Shows that almost made the list: Golden Girls, Friday Night Lights, Mad Men, Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, Bad Girls, Grace and Frankie, Warehouse 13, One Mississippi.
My Top 10 Television Shows: Ro White, Who Loves Scary Women
In My Top 10 Favorite Television Shows, various members of Autostraddle’s TV Team will be telling you about the TV shows nearest and dearest to our hearts, EVEN the ones that don’t have lesbian / bisexual / queer woman characters.
Today, Ro White shares their feelings!
When the Autostraddle TV team requested “Top 10″ TV lists, I balked. I don’t watch much TV, and I lack the language to write about it. My Netflix history looks less like a well-curated selection of quality entertainment and more like a jumble of jokes, werewolves and lesbians (which honestly sounds like a cool party, but I digress).
If you’re reading this, you must want to know me, and in that case, you’re in luck. You can scroll through my top ten shows and know exactly who I am and who I’ve been — a consistently queer, formerly goth, recovering musical theater nerd with a penchant for dry humor and scary women. Sharing this list is like showing you my diary if all my love poems were about Sandra Oh. Readers, this is a big step for us. Let the vulnerability parade begin:
10. The Secret World Of Alex Mack
With her giant flannels and backwards hats, Alex Mack was the quietly queer icon I needed while coming of age in the Midwest. Alex is a typical preteen girl, but after coming into contact with a top secret chemical, she develops superpowers, including telekinesis and the ability to morph into a silver puddle. She can’t control these changes, and sometimes they’re embarrassing. I’m sure this Nickelodeon series was meant to be a metaphor about puberty, but for me, it was all about gay stuff.
9. Sense8
I’ve been a fan of the Wachowskis since I saw The Matrix as a kid. Discovering Bound at an Indiana Blockbuster Video solidified their place in my heart. This Wachowski-made Netflix series has everything I adore — science fiction, suspense, small women beating up large men, strap-on sex and a surprise group sing-a-long that was ultimately a strange but endearing artistic choice.
8. Saturday Night Live
Ok, they don’t always nail it, but after spending seven years doing a weekly live show myself, I have a deep appreciation for creating hilarity under a deadline. The weirder the premise, the harder I’ll howl. Kate McKinnon as Justin Bieber never fails to make me scream-laugh.
7. Are You Afraid Of The Dark?
Some of my earliest memories involve hiding behind the couch while the Are You Afraid Of The Dark? intro music played. I could handle the episodes themselves — each formulaic story led to a somewhat happy ending — but that intro music still fucks me up. I would wait until the Midnight Society announced the day’s story before peering out from my hiding place. Some episodes that are permanently seared into my brain include “The Tale of the Lonely Ghost,” “The Tale of the Dead Man’s Float” and “The Tale of the Super Specs.”
6. The Haunting Of Hill House
I adore supernatural horror, and allegorical horror about human grief (a la The Babadook and Hereditary) is my favorite flavor. I came across The Haunting Of Hill House when I had the flu and smashed through the whole series in two days. I was of course drawn to Theo, Hill House’s resident lesbian psychic who can feel other peoples’ trauma through touch. Could there be a more Sapphic supernatural power? I feel attacked.
5. Shrill
The cast of this show is a parade of comedy’s weirdest weirdos. Shrill features Aidy Bryant as Annie, a young journalist learning how to stand up for herself, in a star-studded cast including John Cameron Mitchell, Julia Sweeney, Jo Firestone and more. Lolly Adefope plays Annie’s queer roommate with incredible charm. I’m particularly obsessed with comedian Patti Harrison as Ruthie, Annie’s unhinged coworker who steals the show with one-liners like, “Scaring people makes me horny.”
4. Killing Eve
The ferocious hype around Killing Eve deterred me at first, but while quarantined and unemployed, I finally gave in. This series includes all of my favorite things: gore, deceit, the eroticism of female rivalry and admiration and also Sandra-motherfucking-Oh. Killing Eve’s bizarre, dark humor is often hard to grasp. I find myself laughing and I don’t know why. I love that.
3. Buffy The Vampire Slayer
My Buffy geekdom runs deep. Buffy got me through junior high. Buffy got me through high school. Instead of going to senior prom, I stayed home and rewatched my favorite episodes because I was 18, deep in my feelings and barely surviving the Hellmouth of Indiana. This is the show I return to when I’m sick or sad. The aesthetic yanks me back to my preteen goth roots and the stories remind me that friendship conquers all. Willow and Tara were the first queer female couple I ever saw on TV, and (SPOILER!) Willow avenging Tara’s death in season 6 is the epitome of my Aries Dyke Energy.
2. Work In Progress
Produced by Lilly Wachowski and filmed in my home city of Chicago, Work In Progress chronicles the life of Abby, a middle-aged, self-identified “fat, queer dyke” who falls in love with a much younger transgender man. I should disclose that a bunch of my friends are on this show, but that’s not why I love it. Work In Progress offers three things I rarely see on TV — an intergenerational queer relationship, education that doesn’t feel pedantic and an actual butch character who’s not a cop or a person in prison.
1. Dead To Me
Dead To Me is part thriller, part female buddy dramedy rolled up into one exquisite take on human grief. I’d hate to spoil the plot, so I’ll leave you with this: actors Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini lean into the romance and depth of female friendship with unfiltered honesty and the best comedic timing I’ve ever seen. Watching their characters unravel is a masterclass in acting. I cannot wait for season 3.
Honorable mentions: Wishbone, Herstory, The Babysitter’s Club, Vida, All That
Where to stream gay TV:
89 Queer TV Shows to Stream on Netflix
32 Lesbian, Queer & Bisexual (LGBTQ+) TV Shows Streaming Free on Amazon Prime
My Top Ten Television Shows: Casey Stepaniuk, Your Friendly Neighborhood Lesbrarian
In My Top 10 Favorite Television Shows, various members of Autostraddle’s TV Team will be telling you about the TV shows nearest and dearest to our hearts, EVEN the ones that don’t have lesbian / bisexual / queer woman characters.
Today, your friendly neighborhood lesbrarian, Casey, is setting aside her books to share her feelings about teevee!
Like many others, I struggled at first to settle on what criteria I wanted to use to determine my top ten. Honestly there are shows in my honorable mentions are objectively better TV than some of the ones that made my list. Vida, for example, is such a visually gorgeous show with incredible acting and writing. But it’s one of those shows I deeply admired rather than one I was obsessed with and that was personally important to me. So that’s what I chose to focus on: shows that spoke to me deeply in some way, that I am / was passionate about and consumed by, and that when I thought about them, I felt the urge to revisit them all over again, no matter how many times I’ve already watched them.
10. Sex and the City
I love a good rom-com. So it’s not surprising I developed an early love for <Sex and the City, an ongoing rom-com TV series about four white New York women in the late 90s and early 00s. But the show is also an anti-rom-com. It is about women’s lives, with a focus on romantic and sexual relationships, sure. But it often resists the conventions of the genre by featuring themes like casual sex and failed relationships and focusing on an often unlikable anti-heroine. The show’s open discussions of women’s sexuality were very influential for me.
I first learnt about vibrators, threesomes, oral sex, and so many other sexy things from this show! Sex and the City gets a lot of flack, especially in retrospect. Certainly, the show has its problems, especially in terms of its representation of race and that cringey biphobic episode. But at least some of this flack comes from a place that forgets how, for its time, Sex and the City was radical to take the (sexual and otherwise) lives of single women in their 30s and their friendships with each other seriously. I’ll let Emily Nussbaum explain better than I ever could about how Sex and the City doesn’t deserve its current bad name.
9. Battlestar Galactica
The premise of Battlestar Galactica has always captured my imagination. I love a good enormously high stakes (i.e., potential end of humanity) science fiction novel. I should really seek this genre out in TV more often! Battlestar Galactica does it so well, and with a huge cast of very flawed characters. (Although I wish more of them were not men). If you know anything about my taste in women you won’t be surprised to learn that from the first moment she appeared on screen, I was a huge fan of Katee Sackoff’s Starbuck / Kara Thrace. One of my top five TV crushes for sure. It is disappointing the character isn’t queer, but it is also kind of great to have representation for toppy, tomboy straight women? I was also enthralled with President Roslyn’s character and how she navigated her new power and being a woman leader.
8. One Day at a Time
One Day at a Time is comfort food for my soul. Like The Babysitters Club (see below), it tackles with authenticity and heart a lot of issues that would otherwise veer into tacky “Very Special Episodes.” I find the Alvarez family’s closeness, bickering, and unconditional love for each other irresistible. The representation of Penelope / Lupita’s anxiety and depression was especially important to me, as was Elena’s most adorable baby dyke coming out story and subsequent (or should I say sydsequent) romance with nonbinary Syd. And who could not love abuelita, played by legend Rita Moreno? Sometimes I think about her angrily “slamming” the curtains separating her bedroom from the living room while saying “e-slam” and I laugh out loud.
7. The L Word
Do I think this show is actually good, for the most part? No. Do I deeply love it? Yes. Like many queer women in their mid to late 30s, my coming out coincided with the early seasons of The L Word. It was formative for my sexual identity in ways I don’t think I can even explain. Or I could just use one word: Shane. As unrealistic as The L Word is, in so many ways it was the piece of media that made me realize that life as a queer woman with a queer women’s community was actually possible. The dyke dating drama was entertaining, the fashion was impressive, trying to recognize Vancouver landmarks was fun, but my favorite parts about The L Word have always been the friendships. I just love when all the women are sitting around talking and drinking coffee at the Planet. Okay, and also the sex scenes, the best of which is no contest that one on top of the washing machine with Alice and Tasha.
6. Fleabag
I very much appreciate how Fleabag has understated queer content and a casually bisexual main character (that kiss with Kristin Scott Thomas’s character in season two!). But I almost don’t even care because I love it so much for other reasons. Fleabag has a combination of humor, darkness, and discomfort that I find indelible even as it makes me squirm. The first season is wrapped up in a refreshingly frank take on sex (with men), the second season more so with a sustained romantic and sexual connection with a (I will jump on the bandwagon and add hot) priest. But what really captures me are Fleabag’s complicated relationships with the close women in her life, those who have died and those who are still with her. There’s Boo, the BFF who haunts her. There’s Fleabag’s mother, whose death around which her family is still structured. And then there’s Claire, her sister. I feel very devoted to Claire, perhaps too much considering she is, uh, a fictional character. To me Fleabag and Claire’s relationship is the series’ love story: “The only person I’d run through an airport for is you.”
