5 Mind-Blowing TV Shows From 2019 That You Can Binge-Watch during this home quarantine
TV isn’t what it used to be. Over the course of the last decade, the quality and quantity of content have outpaced all records. So much so, that this isn’t the era of technology anymore, it’s the era of television. There’s never been more to watch and more ways to watch it. There’s Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and with Disney, Apple joining them and Warner media, Comcast, Costco, Flipkart, NBC to follow suit, there’s going to be a content overflow. It isn’t about finding something good to watch but, finding the right content for you.
From shipwrecked “Game of Thrones” season 8 to eye-popping season two of “The OA”, 2019 was one hell of a ride for TV. And with just four months into 2020, our life has started to feel like the GOT finale. But, worry not cause we still can make this boring, antisocial home quarantine fun (Introverts can back me up on this). With a cosy dose of mindblowing TV to snuggle with and you’ll forget everything about COVID-19. But the question arises, what to watch?
I know there’s a crazy amount of ingenious stuff floating around and it’s not feasible or healthful to keep up with all of it and so, we arrive at the crossroads of choosing the right stuff to watch and this is where this list factors in. With a collection of 5 mind-blowing shows from 2019 that you can watch in a single day. And every precise detail as to what makes them so exceptional, your problem’s solved. So, without wasting any more time, Let’s get on with the top 5 picks.
5. The Boys
What’s It About — The world is full of superheroes and they might fight evil but what if they become evil. Who will keep a check on them? Are they above law? A dark, satirical take on superheroes as we follow the story of a group of vigilantes (all 7 are just a variant of Justice League but might not win Justice League look-alike contest) against a group of ragtag misfits dead set on taking down corrupt superheroes abusing their superpowers.
Why It’s Amazing — The world is sick of superhero stories. It’s time we had something different and amazing. Wait a minute, we already do! The Boys are here to save the day. An action-packed, satirical take on post-Trump America with a delightful coating of our superhero obsessions and we found ourselves a show that’s not a superhero story but an antidote for all the superhero stories we’ve heard over the past years.
The show imagines a world where superheroes are the ones chosen by God and managed by an organization that keeps their dirty work in hiding and carries their worth in millions based on their popularity on social media.
In the midst of Avengers Endgame becoming the highest-grossing movie of all time and me wearing an Iron Man T-shirt writing this, Amazon has come up with an anti-superhero solution of its own (Though they never made any superhero show) and it really questions our fandom.
Who Will Love It — Anyone who loves superheroes but sick of the same superhero stories.
Who Does It Star — Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Erin Moriarty.
Where It’s Available — Amazon Prime Video
4. Fleabag Season 2
What’s It About — An angry, dim-witted woman “Fleabag” tries to navigate life In London while running her own business and navigating a tangle of unfulfilling and masochistic relationships while trying to cope up with the recent death of her best friend.
Why It’s Amazing — The first season was an epic ride through sexual adventures, self-exploration, and revelation of the secret that haunts Fleabag(the show never revealed her real name). The second season made us wait for 3 years and all I know is, it was worth every second. The story unveils a handsome, un pious priest who’s as offensively crude as Fleabag’s vulgar sarcasm. What follows is their spiritually sincere and hot connection which spotlights Fleabag’s discomfort with being too closely read and understood by another person.
What makes this ride worthwhile is the heart to the show and we may have to crawl up in barbed wire to extract it out of all that dark humour, but “Fleabag” is especially attuned to the voices of women & showcases some brilliantly written lines that strike a chord to dark social conventions and the pain of being a woman with an exceptional take on feminism.
A guiltier story than season one — one that discusses body shaming and temptation. The next viewer might say that season two is wrestling its built-in moral pain, a form of original sin but it is more complicated and empathetic, one that makes you think. What remains is a harsh, true, satirical and genre-defying original, with an ending that will mess up your heart and actually make sense. Bring tissues.
Who Will Love It — Anyone who loves dark humour, original classics breaking social, conventional norms. It’s a must-watch for Jane Austen fans and the ones who enjoyed Gentleman Jack on HBO.
