Stef's TV & Movie list

A little window into me, through the stories I love. Here's a quirk of how I watch: every night I have two shows going — something heavier in the drama slot first, then I wind down with a comedy. It's my routine, and it's how this list is laid out.🎬 The drama slot — where I go for comfort in the dark 🖤This is going to sound backwards, but darkness is where I feel most at home. Not gore, not shock — I mean the kind of horror that's really about grief, and dread that's earned. Stories that sit with deep sadness and treat it tenderly. When a show understands that kind of pain, I feel seen.Mike Flanagan is my favorite creator — he turns grief and family wounds into horror that's gorgeous and devastating. In order of how much I love them:- The Haunting of Hill House (2018; 10-ep series) — Supernatural horror-drama. Genuinely scary; grief and family trauma, haunting as metaphor; slow-burn dread with earned scares.
- The Fall of the House of Usher (2023; 8-ep miniseries) — Gothic horror-drama drawn from Poe. Low scare factor; lavish, literary, grief-heavy, atmospheric dread.
- Midnight Mass (2021; 7-ep miniseries) — Horror-drama. Slow-burn, mournful, contemplative; faith, guilt, addiction and recovery, mortality; isolated island community. Horror builds late.
- The Midnight Club (2022; 10-ep series) — Supernatural drama. Low-moderate scares; melancholic, tender, mortality-centered; structured around told ghost stories.
- The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020; 9-ep series) — Gothic romance-horror. Low scare factor; melancholic, tender; love, loss, and memory over scares.A few more spooky, atmospheric ones I love:
- Sinister (2012; film) — Horror-mystery. A true-crime writer's investigation; found footage, escalating dread, genuinely scary.
- Weapons (2025; film) — Horror-mystery. Creepy, suspenseful, slow-building puzzle with a satisfying payoff; flashes of dark humor.
- Bates Motel (2013–2017; 5 seasons) — Psychological thriller-drama, a Psycho prequel. Creepy, claustrophobic; codependent, enmeshed mother-son dynamic; slow descent.
- Behind Her Eyes (UK, 2021; 6-ep miniseries) — Psychological thriller. Mysterious, uneasy, creeping dread; forbidden-romance tension, some steamy scenes. Best watched without reading the synopsis.And some dark comedies that play like drama — they've got enough weight and story that I'll happily watch them in my drama slot:
- The Gentlemen (2024; 8-ep series) — Crime dark comedy, Guy Ritchie. Fast, stylish, thrilling; British aristocracy meets the drug trade; gasp-out-loud absurd violence, chicken-suit-and-shotgun energy.
- Murder Mindfully (Germany, 2024; series; subtitled) — Crime dark comedy. Deadpan, farcical, escalating chaos; a crime-family lawyer takes up mindfulness, with a genuine inner-work arc under the absurdity.
- Norsemen (Norway, 2016–2020; 3 seasons; English-language version) — Viking deadpan comedy. Absurd, anachronistic, crude; a smart show pretending to be stupid.
- Fleabag (UK, 2016–2019; 2 seasons) — Comedy-drama. Sharp, raw, fourth-wall-breaking; grief and self-destruction under the wit.😂 The comedy slot — smart shows being gloriously stupid 🪿My other half. I adore silly, playful, lighthearted comedy — the dumber and more earnest, the better — as long as it's got a warm heart and isn't mean. (Cruelty for laughs is the one thing I can't sit through.) Honestly this is the genre I most want to share with someone: a show projected on the ceiling, holding hands in bed, laughing together. Low effort, high connection — my favorite way to recharge.- I Think You Should Leave (2019–2023; 3 seasons) — Sketch comedy, Tim Robinson. Escalating absurdity and social cringe; unhinged, fully committed bits.
- The IT Crowd (UK, 2006–2013; 4 seasons + special) — Workplace sitcom. Absurd, warm, nerd-centric. Watched three times; I'm basically Moss, and I was a goth sysadmin who hid in the server room.
- What We Do in the Shadows (2019–2024; 6 seasons) — Mockumentary comedy. Vampire roommates; deadpan, absurd, endlessly bickering.