5. Broad City
I love shows with comedic elements, but comedy as a genre is not usually my thing. Broad City is the gigantic exception. I just find this show genuinely, gut-splittingly hilarious. It can be years since I’ve seen a particular episode, and if something reminds me of a funny scene, I will laugh in remembrance. My favorite aspect other than how it’s so damn funny is that the deep, romantic friendship between Abbi and Ilana is at the show’s heart.
I can appreciate media that represents women who compete with each other and feel like they have to bring each other down in a misogynist world (we do live in a patriarchy after all). But I would much rather watch something like Broad City that features two women who love and support each other. Also shout-out to Ilana’s low-key but always there bisexuality and the amazing queer turn for Abbi late in the series. My partner and I have a hard time choosing TV shows or movies that we are both into; whenever we can’t decide on something, we’re always like, oh, let’s just rewatch some Broad City. It is never a bad decision.
4. Killing Eve
I came to Killing Eve late, only discovering it in early 2020. Where had I been? Thank god for that cold in January that kept me on the couch for a couple days during which I marathoned seasons one and two. I watched the first episode, was immediately obsessed, and in love with Villanelle. Maybe I shouldn’t love Villanelle as much as I do. Hello, stereotype about bisexual women psychopath killers.
But Jodie Comer infuses the role with so much complexity, glee, and intelligence. Comer as Villanelle alone would be enough to earn my devotion, but Killing Eve also features outstanding performances by mother-fucking Sandra Oh and Fiona Shaw? This show is just full of complicated, un/likable, smart, vulnerable, fascinating women, both characters and actresses. I also love the queerness and feminism of Killing Eve which feels at the same time front and center and beautifully blended in. I would gladly be stabbed by either Eve or Villanelle. But preferably kissed.
3. Jane the Virgin
Like Sex and the City, Jane the Virgin is a show self-consciously investigating the romance genre. Jane the Virgin, however, buys into the genre’s promises more wholeheartedly, which I find fascinating and charming. While I love watching the ups and downs of Jane’s romantic life — I’ll out myself as #TeamRafael — what really kept me coming back to this show was the three generations of Villanueva women and their relationships with one another: Jane, her mom, and her abuela. I love those women so much, their complicated family bonds, their fierce love, and their growth together and individually over the show’s seasons. I was also thrilled at the direction that Petra’s character took; she went from a mostly one-dimensional villain to a fully fleshed out vulnerable bisexual woman! One last thing: Rogelio de la Vega is probably my favorite male character on TV of all time.
2. The Babysitter’s Club
Is it weird to know that a show that literally just came out is destined to go down as one of your all-time favorites? As a 90s bookish girl, I was a HUGE BSC fan. I was a Mallory who wanted to be Stacey who had a crush on Kristy. I was cautiously optimistic when the Netflix adaptation was announced, and was so pleasantly surprised about how much I adored it. It is so tender and wholesome, yet it doesn’t ignore the bad stuff that happens in tween girls’ lives. The updates to the show — namely increasing the representation of girls of color and including supporting LGBTQ characters — were so excellently done.
Literally every episode of season one made me cry (in a good way). Despite addressing a lot of “issues,” — parental abandonment, childhood diabetes, rights for trans kids — The Babysitters Club resisted didactic storytelling. It felt simultaneously made to be enjoyed by today’s tweens and self-referentially nostalgic to appeal to fans of the original books like me. I love this show so much that I wrote an article arguing that it is even better than the books, which is basically sacrilege for a book-lover lesbrarian like myself.
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
If this were a completely honest list, it would just be Buffy the Vampire Slayer listed ten times. I often have a hard time starting new shows, because when I feel like watching TV, Buffy is pretty much always what I want. I am never not somewhere in the middle of a Buffy rewatch. The show has comforted me in so many hard times in my life, calmed me in the throes of anxiety, helped me cry when I needed to, and made me laugh when I needed to remember what being happy was.
As a teenager the thing I loved most about Buffy was getting to watch a teen girl beat up guys (demonic or otherwise).
I still love that part, but now I also love its deep and complex characterization; its fun, snappy word-play infused dialogue; its focus on found family; the groundbreaking representation of Willow the lesbian witch; brutally honest, learning to be human Anya who deserved way better than the show gave her; Buffy negotiating how to use her power and be a woman leader; its heart-wrenching portrayal of depression in season 6, and its majestic use of the fantasy genre’s metaphor to address the experiences of young women. I can’t imagine any other show ever replacing Buffy as my favorite show of all time. Also, my unbelievably still ongoing crushes on Faith and Spike (I know, I clearly have a TV crush type) were and still are emblematic of my bisexuality.
Honorable mentions: Derry Girls, Vida, Lip Service, Queer as Folk
Where to stream gay TV:
89 Queer TV Shows to Stream on Netflix
32 Lesbian, Queer & Bisexual (LGBTQ+) TV Shows Streaming Free on Amazon Prime
62 TV Shows On Hulu with LGBTQ+ Characters
My Top 10 Television Shows: Bailey, Who’s Really Gay and a Bit British
In My Top 10 Favorite Television Shows, various members of Autostraddle’s TV Team will be telling you about the TV shows nearest and dearest to our hearts, EVEN the ones that don’t have lesbian / bisexual / queer woman characters. Today, Bailey shares their feelings!
Who’d have thought this would be the most difficult thing for me to write for Autostraddle? When I started the list I felt so sure but every time I went back to it shows danced around each other fighting for spots 2-10. I was naive to think this list wouldn’t define me but after a tally (you read that right) the results came in. Really gay and quite British. Fuck sake.
10. Vis a Vis
Dramatic, violent and silly, Vis a Vis was a rough ride for Macarena who enters prison a soft and naïve middle-class straight woman. She gets off on the wrong foot with prison tough girl, Zulema. Saray is Zulema’s loyal friend and side kick. Rizo is Saray’s ex-girlfriend and Macarena is the woman Rizo is now about to start courting. It’s a hot mess chock-full of wonderful acting and chemistry that feels like Bad Girls crashed right into Orange Is the New Black.
9. Sugar Rush
Way ahead of it’s time back in 2005, Sugar Rush was set in gloomy-yet-sunny unofficial gay capital Brighton. We follow closeted teenage Kim, who’s sporting a massive lesbian crush on her new best friend Sugar. Pre-The L Word and pre-gay Bailey, I couldn’t ever put my finger on why I loved this show so much (jk jk) but I always appreciated Channel Four for bringing me adolescent drama and punchy scriptwriting.
8. Skins
Seasons three and four (lets ignore Fire) really hit a gay nerve for me. Every week, I’d invite a pal over to my university dorm room to watch the latest instalment of Cook, Effy, Pandora, Thomas, JJ, Katie and fun-sponge Freddie. I was the kid that ran naomily.com, wrote fanfiction and shared icons for people to use on their Livejournals. I’ll never forget the Naomi and Emily fandom; green shoes and buttons, a piggy t-shirt and a real-life Skins party in Bristol’s old Fire Station – it was a whole thing.
7. Being Erica
Erica is 30 when she’s assigned a time-traveling therapist. For every regret or resentment she has, she gets to go back in time and do it differently. What I love about this show, is it covered so many themes throughout four seasons by applying them to Erica’s growth. She learns to set boundaries, speak up for herself, ask for what she wants and take risks. There’s also that one gay episode called “Everything She Wants,” starring Lost Girls’ Anna Silk.
6. Scandal
Kerry Washington’s Olivia Pope might have spent almost seven seasons deciding between the president and a U.S. Navy / NSA hunk but what kept me watching were the power suits and “It’s Handled” moments. I never quite decided if OLITZ was OTP, but I for sure know everyone in that damn show was terrible in one way or another. So many secrets and lies! No one was safe.
5. Misfits
This comedy about five characters doing community service, suddenly struck with their own individual superpowers, was a hit from the beginning. However, when I reflect on Misfits, it was really the relationship that evolved between Alisha and Simon I remember so fondly. You would never have thought they would so much as look each other in the eyes deeply, even in a situation such as the paradox written into season three.
4. The Handmaid’s Tale
Samira Wiley’s Moira and Alexis Bledel’s Emily honestly outshine the white woman feminist trying to find her little bubba Hannah in the dystopian society storyline. The Handmaid’s Tale is dark and features so many worrying parallels to today – Atwood herself has said everything that happens in The Handmaid’s Tale has already happened in one way or another already.
3. Sense8
The relationship between Amanita and Nomi was one of the most wholesome; actual relationship goals back in 2015. I found things to love about every character in this show; Sun’s strength for example, Lito’s humour. Sense8 was groundbreaking not only in the ways it was filmed across different countries, but because it was the first TV show I had seen where trans writers wrote a trans role for a trans actress.
2. Euphoria
Every character at this high school is toxic AF and the cast does a great job at portraying that. Addiction, sex, body positivity and grief get hit in the head pretty hard with a nail in Euphoria’s first season and I can’t wait to see what season two brings. Zendaya’s depiction of Rue, along with her best friend/love interest Jules, played by Hunter Schafer, were raw – reminding me so much of the British shows I grew up with (Sugar Rush, Skins, Misfits) and that’s in the beauty of why I love it.
1. E.R.
E.R. was a wild ride. No show has ever truly matched up to it. Abby’s struggle with alcoholism and Sam’s escape from her abusive ex husband were two storylines that hit home. I was far too young to watch this show but I remember sneaking downstairs at night to watch the new episodes through cracks in the door, as my mum chatted on the phone. I remember how after F.R.I.E.N.D.S aired, I quietly watched from the passage as Lucy and Carter were stabbed by a patient. I begged my mum to let me stay up the following year just so I could find out what happened to them. I felt unequivocally invested in these characters from day one in the passage of my childhood home watching their lives unfold.
Shows that almost made the list: America’s Next Top Model, Black Mirror, Buffy, Catfish, Charmed (original), Dead Like Me, How To Get Away With Murder, Lost, Orphan Black, The Walking Dead, Younger.
Where to stream gay TV:
89 Queer TV Shows to Stream on Netflix32 Lesbian, Queer & Bisexual (LGBTQ+) TV Shows Streaming Free on Amazon Prime62 TV Shows On Hulu with LGBTQ+ Characters
My Top Ten Television Shows: Christina Tucker, Who Loves Hangout Comedies and White Women Going Off
In My Top 10 Favorite Television Shows, various members of Autostraddle’s TV Team will be telling you about the TV shows nearest and dearest to our hearts, EVEN the ones that don’t have lesbian / bisexual / queer woman characters. Today, Christina Tucker, who loves a hangout comedy and white women going off, shares her feelings.
When I started to put this list together, I thought that I would have to deliver a disclaimer up top, believing that my favorite TV shows change all the time. Surely, I thought, if someone asked me next week, I would pick entirely different shows. I am a growing person, I contain multitudes. When I finished, I was forced to reckon with the fact that is is not true at all. The order might move around a bit, but for the most part, these are the shows I find myself returning to, again and again. On second thought? Of course they haven’t changed, I’m a Taurus.
10. The Morning Show
If you were tempted to close this tab after seeing this — I get that, I really do. I might even deserve it. I started a very dedicated and possibly bonkers Twitter campaign for this show because I love to watch white women behaving badly. In that way, it is like the writers of The Morning Show reached directly into my brain. Did I start my campaign as a bit, possibly because I was bored and possibly because Jennifer Aniston is now 50 and thus my type? Did the bit get out of hand? Who can say! Yet the more I revisit the show (a regular amount, I promise) the more I have come to genuinely appreciate it. Somehow, it managed to create a surprisingly honest depiction of a woman who has to grapple with losing the power she has managed to hold onto for decades, and in doing so, forces her to face the ways she is complicit in holding up the status quo. The show does not hide the lengths rich, white, cis women will go in order to retain a tenuous hold on power, and manages to demonstrate how much easier it is to remain in line with the dominant culture, even if it has a cost.
I must add that The Morning Show uses Jennifer Aniston brilliantly. Not only as an actress, but as Jennifer Aniston — her personal life, her star power, the fact that she has been a fixture of American media for decades. She brings a delicious meta-textual context to the role simply by being in it, and that is the kind of TV I do like. Like when she furiously dresses down a man in the street who thinks he knows her just because she is on his TV all the time. Or the look on her face as she listens to her PR team run down the list of disaster scenarios that could come from announcing a divorce. Also, she sings a four minute long Sondheim duet with Billy Crudup that feels like an out of body experience. Thank you for your time!
9.Living Single
Watching Living Single is like taking the perfect bath, one of the ones where you actually fit in the tub and there are candles everywhere and the good bubbles and maybe even a glass of wine. I can put any episode on at any time and I can guarantee that I will feel loved and seen and held and that at least three of Erika Alexander’s line readings will leave me breathless with laughter. I will swoon at Synclaire and Overton and try to not to be too jealous about the fact that Khadijah straight up owns a magazine. (?????? mods????) I don’t even want to bring up the other show that it is forever compared to, because they are not even the same stratosphere when it comes to quality sitcoms. Max and Kyle have one of the best friends to lovers relationships in TV history, that is just fact! Carmen has already written beautifully about Living Single for this series, so I will leave it here: It is a perfect sitcom; I have zero notes.
8. The Good Fight
While many of my fine colleagues have written about The Good Wife — a show I deeply love — I am here to say that The Good Fight is incredible, and the perfect show for the times we are living in. It takes a while for it to find the right tone, but when it gets there, it is an absolute joy to watch. I mean, the premise is basically “Christine Baranski loses a bunch of money and ends up as a diversity hire at a Black law firm.” Who can look me in the eye and tell me they don’t want to see that!?
There are wonderful jokes (“America Goes Poddy” is a perfectly tongue in cheek reference to Pod Save America), surprisingly nuanced thinking about complicated issues, and simply the greatest TV show credits. The cast includes Delroy Lindo, Cush Jumbo, Audra McDonald, and features recurring guests like Bernadette Peters, Andrea Martin, Judith Light and Michael Sheen! There is a song about Roy Cohn that I still get stuck in my head! I have always loved procedurals, and this take on the comforting structure that I am used to is such a delight to watch. Also, this is a real moment from the show, not something I dreamt in a fugue state. God, this show slaps.
7. Pushing Daisies
Speaking of zany procedurals! The first time I watched Pushing Daisies, I had just had an infected wisdom tooth removed. I was recovering in my parent’s basement, absolutely out of my mind on painkillers, reclining on a nest I built out of a blow up mattress and couch cushions. The two seasons of this private investigator slash romantic comedy gem sped past in a delightful haze. After I healed, I wasn’t sure if I had hallucinated this witty, sexy and brightly colored show — so I went back and re-watched. I was delighted to find that it was not a dream, but a fully realized, entirely winning show. Lee Pace is perfectly pitched as a sad, handsome pie maker with a gift to bring things back to life — a gift that comes with a number of complications. Anna Friel is an underrated member of the manic pixie dream girl cannon, and a spunky side-kick slash love interest. Chi McBride is the ideal curmudgeonly private investigator, and any show that knows it should dedicate full on musical numbers to Kristin Chenoweth is a show that I am fated to love forever. It’s tragic that the show only lasted for two seasons, but sometimes the best things in life just aren’t meant to last.
6. New Girl
After a brief detour to the land of the procedural, I happily return to the hangout comedy genre with New Girl. This is the best friendship sitcom of the mid-aughts, featuring two of my favorite TV couples of all time: Nick and Jess and Schmidt and Cece. I can’t tell you how many times I have watched this show, and almost every minute of it holds up — yes even the early episodes where Schmidt’s douchebaggery was dialed up a touch too high. It makes his growth over the seasons even more satisfying! I should note here that I am a Schmidt Sun with a Rising Cece and a Winston moon, so it is possible I am biased when it comes to Schmidt. The jokes in this show always make me laugh, the romance always makes me giddy, and watching a group of five dummies push each other to be better and want more for themselves is the kind of television I return to again and again. New Girl also wins the “Best Use of Beloved Character Actors as Parents” award, an award that I just made up but should be included in the Emmys as soon as possible. Anyone up for True American?
5. Grey’s Anatomy
I am a sucker for a perfect pilot episode. I love an episode that immediately sets the tone and point of view of the show, one that allows you to find new things every time you watch. It’s probably hard to remember the first season of Grey’s given that the show is currently barreling into its seventeenth season, but trust me, it is perfect. There are so many reasons I love Grey’s: Callie Torres, Addison Adrianne Forbes Montgomery-Shepherd, the music, Bailey, The Chief, “it’s a beautiful day to save lives,” the sparkle pager, Mark Sloan — I could go on. But the reason I come back to Grey’s again and again is because of Meredith and Cristina. I have watched what some might call “a lot” of TV and this is one of my favorite portrayals of friendship. Meredith and Cristina click right away, but they are wary — of each other, of their own feelings, of trusting another person. But at the end of the day, they understand each other. It’s not until the second season that Cristina begrudgingly tells Meredith: “You’re my person,” a line that is so simply written, so flawlessly delivered that it instantly became iconic. It takes time for them to build their friendship, but it is the strongest relationship either of them have.
Everything about their ten years of on screen friendship is wonderful — dancing out their feelings to Tegan and Sara, pushing each other to be better in surgery, Derek walking into his bedroom to find Cristina there and knowing them well enough to walk away or lie down and go to sleep without comment. They have realistic fights about their marriages and their careers and what they want out of life, but they always come back to each other. When Cristina leaves, she tells Meredith: “He is very dreamy, but he is not the sun. You are.” May we all have a friendship like that.
4. Fleabag
When the first season of Fleabag ended, I said to myself “Well, that was perfect, no need for anymore of that.” I mean, how often do people create a perfect, self contained first season of television and then a second one that is just as good? Funnily enough, Phoebe Waller Bridge didn’t either, because she managed to create a perfect first season and an even better second season. When I say Fleabag is one of my favorite TV shows, I do technically mean both seasons, but it is the second season that stays with me.
I watched it all in one night, vacillating from helpless laughter (Olivia Coleman’s line readings!!!) to shocked surprise (“Where did you just go?”) and when it was over I sent profanity littered texts about it to one of my best friends, then watched the entire season again. This one almost feels self explanatory, I mean, look at that jumpsuit — how could it not be on my list? I don’t know that any show I have ever watched has more efficiently punched a hole in my heart and then had the absolute nerve to play “This Feeling” afterwards. Thinking about it right now makes me feel weepy! I love it!
3. 30 Rock
People often tell me that I am funny. I appreciate that, but I always wonder if they realize how many of my jokes are straight up 30 Rock quotes. Would you like to know why I forgot to do a task? “Cooking a French Bread Pizza and Forgot.” If you tell me something that crappy that happened to you? I’m gonna tell you that it is just like “the movie Hard to Watch based on the novel Stone Cold Bummer by Manipulate.” Anytime I have a problem? Look, “I know it’s gay, but it’s my gay problem and I am handling it!”
I could go on, but I think my point has been made. This show hit me at the exact right time in my life and is precisely dialed into my comedic sensibilities. It knows exactly how to use every actor and personality in the cast, and it knows what to do with every guest star. Has there been a better use of Brian Williams then his iconic appearances as himself but the living worst? I submit there has not. Dot Com is my hero, Jenna’s rage stroke induced nosebleeds are incredible, Elaine Strich’s performance was a gift, and most importantly? I will never, ever go with a hippie to a second location.
2. ER
ER was the first show I got permission to stay up past my bedtime to watch. I discovered it during the lazy summers of the early aughts, when TNT had their (iconic) block of “Primetime in the Daytime” programming. Every weekday, I would race home after a morning of swim practice just in time to spend two glorious hours at Country General Hospital. ER is a little bit of everything I love: hints of procedural, rooted in friendship and good mentorship, and you better believe the white ladies on this show had their fair share of dramatics! Before it graced our Hulu screens, I spent way too much money on [number redacted] of seasons, and I was thrilled that that it held up, even twenty five years later. This is another entry in my personal perfect pilots list! Everything is dialed up to 11 — this is an emergency room! — the hallways are crammed with people and medical equipment and you are whipped along for the ride.
ER has one of the most iconic casts of all time. It is wild to watch George Clooney on the small screen, it can barely handle the force of his charisma. Julianna Margulies has a face like the sun; she is given such a dark arc from the start of the show and she absolutely crushes it. John Cater and Peter Benton have such a sweet friendship, I could not believe how hard I cried when Eriq La Salle left the show. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Kerry Weaver’s coming out was the first I saw on TV, and even though I didn’t have the language for it then, it was one of the first things I wanted to revisit after I came out. Also? Maura Tierney. Double also? Alex Kingston.
1. The West Wing
Here it is, the winner of Christina’s Perfect TV Pilot! Also the winner of the coveted “TV Pilot Christina Has Mostly Memorized!” and the slightly less well known “This Show is Flawed, but so am I, Here is My Heart” award! No matter how many times I watch it, the first episode of The West Wing thrills me, from the classic Sorkin dialogue to the often mocked and replicated walk and talks, to the incredible introduction of Jed Bartlett.