Who Does It Star — Phoebe Waller-Bridge (also the creator and writer), Andrew Scott.
Where It’s Available — Amazon Prime Video
3. When They See Us
What’s It About — Based on the infamous case, ‘The Central Park Five’ and how evidence leading to the rape were tampered, resulting in the prosecution and imprisonment of 5 innocent kids, who were later exonerated and given a settlement of $41 million after the real rapist confessed to his crimes.
Why It’s Amazing — Directed by Ava DuVernay, When They See Us portrays the brutal and horrifying real story of the suffering of 5 innocent black teens as they face trial, false accusations, and imprisonment. The four-episode long TV series features ground-breaking performances as it raises the question of racial discrimination and portrays horrifying glimpses of the suffering endured by the little kids as we see their teenage years getting wasted in prison cells for a crime they didn’t commit.
The series questions negligence of the truth and the misconduct of police investigators and lawyers aided by Political leaders like Trump, as they try to frame 14-year-old innocent kids as rapists. The show not just portrays the political and social effects leading to, and after the incident, but also the physical sufferings endured and the psychological battle these 5 kids and their families face as they try to leave their past behind and start a new fresh life.
But can they?
In this world full of freedom, we’re again forced to ask ourselves, Are we really free?
Who Will Love It — Those who love Law & Order, The Wire, Black Mirror and hate Trump’s politics and his hair (So, basically everyone including Ivanka).
Who Does It Star — Vera Farmiga, Jharrel Jerome, Asante Blackk
Where It’s Available — Netflix
2. Dark Season 2
What’s It About — A family saga bound in time, against time and through time, linking a supernatural twist, set in a small German town, where the clueless disappearance of numerous children exposes the secrets, lies, past and the future of four families.
Why It’s Amazing — For all those Back to the Future and Stranger Things fanatics, instead of feeling hardcore nostalgic, why not find time to get lost in time. How about taking a journey in time, untangling the family trees, exploring timelines, fixing a bug in time and with an intriguing experiment in looped up events, finding the reason for our existence and evolution. You may ask yourselves, “what!!!” but the question is “when???”.
Season one was darker than the title itself but season two is flawlessly darkest of them all. “Dark” is the ultimate experience to get lost in the circle of reoccurrence as one season can flow into the next and back to the beginning. No matter what episode you are at, the depth of the characters, murky themes and rich storytelling is breath-taking, making Dark the most thrilling original show on Netflix and accurately distressing our minds is the ominous music by Ben Frost.
Science is neat, time isn’t. This is the story of “Dark” and to find these answers, you need to watch it right away.
Who Will Love It — All Sci-fi fans and anyone who loves stranger things, back to the future and complex mysteries.
Who Does It Star — Louis Hofmann, Lisa Vicari
Where It's Available — Netflix
- Chernobyl
What’s It About — HBO TV mini-series portrays the story of the worst man-made catastrophe, the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It digs and uncovers the lies and politics, starting from minutes before the incident to the 33 years that followed, in a quest to assess the cost of lies.
Why It’s Amazing — The fabricated reality besieged in counterfeit lies obscured under ruthless USSR politics, gifted this world with Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and 33 years later HBO scraped the dust with its heart-melting, mind-boggling truth.
5 episodes and 5 hours later, we’re burdened with all kinds of horror and this world feels like a bad dream. The series is a masterpiece in digging these graves of lies, revealing facts and presenting a fictional yet truthful, brutal and boldly accurate recreation. There may be plenty of fantasy in Chernobyl but the truth is real.
The series doesn’t just focus on the explosion and the political bureaucracy behind it but delivers the truth on the long fight that followed. The evacuation of cities and millions displaced from their homes, the creation of the exclusion zone, the increase in cancer and birth defects. Through many interwoven stories, the pain is captured perfectly and we can feel nothing but heartbreak and even though we fear truth all our life, Chernobyl uncovers the truth and will leave us with what we began, “What is the cost of lies?”
Who Will Love It — It should be on everyone’s watchlist.
Who Does It Star — Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård
