is just INCREDIBLY well done, sweet and funny. It’s definitely my favorite show we’ve watched as a family and I would recommend it to absolutely everyone (so much so that I literally did a whole blog post about it!).
The Blacklist
This is one of those shows where you kind of forget how good it is until you watch another show and realize that most shows don’t have the high level of acting and plotting that this one does. When the FBI’s most wanted criminal shows up at FBI headquarters and turns himself in during the first 3 minutes of the show, you know it’s going to be good. And when he refuses to work with anyone except a brand-new profiler, well. . . .it just keeps getting better. We just finished it a few weeks ago and I just LOVED it (and can’t wait for the next season).
Hawaii Five-O
I’ve never seen the original Hawaii Five-O but we loved watching this reboot of it and spent more than a year working our way through all the seasons on Netflix (I’m not sure they’re on there anymore). It also made me a LITTLE worried we might get murdered in Hawaii. . . .
Person of Interest
Bart watched the first episode of this on his own a few years ago and then immediately re-watched it with me so we can could see the whole series together. It’s about a guy who created an AI machine that can predict both terrorist attacks and murders, but the government only wants the terroirst attack portion. He doesn’t feel like he can sit back and watch people get killed when he could stop it, so he starts trying to prevent those murders on his own, with the help of a former Special Forces guy. I LOVED this show for most of it, but by the last season, it got a little dark and depressing for me and I wasn’t sad when it was over.
Friday Night Lights
This is definitely not the same as most of the shows on the list (we definitely have a type of TV show we watch together), but this show about small town Texas high school football got recommended so many times and it was filmed near us in Austin, so it was fun to see familiar places pop up (including the main street of our little town in the opening scenes of the pilot where I’d ridden my bike to work at least 100 times). I know basically nothing about football and I loved this show so much. It’s one I would definitely go back and watch.
24
This was the first show Bart and I watched together (in fact, we watched the entire first season on a cruise we took on our first anniversary) and I just never get tired of Jack Bauer.
Lie to Me
My mom recommended this one to us and we really liked it about a reseracher who studies micro expressions and is really good at determining if and why people are lying. Which means, of course, he’s brought in on all sorts of crimes. There are only three seasons of this one.
The Great British Baking Show
This one is REALLY a departure from our norm, but I turned it on one night while I was folding laundry and Bart wandered in and watched the whole episode with me and we’ve watched all the available seasons together now. I would NEVER want to be on this show, but I love watching it.
What are your favorite TV shows? We’re always on the lookout for a new option!
Parks and Rec, The Office, Longmire, Justified and the Good Wife stand out for me…recently watched Shetland (so good!)and now I am reading the books (by Ann Cleeves). I love movies but shows are such a delight…esp when I find one my hubby and I both like.
White Collar has s a definite favorite. I’m rewatching it right now.
We started watching 2 new series this past year that we like. We watched Manifest, and A Million Little Things.
Other favorites include: HIMYM, The Office, Parks & Rec, Scrubs
Veronica Mars was a really fun watch. Only 3 seasons.
Alias (5 seasons) and Nikita (4 seasons)
This is such a great list! I would also add Chuck (my all-time favorite!) and The Mentalist.
I so enjoyed Friday Night Lights but I couldn’t get my husband to watch it with me! Right now we are watching The Good Place (slowly) on Netflix together. Of course The Office, which we watched when it aired and rewatched the whole show last year again. Lost, Parks & Rec. I like having a half hour comedy to watch together so if we need to get to bed we can just do one episode but if there’s more time we can do 2!
Chuck is one of my husband’s and my all-time favorite shows, and we don’t agree on a lot of hour-long tv shows. We watch half-hour ones together though, Parks and Rec, and Brooklyn Nine-nine are a few recent favourites!
My husband and I loved Parenthood.
I think we have pretty similar tv tastes. 😊 My husband and I LOVED White Collar, it was a sad day when it was all over. A year or so ago we watched all of the seasons of The Mentalist, and I really liked that one. The first season is a little slow and the actors seem to be figuring out their characters, but after that I loved it. I’ve also liked Bones, Castle (the first 4 seasons were awesome, then it kind of went downhill), Madame Secretary, Blue Bloods, and Designated Survivor (we’ve only watched one season of that.) Writing that list out sort of makes it sound like all I ever do is watch tv, haha.
Sherlock, parks and rec, the office, Malcom in the middle, house, alias, better call Saul -the best
We just watched all of Brooklyn 99 on Hulu and are so excited for season 7 to come out this year. It’s a cross between a police investigative show and The Office, and Derek and I just think it’s hilarious. The first 1-2 episodes are a little… huh? But once you get into it and know the characters, it’s so good!
Love Brooklyn 99! Captain Holt! So good.
Oh we’ve got so many! We just got caught up on Dead To Me and also Billions. Other faves: Brooklyn Nine Nine, Parks & Rec, The Good Place, The Handmaid’s Tale, Community, Santa Clarita Diet, and Barry. For some reason most of the serious ones we’ve watched are evading me right now!!
I never really liked movies either. And finally figured out why. They have a short amount of time to get across so much emotion and storyline. With a tv show the characters can be developed over a period of time. Reading will always be my go to choice followed by Tv shows. I really enjoyed Psych. Funny and silly and so many great 80 and 90 references!
We loved White Collar! We also loved Burn Notice, Brooklyn 99, and Psych. Burn Notice is the most similar to the shows you like and Brooklyn 99 and Psych are also crime shows but more on the comedy side.
I also loved Person of interest and Blacklist. The problem I run into is that I wake up really early, so I tend to fall asleep early. My husband takes this as fair game and watches a head of me. I tend to get lost, lol.
My husband and I really like dramas. We have enjoyed Ozark, Bloodline and more recently Homeland. Also we are huge fans if The Office and John Oliver’s weekly show on HBO
A lot of the same ones others have mentioned, but we rece toy have been rewatching Monk and Father Brown (BBC) on Netflix. I also love Call the Midwife.
My favorite show was Chuck (love, love the chemistry between all the characters) but then I watched White Collar and, in my opinion, it is THE best show ever! Sometimes I just watch the last episode & am amazed at what I consider the perfect finale of a series!
WHITE COLLAR! i think i’ve watched it 3 times? Chuck is so good. Psych is too!
Parks and Rec, HIMYM, Alias, Charmed (the original, not whatever crap remake is happening currently) The Good Place….. they’re all so good. Oh, i just finished the Unit on amazon prime. just another awesome show that ended because of budget issues, wahhhh.
So many good shows on this list! I really enjoyed Lie to Me and was so disappointed there were only 3 seasons. White Collar was one of the many USA shows that I LOVED. I would also add Monk, Psych, Suits, and Royal Pains to the list.
24 is obviously a TV classic!! I got into the show when a friend lent me the DVDs for the first three seasons. I watched all 3 seasons in about a week and signed up for a Blockbuster card just to get Season 4 because streaming was not a thing yet. I watched that season in TWO DAYS!!!!!
I am the TV person in my relationship, and there are sooo many shows I enjoy!! Blackish, Grownish, Agents of Shield, This is Us, and Brooklyn 99 are current faves. My beau is not really a TV person, so there aren’t many shows we watched together. He got interested in American Horror Story while I was watching Season 5, so we started watching it from the beginning and just started Season 4. We both LOVE American Greed though!
Sherlock, One Day at a Time, and Parks and Rec are high on my list!
To fit in with the police dramas, The Glades is one of my favorites. It’s now on Prime.
I’m also a really big fan of Grantchester and Call the Midwife on PBS.
My other two favorite series are on Prime too… and I *LOVE* them both:
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (some nudity and crude humor, and it is so worth it bc the drama and storyline are so fab), and Mozart in the Jungle.
The Office, Downton Abbey, Suits, The Good Wife, and Stranger Things.