I know every single criticism of TWW and agree with most of them! Still, it is the show I can always put on, it is the ultimate comfort TV. I had an annoying day last week and I put on “Galileo.” If I have a really bad day, I’ll put on “18th and Potomac” and follow it up with “Two Cathedrals.” Sometimes I crave specific moments, like CJ telling Danny she likes Goldfish, “the cheese things you have at a party,” not actual goldfish, or Abby exasperatedly telling Jed the answer to his crossword: “END, you idiot, Bitter END,” or Jed giving Charlie his family’s knife for Thanksgiving. My (seemingly) eternal love of The West Wing is the most I have ever identified with the phrase the heart wants what it wants, which is perhaps a worrying fact to have committed to the page. My feelings about the show’s politics has shifted over the years, I have only gotten more progressive and less tolerant of the both sides discourse, and the concept of good white people nobly doing the right thing is less enticing than ever. The more I stopped expecting The West Wing to provide my personal political roadmap, the more I am able to love it for what it is: a damn good TV show. The longest break I have ever taken from it was after the 2016 election — turns out nothing is infallible. The mix of humor and hope, the ruminations on what complex choices do to your morals, and the absolutely incredible acting — it just works. It’s my favorite TV show, flaws and all. What’s next?
Shows that almost made the list: Sex and The City, Jane the Virgin, Happy Endings, Glee, Judging Amy, Law and Order, Friday Night Lights, The L-Word, Madam Secretary and probably three million others!
Where to stream gay TV:
89 Queer TV Shows to Stream on Netflix32 Lesbian, Queer & Bisexual (LGBTQ+) TV Shows Streaming Free on Amazon Prime62 TV Shows On Hulu with LGBTQ+ Characters
My Top 10 Television Shows: Carmen Phillips, Who Has Always Been Rooting For Everybody Black
In My Top 10 Favorite Television Shows, various members of Autostraddle’s TV Team will be telling you about the TV shows nearest and dearest to our hearts, EVEN the ones that don’t have lesbian / bisexual / queer woman characters.
Today, Deputy Editor Carmen Phillips shares feelings about her favorite shows of all time.
I love television — a lot. By which I mean, a lot.
If we’re being honest, and I think we should because we’re only human after all, I wanted to impress you with my choices. I wanted to pick the definitive BEST television I’ve ever seen (especially because we’ve had so few chances to write about straight and/or cis gay men’s television on Autostraddle, you know? So, I wanted to flex a bit). I gave that up and decided I wanted to tell you my guilty pleasures, the stories that I know are awful but I gobble like sugar sweet candy and never complain — because what’s television, if not fun? Ultimately, I did neither of these things.
In the “shows that almost made the list” section at the bottom of this Top 10, you will find a mix of the shows I consider objectively to be The BestTM and the shows that are my most saccharine pleasures (some are a bit of both!). But for the actual Top 10 you’re about to read below, I simply picked the TV shows that I’ve watched most often. These are the ones I’ve repeated over the years, worn out my streaming queue, and can recite entire scenes from memory without looking up from my keyboard.
It’s an abstract measure of what’s truly my “favorite” — but, oh well, life’s random. At least this gets us to good cross section. OK! Thanks for reading the disclaimer and here we go!
10. Glee
This show makes my Top 10 for one reason and one reason only: Naya Rivera’s performance as Santana Lopez.
A few years ago, here’s what I had to say:
“The only straight I am is STRAIGHT-UP BITCH” is one of the most empowering lines uttered by a queer woman on television. Santana bristled, but she loved. She really loved. She loved without being forced to be soft. That’s something that we don’t often see in “bitchy” television characters, especially in those written by men.
Santana was allowed to rage. When she was in the closet, she took all the hate she was feeling about herself and she spewed it out. Maybe that sounds off-putting in retrospect, but let me tell you — back then it was cathartic. Kurt, Glee’s other resident gay, was a sympathetic queer character. He had a bit of a snarky sense of humor, but when he got bullied, he cried, and the audience cried with him. When he came out, his father loved him and hugged him and then we got to cry some more. His storyline was hopeful and optimistic. I don’t want to take anything away from Kurt or his importance in television history. But here’s the thing about Santana — she was the bully. She wasn’t a saintly gay. She found it hard to love herself, so in turn she made it hard to love her. She told her abuela that she had to come out because every day felt like a war. She was tired of fighting with herself. I wept. So many of us know what it feels like to tear yourself in two from the inside out, to put up armor and hope that no one will notice. My armor was a smile, Santana’s was an insult. And bless her for it.
Thank you Naya.
9. Grey’s Anatomy
When I talk about Grey’s Anatomy, here’s usually the first thing I say: There’s no version of my coming out story that doesn’t also involve Sara Ramirez as Callie Torres. That’s still true — but also there’s no way to talk about my humor, or the ways I’ve learned to cope through the worst of my depression, or the entire decade of my 20s, without also talking about Grey’s Anatomy. I’ve watched it so many times on a loop that it’s actually embedded itself into my DNA. I wouldn’t still be here if I hadn’t had Grey’s — with it’s drawn out monologues and needlessly complicated sexcapades — glowing that soft, quiet hummm into my darkest corners.
8. Friday Night Lights
Maybe you’ve heard of this thing? It’s called “Texas Forever.”
I’ve never been to Texas, and I’ve only ever sat through about three complete football games in my life, but also I’ve got to tell you, Friday Night Lights is some of the finest television ever written. It’s about football, but only as much it’s also about learning strength of character and how to love or what it even means to grow up. It’s about finding and building community. To be honest, when I think of Friday Night Lights, I barely even consider it a television show. Its scripts are so meticulously plotted, with characters who leave as their high school years wane and graduate, but core themes that hold steady throughout — it feels more like a long-form novel about a small Texas town. Ironically, that’s something a lot of pretentious critics say about The Wire, a show that couldn’t be further away from Friday Night Lights in terms of subject or tone if it tried. Still, I think the same adage applies here.
(Many write ups of FNL point to its earlier seasons as a highlight, but I’ve always been partial to a baby-faced Michael B. Jordan’s years in Seasons Four and Five. Those seasons also co-star a young Jurnee Smollet-Bell, whom you’ll see a repeat performance from on this list in exactly one second… )
7. Underground
Yes, I realize that I did an explainer defining the rules of this Top 10 list — namely that no matter how great or masterful, no show that I’ve ever only seen once could make the cut — but rules are made to broken and if there’s ever been a need for an exception, this is it.
Underground only lasted for two short and criminally undervalued seasons on WGN (you can currently find them streaming on Hulu). Its legacy got cut short because period dramas are expensive and WGN wanted out of the original programming business, but if you’ve ever trusted my opinion any piece of television criticism, you’ll make it your business to seek it out.
It’s true that I’ve only seen Underground once, but that’s for a very good reason. The highest praise I can give is this: I hate, and I mean genuinely loathe, fictional stories about slavery. It’s my steadfast belief that there are so many better ways to spend my one beautiful precious Black life than being re-traumatized by watching my people be abused, raped, and in chains. And yet — Underground is triumphant. It’s determined, and considered, and hopeful without ever once losing track of the violence, torture, or purposeful cruelty that enslaved Black Americans were subjected to. In Season Two, Aisha Hind’s Harriet Tubman has the honor of what I still consider to be the single greatest hour of performance put forth by a Black woman on television. Jurnee Smollet-Bell’s protagonist is a heroine of epic portions — fierce, loyal to her family, relentlessly brave. If you loved Amirah Vann’s Tegan Price in How To Get Away with Murder, you are wholly unprepared for her breakout role in this series. Autostraddle favorite Jasika Nicole is also prominently featured.
Like so many others, I’ve spent a lot of time this summer thinking about Black stories and media consumption. Underground is what happens when you purposefully decenter whiteness in our history and the stories we tell ourselves about it. You should watch it.
6. Noah’s Arc
Patrik Ian Polk’s Noah’s Arc is only rivaled by The L Word (hold one second on that!) when it comes to television shows that fundamentally shaped by baby gayhood as a queer Black woman. Those who know know, but Noah’s Arc was truly FOR US, BY US television — it didn’t have fancy Showtime backing, the sets and costumes were sometimes a little budget tight, but the love behind and in front of the camera was always sincere and overflowing.
When similarly placed (and much more mainstream) shows, like Queer as Folk and The L Word, were busy associating gayness with whiteness in our media, Noah’s Arc was the 1st place I saw ball culture, or learned about Black prides, or literally saw ANY gay Black couple love each other EVER. I was wrecked when Noah was beaten horribly in a hate crime. When Ricky briefly gave up his fuckboi ways and fell in love with Wilson Cruz’s Junito? I swooned hard. Alex’s everything is a Forever Mood. The first gay wedding that made me cry? 100% that was Wade and Noah in the spin-off movie Noah’s Arc: Jumping the Broom (and yes, I went out of my way to see the film opening night, thank you very much). Noah’s Arc was a window. More than that — a mirror. A mirror that I could be fully black, fully queer, at the same time.
If you’ve never seen Noah’s Arc, the first nine episodes are currently available online. The feature film Jumping the Broom is available as well. Earlier this summer, the cast and creator filmed a special Coronavirus and Black Lives Matter themed reunion episode that’s since been released on YouTube — and no less than four people I love sent me the original press announcement within an hour of its release. I’m just here to give Darryl Stephens and Patrik Ian Polk all of their flowers.
5. The L Word // The L Word: Generation Q
Ah yes, who realized that we’d arrive here eventually? The L Word portion of the list! The thing is, looking back over my television watching life, I’m genuinely surprised how many times I have re-watched The L Word!!
I mean, OK, I’m a queer TV/Film critic and also a senior editor on a lesbian website, so this probably doesn’t surprise many of you — but it surprised me. Even more than that, I’m genuinely surprised at how much I enjoy watching it? The L Word has very rightly been held to tough criticism over the last ten years. The original is famously bathed in whiteness and never did right by Tasha or for that matter, a single trans character. The reboot still has yet to cast a dark skinned Black woman or literally any woman who’s not a sample size. But even with all of that, I still genuinely fucking love both of these shows.
The L Word has often caused hurt, but damn does it get back up and try again. It always seems to find a way — a conversation between friends who use nothing but their eyes, the way that queer women pile on top of each other to say hello and drink wine out of mugs, working up the courage to ask that hot neighbor next door out on a first date, all of it — to remind me that it’s still home.
Plus, every time Bette Porter says “Fuck.” My heart.
4. Orange is the New Black
Speaking of shows that have caused hurt, may I welcome you to Orange is the New Black?
Listen I don’t know what to tell you, I once loved this show with passion and absolute fire, and then I was left betrayed and brokenhearted by a writers’ room and showrunner who had no interest in telling stories that respected Black and Brown women as opposed to actively traumatizing them. Somehow along the way, I found myself back to… well, I can’t say I’ve ever forgiven this show, Jenji Kohan burned that bridge long ago, but I did come back around to appreciating it.
Here’s the kindest, truest thing I can say about Orange is the New Black: Almost everything about how we tell women’s stories in the last decade, queer women’s stories, stories about trans women and women of color, all of it — it all changed because of this one single show. Perhaps Orange is the New Black’s greatest gift and curse will be that it lived long enough to watch its metaphorical TV children outgrow it.
I’ll never watch another Jenji Kohan show for as long as I live, but this cast was magic. I’ll always be grateful for the women of Litchfield and the summers they stayed my life.
3. Pose
It is sincerely dumbfounding how good one television show can be. At this point I feel as if I’ve written so much about Pose that I might as well be blue in the face. But you know what? Here goes one more:
With skill and artistry, Steven Canals and Janet Mock have tapped into a purity and resiliency and love that beats raw at the center of so many queer chosen families for Black and Brown trans and queer folks. Then, they splashed it in our full splendor across our screens, immortalizing us the same way white cis people have been able to see themselves for years.
I can go on. I could talk about how I’d never seen a Black Puerto Rican femme who’s the mother of her queer chosen family who reminded me so much of myself until I saw Mj Rodriguez’s Blanca Evangelista (down to her arroz con gandules served straight from the caldero). Or how I’ve held Angelica Ross’ performance as Candy in my heart for two years. I could talk about how Billy Porter is shattering glass ceilings on the awards circuit, and how rampant transphobia simultaneously keeps Pose from collecting all the little gold statues it rightly deserves.
In the opening of Pose, Elektra wonders what category to walk. Blanca responds: ROYALTY. Pose is so much more than luxurious ballroom runways; it knows we’re fucking rich. It knows that small family dinners surrounded by the people who really see you are worth more than gold. It knows even in the specter of death, queer folks don’t falter. We hold on to each other harder and stronger — and that fortitude is worth an entire crown of jewels. We’ve earned our diamonds because we withstood the pressure.
2. Living Single
When Autostraddle first designed this Top 10 series, there were two shows that I never doubted for a second would be the last two standing. And honestly, the two are so closely tied in my mind that I couldn’t figure out how to rank them separately. In the spirit of democracy (ha!) I did a impartial straw poll of my three oldest friends and my mom — another show won (barely), but more on that in a bit.
It may be a sitcom, but I take Living Single very seriously. I take it seriously that this Black television show, on what was once the last place ranked FOX broadcast network, centered on the friendships of four Black women, became the entire blueprint for a better known white juggernaut that many would later say defined the decade. I’d argue those critics who flaunt Friends as being definitive are plainly and factually wrong; there isn’t a thing Friends did that Living Single didn’t do first and with essentially 1/8th the budget. Tattoo it on my skin. I stand by it.
I’ve watched Living Single front-to-back every year, every single year, since 1993 when I was in 2nd grade. That summer I basically had a Queen Latifah themed birthday party. As a present, of my mom’s friends got me Queen’s Black Reign album on cassette tape! The unedited “adult” version, so you just knew I was big time!
Living Single is on Hulu, if you’ve never seen it or want to catch up. It’s always funny in the way you want “classic” sitcoms to be, and it leads with its heart. After watching for 30 minutes, you can’t help but feel a little more settled about the world. (Also there’s a lesbian themed special episode in Season Three — 3×22 “Woman to Woman” — that, just like the rest of the show, pokes fun without laughing at you and ultimately lands exactly where you want to be.) The most important thing to know, that I will take no debate over, is that Max and Kyle are second greatest Black love story on television.
Want to know the first?
1. A Different World
Dwayne Wayne and Whitley Gilbert forever.
Debbie Allen’s magnum opus was so ahead of its time 30 years ago, and it gets better with age. Do you want to know who was frank, honest conversations about consent and the responsibility of men not to rape all the way back in 1989? That would be A Different World. Who was talking about growing HIV/AIDS rates in Black communities when the President of the United States could barely choke out the virus’ name? Oh that would also be A Different World, back in 1991. What about racist hate crimes on college campuses? 1992 — and you already know the deal. Debbie found time to dedicate entire episodes to Black history icons like Lena Horne or Alvin Alley, not to mention creating graciously realistic goals for Black hair care while living in a college dorm.
But what makes A Different World absolutely iconic is not its myriad of “Very Special Episodes” in that late 80s way — it’s that it is legitimately funny and feels “lived in” in the way you feel once you’ve settled in on a college campus. As a viewer, it’s so easy to genuinely believe these characters are best friends trying to figure out young adulthood and life. It’s a true work of large ensemble and in that light, there are very few other sitcoms like it. Most focus on a central cast of four or five — A Different World tapped out somewhere around nine!! With so many characters to keep track of, the show becomes an ideal masterclass in the tight 22 minute, three-act script. It’s also a surprisingly gripping slow burn romantic comedy (and here I am in 2020, still looking for a nerdy lil’ butch Dwayne Wayne with flip-up glasses to call my own).
There’s a reason that you can still buy Hillman college sweatshirts online 33 years after the show’s debut, a reason why Lena Waithe named her company “Hillman Grad Productions” — it’s because Debbie Allen took us to school. May we continue to be her legacy.
(A Different World is available on Amazon Prime, but if you’ve never seen the show you should start at Season Two and just thank me later.)
Shows that almost made the list: Vida, One Day at a Time, The Wire, The Sopranos, The Crown, Jane the Virgin, The West Wing, How to Get Away with Murder, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Big Little Lies, Sex and the City, This Is Us, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gilmore Girls, Oz
My Top 10 Television Shows: Heather Hogan, Lover of Love and Laughing
In My Top 10 Favorite Television Shows, various members of Autostraddle’s TV Team will be telling you about the TV shows nearest and dearest to our hearts, EVEN the ones that don’t have lesbian / bisexual / queer woman characters.
Today TV Team Editor and Senior Writer Heather Hogan shares feelings about her favorite shows of all time.
10. How to Get Away With Murder
How to Get Away With Murder isn’t the kind of show I usually watch. Even fictional murder freaks me out; I can’t stay invested in procedurals; and non-linear plots on broadcast TV lose me as soon as the episodes take a break. But How to Get Away With Murder was anchored and elevated by the one and only Viola Davis, a generational talent and my all-time favorite actor, playing a Black bisexual character on primetime, and there was no way I was going to miss that. Natalie’s words are the ones that belong here; I hope you read and cherish them as much as I did.
9. Steven Universe
Korra and Asami crawled so that PB and Marceline could walk so that Ruby and Sapphire could run so that Catra and Adora could fly — but it’s important to note the huge chasm between walking and running. It feels like only Rebecca Sugar could have bridge that gap. And boy did she ever. Steven Universe was a masterwork of queer storytelling, exploring everything from gender to gender presentation to commitment to grief to depression to trauma, and everything in between.
8. Orphan Black
There will literally never be another Orphan Black, one of the greatest feminist series and sci-fi shows of all time, and the fact that Tatiana Maslany doesn’t have a dozen trophies to show for it is a crime.
7. Jane the Virgin
It never stopped surprising and delighting me, especially in the end with Petra and JR, which turned out to be one of my favorite TV romances ever. Jane the Virgin made me laugh and cry, in good ways, combined, more than another other show I’ve ever watched.
6. Skins
This series transformed everything about my life: my understanding of myself, my writing, my career, and, well — I met my wife when she tweeted at me about my recaps in 2010. I waffled on including this because Skins Fire is the greatest abomination of my professional life, but look at these faaaaces.
5. Derry Girls
As a child of the ’90s, Derry Girls tickles my nostalgia — and it also tickles me to my core. I have never laughed as long or hard or loud as I do when I watch this series, even if I’ve already seen the episode ten times.
4. One Day at a Time
One Day at a Time is the reason I fell in love with TV when I was a little kid. It reminds me of the shows I grew up on and cherished because they showed me families (found ones, too) that didn’t often remind me of my own — Family Ties, 227, The Facts of Life, The Golden Girls, A Different World — and taught me things and brought me belonging I wasn’t learning or having in real life. And also made me laugh and lot and forget my worries for half an hour at a time. I honestly cannot imagine what seeing Elena as a child would have done for me. It would have changed everything.
3. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
It’s epic sci-fi and fantasy on par with Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, series-long masterful character development, heroes in all shapes and sizes and backgrounds and genders and races, and a queer love story that saves the literal world.
2. Gentleman Jack
What else can I say: “Declarations of love and promises and pleas not to be hurt, a camera on a crane sweeping the Yorkshire landscape, rings! Fingers intertwined! A wedding! There has never been a show like Gentleman Jack on TV. The messiness and the misandry and the ascendent lesbian happiness.”
1. The Wire
When Natalie and President Obama agree on something, who’s going to argue with it? There are very few shows that have stayed with me like The Wire; the first time I watched it, I was expecting to be at least a little underwhelmed because, like Natalie said, so many TV critics choose it as their all-time favorite show. But nope! It exceeded the hype in every way. It is a masterpiece of storytelling and Omar Little is one of the greatest TV characters in pop culture history.
My Top 10 Television Shows: Valerie Anne, Superqueero Head Girl
In My Top 10 Favorite Television Shows, various members of Autostraddle’s TV Team will be telling you about the TV shows nearest and dearest to our hearts, EVEN the ones that don’t have lesbian / bisexual / queer woman characters.
Today, writer, TV recapper, and resident sci-fi nerd Valerie Anne shares feelings about her favorite shows of all time, most of which, turns out, are sci-fi.
I hate declaring my favorite thing! My go-to answer is, “It depends!” Once for an Autostraddle roundtable we were supposed to write about our favorite TV ship and everyone got cute little graphics made of their choice and my little heart was instead filled with the words, “I won’t pick and you can’t make me.” In a perfect world I could make you a list that’s broken down: My Top 10 Favorite Shows from my Childhood, My Top 10 Sci-Fi Shows, My Top 10 Comedy Shows, My Top 10 Shows I Started and Finished in Quarantine So Far, etc. But alas, here we are. So I just went with the ones that came to me fastest and loudest, and while there are some on here that I imagine will always be true, I could write this list once a year and it would be different every time.
Also, some things I learned about myself while making this list: 1. I have a lot of all-time favorite characters that appear on shows I don’t consider my favorite shows and thus they are missing from this list. And 2. So many shows that were my favorite for a few seasons broke my heart so hard I couldn’t bear to include them. (Though on the flip side there were shows that let me down but I love them hard anyway.)
Okay enough with the caveats, off we go.
10. Supergirl
To be perfectly honest, Supergirl almost didn’t make this list after this most recent season. But the thing is, nothing will ever take away the joy and hope it gave me when it first started. The first two seasons of this show are nearly perfect. I’ll never forget how excited I was to have a superhero that reminded me of… well, of me. Kara was hopeful and open and a team player and so different than her grumpy male counterparts in the DCTV universe and she truly was a breath of fresh air. And just when I thought the show couldn’t get any better, Alex Danvers came out. She has one of my favorite coming out arcs on all of television, and her and her current girlfriend Kelly were often the best parts of the most recent season. I still, perhaps foolishly, believe this show can get back to what makes it great, so I put it here on this list with hope in my heart.
9. The Vampire Diaries/ The Originals/ Legacies
Why yes, here I am, cheating already. IN MY DEFENSE, these shows all take place in the same universe. There are character crossovers galore. Epic lore and three-dimensional characters and taking the idea of ‘endgame’ and flipping it on its head. And so many queer witches! And a queer werewolf! I wrote about the good, the bad, and the queer history of this universe so I won’t bore you with the details here but my friend and I devoured all 8 bajillion episodes of this universe last summer and it was such a fun world to be immersed in.
8. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
Ever since my brother, who is four years younger than me, was little, I’ve found comfort in the escapism of shows technically made for children. I watched shows on Nickelodeon during my summer breaks from college, my friend and I threw a watch party for the Disney movie Descendants 3 just last year. And while I also very much enjoy the made-for-adults cartoons like Bob’s Burgers, Bojack Horseman, and Tuca & Bertie, I also find the pureness of shows like She-Ra and Steven Universe healing. They’re the type of shows I wish I had when I was younger, and so watching Adora and Catra fight with and for each other on this queer show made by queer folks as a queer adult? My inner queer child is soothed. Plus the whole show is about the power of friendship and smashing the patriarchy and what’s not to like about that?
7. The Haunting of Hill House
I’ve loved the horror genre for as long as I can remember. I read every Goosebumps book as soon as it came out, I watched Are You Afraid of the Dark every Saturday night. So now that I’m in my 30s, I feel like I’ve seen it all. It’s very easy to do horror poorly, and oh so many people do. And for folks who just want a jump scare now and then, that’s fine, but I like history and lore and STORY. Plus also enough spooks to get my adrenaline pumping. Haunting of Hill House gave me just that. It was beautifully done, from the CGI to the practical effects to the directing and acting. And just brilliantly written. Then they gave us the Theo Crain cherry on top. The spooky lesbian empath of my dreams.
6. South of Nowhere
I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, I haven’t rewatched South of Nowhere since I first saw it over a decade ago, so I can’t tell you with any kind of certainty that it holds up. I don’t even remember if it was an on-paper good show. But it was so important to me. Spencer Carlin is a big reason I came out when I did. Ashley is the tough outer shell, squishy insides type of character I love. Spencer’s mom had the reaction I was scared my mother would have, and then went on a journey to acceptance I allowed myself to hope my mother would go on. It was a teen drama like all the other teen dramas I had watched and loved before, but this time the main character was in love with another girl instead of the quarterback of the football team or the town bad boy (or both).
5. Legends of Tomorrow
People talk about “jumping the shark” like it’s a bad thing, and for shows that are typically nowhere near the “water”, it can be alarming when they do it. But Legends of Tomorrow took a whole herd of sharks, saddled them, gave them silly names, and hitched them to their time machine. And it’s beautiful. They’re already time-traveling vigilantes, why not have FUN. Their world defies the logic of our world, so why wouldn’t their show defy the logic of the genre? The show puts characters first, and then plays MadLibs to figure out what will be happening around them while they learn and grow and bond. Plus, Sara Lance, from her first episode in Arrow to her most recent Legends moment, has had one of the most epic character growth arcs of all time. A fully realized bisexual character who refuses to die no matter how many times they kill her, and who had a long-term girlfriend, then a few flings, then another long-term girlfriend. She is nobody’s trope and I love her. PLUS, she’s not anywhere near the only three-dimensional queer character on the show. There’s her lesbian clone girlfriend, her pretty pansexual shape-shifting pal, her bisexual wizard boy ex and his queer assistant who has a crush on anyone even a little in charge of him. And if you get into secondary characters, the list just goes on and on. It’s just a fun queer time and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
4. One Day at a Time
Two words: Elena Alvarez. I know I already talked about retroactively healing the wounds of my younger selves so I won’t go on too much about it but Elena feels like how I would be if I were a teenager in 2020 instead of in the early 2000s. There are a lot of similarities between my family and hers, but also so many differences, and I love seeing myself reflected in her and also learning from her. The show balances humor and heart with great skill. I never thought any 30-minute comedy would ever live up to Parks & Rec in my book, but this show soared right into my top sitcom spot swiftly and easily.
3. Orphan Black
Orphan Black was an amazing show, with an amazing story and a unique feel to it, but that’s not why it’s so high on this list. I mean yes, the brilliant acting job by Tatiana Maslany, the writing that elevated women and told the story about how different we all are even when we’re genetically identical, the Gays, it was all PART of the reason it’s so high on this list. But the thing is, Orphan Black changed my life. Writing recaps for it changed the trajectory of my career, Tatiana Maslany was my first (email) interview, Orphan Black was the first show to send me physical screeners and press kits in the mail with letters calling me a journalist, my first red carpet interviews, my first cast-and-crew-attended press party. It was the first hashtag I invented that took off (hey #clonesbians), the first fan meetups I organized. I met some of my best friends through this show, so it will always be part of my DNA. Pun very much intended.
2. Wynonna Earp
Similar to Orphan Black, Wynonna Earp changed my life. I met even MORE of my best friends through this show, and have had even more amazing opportunities because of it. I couldn’t even begin to describe all the ways this show has changed me. The sci-fi is wacky but the characters and their relationships are so real. Wynonna is that tough on the outside soft on the inside gal I mentioned earlier. Waverly is that optimism-is-harder-than-it-looks type, like what drew me to Kara Danvers. Nicole isn’t just Waverly’s girlfriend, she’s her own person. Plus their world is full of such complicated women like Rosita and Kate and Mercedes. The show is funny and smart and full of found family feels, which I suppose is how it led me to my smart, funny found family.
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I was 11 years old when I started watching Buffy. 11-years-old when I saw this teenage girl kick everyone’s ass. The show was dark and gritty but funny and sweet and I couldn’t get enough. The fast-paced quips made their way into my lexicon, and haven’t left. To the point where sometimes I make Buffy references and don’t even realize I’m doing it. Buffy is the first way I started to explore my sexuality, though I didn’t recognize it as such. At the time it was just acting out f/f romantic storylines in AOL RP chatrooms as Buffy characters. You know, for the luls. I watched Buffy with my dad, and watching him watch Willow and Tara the same way he watched any other pairing on the show planted a seed of hope I would cling to later. (And in fact, when I did come out to him, he said, “Yeah, I know. I watched Buffy with you. I remember how you reacted to Faith.”) The kids in the Scooby Gang were my friends when I felt like I had none, my familiar faces to visit when I was off in New York City alone for college, and the show that taught me that even when everything sucks and feels impossible, you can still be brave and live.
Shows that almost made the list: Jane the Virgin, Pretty Little Liars, Nancy Drew, Glee, Shameless, Fleabag, Warehouse 13, Marvel’s Runaways, Impulse, OH GODS SO MANY MORE
My Top 10 Favorite Television Shows: Natalie, the TV Team’s Resident Bisexual
In My Top 10 Favorite Television Shows, various members of Autostraddle’s TV Team will be telling you about the TV shows nearest and dearest to our hearts, EVEN the ones that don’t have lesbian / bisexual / queer woman characters.
Today, writer and TV critic Natalie shares her top 10 favorites TV shows of all times and tries to convince you to watch.
10. Pitch
It’s been three years since FOX cancelled Pitch and, let me tell you, I’m still not over it. The series, about the first woman to play Major League Baseball, only lasted a season but it made in indelible impression. Kylie Bunbury stars as 23-year-old Ginny Baker who steps into the Padres bullpen mid-season. Like Friday Night Lights, Pitch is a show about sports that’s not entirely about sports; it’s about the challenges of being the first in a space. You get all the emotion of Dan Fogelman’s other 2016 series, This is Us but without the excessive sentimentality.
I loved Pitch from the outset: Bunbury is imminently watchable as Ginny Baker and Mark-Paul Gosselaar charms as gruff Padres catcher, Mike Lawson. But the show resonates with me most because it’s an opportunity to see someone from where I’m from — Ginny’s from a small town in Eastern North Carolina and we almost share an alma mater — thrive on the global stage. I still cling to the hope that one day, Pitch will get a second season but, for now, you can watch the show’s lone season on Hulu.
9. The Good Wife
“I’m not gay, I’m flexible,” Kalinda Sharma tells Alicia Florrick one night over drinks. For anyone else, that answer might feel like a cop-out, but for Kalinda Sharma it fits. As the badass private investigator at Lockhart Gardner, Kalinda constantly makes herself just malleable enough to accomplish whatever she wants or needs in the moment. She is terribly enigmatic — as evidenced by the fact that it took her two years to respond to Alicia’s question about her sexuality — but she draws you in all the while. I love how Kalinda Sharma upends so many of the stereotypes that often constrain South Asian women on television. Sufficed to say, I watch The Good Wife for Kalinda Sharma… and when she left (and given how she left), my attention went with her.
8. Luther
Before there was Villanelle, there was Alice Morgan.
Debuting back in 2010, Luther follows the travails of Detective John Luther who, in his first case, post-suspension, has to solve the murders of Douglas and Laura Morgan. His suspect? Their daughter, Alice. While Luther’s questioning exposes Alice as a “malignant narcissist,” there’s no evidence linking her to the crime — Alice is too smart for that, frankly — and he’s forced to let her go. But that’s only the beginning of their relationship… which becomes just as alluring as it is toxic.
Especially in the show’s first series, watching Luther is like watching two fighters in their prime: both Idris Elba and Ruth Wilson deliver outstanding performances. As Alice, Wilson is magnetic: drawing you in and making you cheer for her even though she’s obviously a psychopath. She’s on my Mount Rushmore of TV Villains.
7. Jane the Virgin
From my contribution to last summer’s Jane the Virgin roundtable:
I watch a lot of television – you know, for work – and when I’m watching any ensemble show, I have a tendency to gravitate to a few characters while growing to loathe a few others. I’ll devour storylines featuring the characters I care about, especially the queer ones, while begrudgingly sitting through the storylines featuring characters I don’t. That’s been the case for nearly every other show I’ve ever watched, except for Jane the Virgin.
I cared about damn near every character on this show. I wanted love for Petra and Alba. I was invested in Xiomara’s health just as much as I hoped for Luisa to hold onto her sobriety. I wanted Jane’s career to flourish and for Rogelio to find success on the American small screen. And while I had my preference for who would win Jane’s heart, I wanted happiness for both Michael and Rafael. There wasn’t a character I truly loathed – well, besides Petra’s mom, but that was kind of the point – and I never once found myself wanting to fast-forward through anyone else’s storylines. It’s such a rare and incredible feat.
6. Friday Night Lights
I never really bought into the football culture of the Southern town I grew up in but I was fully sold on life in Dillon, Texas. It’s a show about becoming the best versions of ourselves, led by these two incredible educators. I love it so, so much. Clear eyes, full hearts…
5. How to Get Away With Murder
I’ve written enough about my love for How to Get Away With Murder and Annalise Keating that I won’t belabor the point too much here… except to echo our Senior Editor Carmen Phillips who, directly following HTGAWM’s finale, dubbed her: “THEE most important black queer woman character we’ve ever had on television, bar none.”
4. The Sopranos
It’s hard to imagine many of my favorite shows existing if not for The Sopranos. The crime drama rewrote the rules about what stories could be told on the small screen and, in doing so, changed the whole entire game. Sopranos creator David Chase took advantage of the archetypes we’d already seen in the Godfather trilogy and Goodfellas and gave them more depth that would’ve ever been possible in film.
3. The West Wing
There’s no show on this list that I’ve watched more often than The West Wing. Rarely a day goes by when I don’t find myself quoting the show in some way. It served as a salve during the worst of the George W. Bush presidency… a reminder that competent governance was still possible. During the Obama years, it was a shortcut: a way for me to explain difficult political issues. Need to understand the debate over Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell? Watch “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet.” The debate over school vouchers or the DC City Governance? Try “Full Disclosure.” Now, it’s an escape: a place where I can laugh at Joey Lucas’ first meeting with Josh Lyman, CJ Cregg’s performance of “The Jackal” or Big Block of Cheese Day.
2. Breaking Bad
As evidenced by numerous entries on this list, I love a good villain… and there is no greater villain ever on television than Gustavo “Gus” Fring on Breaking Bad.
The model that Walter White showcased in Breaking Bad‘s first few seasons — the drug dealer who hid in plain sight — to some success, Gus Fring perfected. He was a model citizen: a slight, bespectacled man whose legitimate businesses, most notably Los Pollos Hermanos chicken franchise, fund his philanthropic efforts. He’s even a booster for the Drug Enforcement Agency. But beneath his dashing suits lies the heart of a ruthless drug kingpin, controlling drug distribution across the entire Southwest. He slips from pure sophistication to absolute villiany in the blink of an eye and it is a sight to behold. Gus Fring seems impenetrable and unflappable until he’s not… and even that makes for one of Breaking Bad’s greatest moments.
1. The Wire
At this point, it feels almost cliché to have The Wire atop my list. It feels too obvious. I mean, once the President of the United States has called it his favorite show and agrees that Omar Little is the greatest character ever to exist on television… it feels like you’re not offering any insightful commentary, you’re just stating facts. Fire is hot, water is wet and The Wire is the greatest television show of all time. Facts on facts on facts.
Shows that almost made the list: The Chicago Code, Life, One Day at a Time, Psych, Survivor’s Remorse, Terriers, Vida and Watchmen
My Top 10 Television Shows: Drew Gregory
In My Top 10 Favorite Television Shows, various members of Autostraddle’s TV Team will be telling you about the TV shows nearest and dearest to our hearts, EVEN the ones that don’t have lesbian / bisexual / queer woman characters.
Today, writer and TV/film critic Drew Gregory shares feelings about her favorite shows of all time.
10. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
I’m a Jewish girl with mental illness who is obsessed with love and musicals. What else needs to be said? Across four seasons, Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna created a show brimming with ambition, intelligence, and delight. Songs like “You Stupid Bitch,” “Ping Pong Girl,” “A Diagnosis,” “Maybe She’s Not Such a Heinous Bitch,” and so many more range from emotional to hilarious, always deepening the story like any good musical — while doing things a movie musical never could. A reprise just feels different when it’s four years in the making.
9. High Maintenance
More like a collection of short stories than a collection of short films, Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclair’s portrait of New York switches genre as often as plot. Some episodes are horror movies, some love stories, many grounded in the magic of everyday reality, and some even from the point of view of a dog or a lighter. And yet despite all the different lives explored, High Maintenance really came alive when Blichfeld and Sinclair let their own relationship seep into the narrative. It was a vulnerable choice that continues to deepen the show in unexpected ways.
8. Fleabag
This show is very personal to me, which makes its gargantuan success feel somewhat strange. But the truth is I think it’s personal to a lot of people because writer/creator/star Phoebe Waller-Bridge created something special. I don’t actually have much in common with any of the characters and yet it feels like she tore ventricles from my heart, scooped out a corner of my brain, and splattered it all on screen. Years after Hot Priest discourse is long forgotten, the show’s little moments will continue to comfort me.
7. Six Feet Under
The first time the “describe yourself with three characters” meme floated around Twitter, I half-jokingly, very seriously posted the three Six Feet Under siblings. David’s attempts at control and role as caretaker; Nate’s endless, dissatisfied wandering; and, of course, Claire’s angst, bite, and desire to create. How lucky for me to feel connections to characters that happen to inhabit one of the most formally accomplished, well-written masterworks of the medium. If this list was best instead of favorite, I’d have a hard time putting anything else at number one.
6. Looking
Every Looking episode name begins with the title: “Looking for the Future,” “Looking in the Mirror,” “Looking for Home.” If you come into this show wanting a representation of contemporary gay life, you’ll be disappointed by its narrow focus. But that was never creator Andrew Haigh’s ambitions, nor should every queer show require those ambitions. This is a show about, well, looking. It’s a show about searching. It’s the best show I’ve ever seen about dating. It’s sometimes cringey, often hilarious, and regularly heartbreaking. It’s buzzing with the beautiful dissatisfaction of life.
5. The L Word
There is The L Word the show and there is The L Word the cultural touchstone. I love both. I get more pleasure discussing The L Word than I do any other work of art. Maybe it’s because it felt forbidden for so long, or maybe there’s just something special about how many people in our community have watched and loved and hated and agonized over it. But I also think it’s worth emphasizing that The L Word is also just a remarkable work of television. It’s certainly not perfect, but I think the artistry of work made by women and queer people is often erased, and it’s important to acknowledge the show’s ambitious formal achievements alongside its representational milestones. And I will defend the theme song until I die.
4. Vida
I loved Tanya Saracho because she wrote on Looking, but wow when I decided to watch a show on Starz for the first time I did not know what I was getting into. I feel like I’ve spent the last three years with a side job as a Vida missionary. It’s just so good and I need everyone to watch it. This is a show about family and community and grief and gentrification and reckoning with the past and the future. It’s a show made with an entirely Latinx writers room and a majority queer and female crew. It’s proof that making a show right is also how you make it best. Special shoutout to Carmen Cabana’s cinematography, the hottest cast on television, and the best sex scenes I’ve ever seen in anything. God I wish it wasn’t canceled, but I’ll forever cherish these three seasons.
3. The Bisexual
When people ask me what kind of work I make/want to make, I say I want to tell stories about queer fuck ups who are trying their best. Because queer people are people! And “good” representation means seeing the scope of that humanity on screen. Desiree Akhavan’s work epitomizes these goals to me. She’s not concerned with respectability politics. She just wants to capture the intricacies of the queer lives she observes. She’s so funny, and talented, and, yes, hot, and The Bisexual is her crowning achievement in a young career already filled with many. This show gives me permission to be the person I am and the artist I want to become.
2. The Leftovers
As a former Lost superfan, I was very suspicious of Damon Lindelof’s follow-up. How could I trust another show with an ensemble cast and a plot full of mysteries after the last one turned out to be such a disaster? Well, I couldn’t. And in a sense that’s the entire point of The Leftovers. It’s not a show about answers, but about how answers don’t exist. It’s a show that’s as messy as it is ambitious and as baffling as it is remarkable. Its first season isn’t even that great, and this is a show that only ran for three. And, yet, in its own way it’s a miracle. It began in 2014 when I was in the process of having a personal political awakening and ended in 2017 after the entire country seemed to be doing the same. We live in a really bad world that’s filled with pain and grief and uncertainty. But it’s also filled with humanity and beauty and possibility. It’s hard to reckon with the existential crisis of existence, but this show tries, and the attempt is glorious. As the theme song says: let the mystery be.
1. Transparent
No other show could be my number one. No other show has reflected my present and shaped my future like this one. If you put every other show on this list in a blender, you’d end up with Jill Soloway’s messy masterpiece. I think a theme on this list has been my interest in narratives of searching and questioning and confusion, and there’s something very Jewish and very queer about that. It’s possible to make a perfect movie, but for any show that runs for more than a few years perfection is far more elusive. But television can do something more important than perfection. We can grow with TV. We can start a show as a straight cis boy who doesn’t care about religion and end a show as a gay trans woman who feels close to her Judaism. I grew with this show. I grew because of this show. It’s a part of me.
Shows that almost made the list: Jane the Virgin, Pose, Sex Education, Top of the Lake, Atlanta, Enlightened, Glee, I Love Dick, Mad Men, United States of Tara, BoJack Horseman, Sense8
My Top 10 Television Shows: Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya
In My Top 10 Favorite Television Shows, various members of Autostraddle’s TV Team will be telling you about the TV shows nearest and dearest to our hearts, EVEN the ones that don’t have lesbian / bisexual / queer woman characters.
Today, writer and TV critic Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya shares feelings about her favorite shows of all time.
First, a disclaimer. I’m betting that most of us who are participating in this series are probably going to write something along the lines of “fuck lists.” My colleagues will probably be less vulgar about it than that, but seriously! Fuck lists! And yet, here I am, making a list. And writing a disclaimer about said list because making lists that have definitive-sounding titles really does stress me out.
So know this: This list is not fixed. Because I am not fixed. This list is true for me in this specific moment in time. Ask me again in a month, a year, a few years, and I will come up with a slightly or even wildly different list. My relationship to different works of art is in constant flux. One thing that does unite every show on this list as it stands is that each of them came into my life at the exact right time and also all influence my own writing in some way. Over the course of writing this, I switched out four different shows in the tenth position.
Anyway, I’m gonna cut myself off now because I’m starting to sound like a dramatic bitch about… a list of television shows. Here we go!
10. Battlestar Galactica
I just really love space? And heavy-handed but still effective allegory? Also, this show pulls off one of my favorite twists of all time.
9. Tie: Riverdale/Elite
Gonna hit you with a double dose of teen soap here. These shows check a lot of boxes for me: hot teens ✓ with hot parents ✓ doing murders ✓ and making dumb decisions ✓ and also there are gays ✓. Elite is vastly underrated in comparison to the beloved but also perplexing Riverdale, but it’s a campy fun prep school thriller that pretty much never loses steam over the course of three seasons despite constantly mixing in new characters and twists. I love the chaos of both.
8. Parks and Recreation
It was harder for me to pick which 30-minute sitcoms to include on here — not because I don’t have a lot that I love — but because a lot of the ones I was inclined to pick sort of satisfy the same things for me? Anyway, Parks is a forever comfort show for me.
7. Real Housewives Of New York
I would be a full-on LIAR if I did not include at least one reality show on my list because, while I am a late-in-life reality fan, as with many of my interests, once I was in I was ALL THE WAY IN BABY. Real Housewives Of New York has a lot of the same stuff I appreciate in scripted drama/comedy: friendship breakups, intense borderline toxic codependent friendships, friendship makeups, and women being openly HORNY (which is coincidentally also an anagram for the show’s abbreviation).
6. Alias
I love action, and I love wigs/costumes, and this show has those things in spades. Yes, the mythology gets absolutely bonkers as the show goes on, but the first season remains top-tier, and the show’s willingness to blow up its own narrative over and over is something I think about a lot when I feel stuck in my own writing and wanna try something WILD. Alias taught me all about ambitious plotting, even when it didn’t always succeed.
5. Sharp Objects
Here is a show I literally have watched over and over and over, and I don’t know exactly what that says about me. I am just so awed by the writing, acting, and direction of this entire series. From the characters to the setting to the pain and trauma it depicts, everything is just immediately immersive and compelling. Sometimes I just rewatch the first few minutes of the series, which do so much to establish place, tone, etc. without dialogue. As a sidenote, I think Gillian Flynn has given us some of the best female characters of all time.
4. Jane The Virgin
The perfect mix of drama, humor, romance, a touch of fantasy… Jane has the range. I fell hard for this show and loved it all the way to the end. Every storyline always does so much at once, and the performances are multidimensional, too.
3. Veronica Mars
Seasons one and two of this show are absolutely perfect. I love noir; I love teen shows; I love a really bold but complicated female protagonist. I just realized in the course of writing this that this is the only show on the list that I’ve only seen once. Not for any particular reason! It just really is one of those things I wish I could experience for the first time all over again.
2. The Good Wife
As far as procedurals go, this is the one I return to over and over again. It exists in that space I love that sort of blurs low-brow and high-brow. It’s legal-drama camp! Kalinda Sharma is one of the most important TV characters to me personally, even though the show ultimately bungled her arc.
1. Buffy The Vampire Slayer
I came to Buffy a little late. Like it was already on Netflix late. And sometimes that makes me feel insecure about how much I love it, which I know is stupid because WHO CARES. Even if I didn’t grow up watching the show, it did come to me at the exact right time in my life (right around when I started dating a woman for the first time—in secret), and it still ended up being extremely formative of the new me that was starting to emerge around college. It’s sometimes hard to explain it exactly, but this show made me feel…like me. Another side note: I’m surprised more fantasy/supernatural/sci-fi shows didn’t end up on this list, because those have always been the shows that resonate on a deep level for me. But again, this list isn’t fixed because neither am I!!!!!
Shows that almost made the list: Vida, Glee, Star Trek: TNG, Pen15, Friday Night Lights, Bojack Horseman, Damages, Dare Me, The Vampire Diaries, The L Word, Revenge, 30 Rock, Community, The Good Place, Charmed, The X-Files, Agent Carter
My Top 10 Favorite Television Shows: Riese, Editor-in-Chief
In My Top 10 Favorite Television Shows, various members of Autostraddle’s TV Team will be telling you about the TV shows nearest and dearest to our hearts, EVEN the ones that don’t have lesbian / bisexual / queer woman characters.
Today, we kick off with CEO Riese sharing her feelings about her favorite shows of all time, which, with one exception, are all ensemble dramas / dramedies!
10. Orange is the New Black
Within five minutes of the first episode, the protagonist was making out, naked, with a woman in a shower. This was UNPRECEDENTED. Then it turned out she wasn’t even the only queer character? And it had this incredibly diverse cast of women, women of all ages and races and sizes, many with theatrical chops? AND it cast a black trans woman to play a black trans woman? AND it addressed an issue that I’ve been pretty passionate about for 15 or so years — our fucked up criminal justice system and prison-industrial complex, which started many conversations around mass incarceration and injustice. People had an inroad. Poussey’s death was one of the most devastating and poorly handled TV character deaths in queer television history. But damn, it’s hard to find another show with a cast this incredible, or any I binged immediately, every year, even when I thought I’d fallen out of love with it. I love and care for these characters with deranged passion.
9. Tie: Beverly Hills 90210 / The L Word
I couldn’t include one of these without the other, and I couldn’t include neither, so here we are: two shows that are so deeply engrained in the fabric of my being that I do not know if I would’ve turned out to be the same type of human had I not watched the entirety of both, rapt and obsessive until the very end.
8. Transparent
The queerest Jewiest show ever, Transparent rolled right in to the intersections of all my favorite things about television. I think I’ve written about Transparent already like 500 times on this website, right?
7. Friday Night Lights
My total disinterest in football as a sport didn’t matter. Friday Night Lights existed in a fully inhabited world of characters who displayed the full breadth of their humanity. This show made me feel good and hopeful in a way that wasn’t cheap, it was undeniably grounded in realism with a nuanced understanding of race and class. Furthermore, Tami Taylor is perfect, and the Taylors’ marriage is aspirational for us all.
6. The West Wing
I don’t know if I could ever watch this show again; not now. Maybe it would feel like a wax museum or a fantasyland. I barely registered its existence — a political drama didn’t appeal to me, not really — until George W. Bush won his second term and my roommate started a marathon with the Season One DVDs and I sat down because it was my living room too and a whole world opened up to me. And I think we saw a little Jed in Obama, didn’t we?
5. Shameless
Perhaps one of the most satisfying experiences for a queer television watcher is when a show you’re watching not for work but simply because you adore it, introduces a queer female character… and then another… and then more… and then even more! Shameless has been criminally uneven, especially in recent years. It’s made unforgivable and frustrating choices. But Shameless‘ characters are so richly drawn, the scenarios they concoct and encounter are so wacky and unpredictable and beneath it all is unmistakable heart. They’ve also managed to incorporate a relatively benign attitude towards queer sexuality as just another element of life that is ultimately small potatoes when your focus is more squarely upon having enough potatoes to eat for dinner.
4. Halt and Catch Fire
I started watching this show ’cause a reader told me a lesbian showed up eventually but by the time I got there it didn’t matter — I was all in. I was there for the powerful women in tech, ’80s/’90s nostalgia, damn fine writing, stories that bounce in unexpected directions, driven by big concepts that rarely get such a compelling dramatic treatment on contemporary television. It’s about ideas, about a team of wicked smart humans who turn hazy visions of a connected future into a tightly coded reality, knowing always that somebody else out there might be riding the same melt and could beat them to beta. It’s about the thought experiments behind the big-deal ideas we now take for granted, from the internet itself to online retail, search engines, layman-accessible chat rooms, internet security and web directories. I learned so much and it looked so good and my only complaint is that it was over too soon, that nobody watched it.
3. The Office
Nothing makes me laugh like this show, nothing!!!!! I love it so much!!! Pam and Jim forever!!!
2. My So-Called Life
I can’t talk about myself about my life about being 13 without talking about when Angela Chase was 15 and the phone appointments I had with all my best friends after every episode, the letters I wrote to ABC asking them not to cancel it, the MTV marathons I taped. We got just one season and I watched it over and over and over and over, more than The L Word, even. I got an internship at nerve.com by submitting an essay called “Why Shane is the New Jordan Catalano.” Angela was me, Rayanne was always my new best friend, Sharon was always my old one, and Jordan was always my crush. Go, now, go….
1. Six Feet Under
Dying in Six Feet Under didn’t mean your character arc was over, not by a long shot. Ghosts were everywhere — they talked to you, chided you, consumed you. Because that’s how death really feels, you know? Sure they’re gone, technically. But if being alive means always being somewhere, then being dead means sometimes being nowhere and sometimes being everywhere. Six Feet Under recognizes that grief is so many things: all-consuming and inevitably partial, devastating and hilarious. I love that the story begins with a family losing their father, and every consequential action is heavier because of it, that happiness and revelation and beauty happens despite it, which makes those beautiful moments “burn a little brighter,” as Claire’s druggie boyfriend would say. The Fishers were smart and interesting and complicated, all of them — even Ruth, who was, along with Shelly Pfefferman, a very rare example of an older woman character who is treated like a full human, still discovering who she is and what she wants. Women over 50 on TV never get to do that. they’re always a done deal. So many quotes from Six Feet Under remain in my back pocket forever — about death, sure, but about relationships and mental illness, too. The moments I remember most vividly from the show aren’t even the ones about death, but the ones about other things altogether, like pain and relationships and sexuality. But knowing those words and ideas came from people who’d felt pain like the pain I’ve felt made them, somehow, better.
Shows that almost made the list: The Leftovers, High Maintenance,The Wire, Skins, Broad City, Veep, Wentwoth, Dawson’s Creek, Queer as Folk, The Handmaid’s Tale, G.L.O.W., Killing Eve, The Brady Bunch, Battlestar Galactica