- Our Flag Means Death (2022–2023; 2 seasons) — Pirate comedy-romance. Gentle, queer, absurd; a lovable misfit crew.
- Swiss Army Man (2016; film) — Absurdist comedy-drama. Daniel Radcliffe as a flatulent corpse; bizarre, crude, secretly tender.
- One Piece (2023–; live-action series) — Adventure comedy. Big-hearted, silly, found family. Sanji — fiercely loyal, devoted as an expression of love — is basically my ideal.🖖 Sci-fi, where I go to feel inspiredDifferent kind of comfort — exploration, adventure, and cosmic wonder: competent people going out to discover what's there. And the best of it carries real grief underneath.- Star Trek (franchise) — Exploration sci-fi. Discovery, adventure, competent crews, cosmic wonder. My #1: especially Deep Space Nine, Strange New Worlds, The Next Generation, Voyager, Lower Decks.
- Doctor Who (2005–) — Adventure sci-fi. Whimsical, silly, time-bending; real grief beneath the absurdity. My close second.
- Battlestar Galactica (2004–2009; 4 seasons) — Military space opera. Epic, grim, morally complex; survival and identity. Watched it two or three times; Starbuck — spiraling, in pain, still heroic — touched something in me.
- Murderbot (2025–; from the book series) — Sci-fi action-comedy. Deadpan, wry, cartoonishly violent. It avoids eye contact, grumbles about irrational humans, and holds everyone together — I saw a lot of myself in it.🎩 Living in another time 📚Here's a real special interest of mine: I'm endlessly drawn to what it actually felt like to be alive in another era — the texture of daily life, how society was put together, what an ordinary day held. I'm not a history buff in the dates-and-battles sense; it's the lived experience I want to climb inside.A Masterpiece adaptation of Les Misérables cracked this open for me — I'd never explored classic literature before, and afterward I fell hard for 19th-century French writers: Hugo, Dumas, Balzac, Proust. I especially love Balzac's almost anthropological eye for how post-Revolution French society was structured. (The Revolution itself ran 1789–1799; what fascinates me is the world that came after it, across the 1800s.) I'm also a little obsessed with immersive lived-history documentaries where historians actually live in the period — the ones I love are down in the documentaries section.- The Count of Monte Cristo (2024; 8-ep miniseries; Dumas adaptation) — Classic-lit adventure-drama. Betrayal, endurance, reinvention, patient revenge. A man loses everything and rebuilds himself from nothing on his own timeline — this one resonates with my whole life.
- Marie Antoinette (Masterpiece, 2022–) — Period court drama. Lavish, intimate; Versailles intrigue and personal struggle.
- Poldark (Masterpiece, 2015–2019; 5 seasons; Winston Graham novels) — Period romance-drama, Cornwall. Sweeping, emotional; marriage, class, rivalry; a comically petty villain whose schemes keep backfiring. Savoring it slowly for years, and reading the novels.🎨 AnimationAnimation is its own kind of magic to me. Some of these are anime (I can't keep up with subtitles the way I used to, but these stayed with me); some are just wonderfully weird cartoons.- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (2012–; anime) — Action-adventure. Flamboyant, weird, maximalist; fighting spirit forged through pain.
- Castlevania (2017–2021; 4 seasons; English cast) — Gothic dark fantasy. Brutal, seductive, lush; vampires, and a war driven by grief.
- Demon Slayer (2019–; anime) — Dark fantasy action. Gorgeous and sad; a boy fighting to save his sister; villains whose damage you understand.
- One Punch Man (2015–; anime) — Superhero parody. Deadpan, absurd; a hero too strong for any challenge.
- Rick and Morty (2013–) — Absurdist sci-fi comedy. Crude, chaotic, darkly funny.
- Solar Opposites (2020–) — Absurdist sci-fi comedy. Raunchy, ridiculous, warm-weird.
- Bee and PuppyCat (2013–2022) — Fantasy slice-of-life. Dreamy, strange, gently melancholic; about being loved for exactly how strange you are.📚 Documentaries- Julius Caesar: The Making of a Dictator (PBS; docuseries) — Dramatized historical documentary. The fall of the Roman Republic; ambition, betrayal, populism; unsettling modern parallels.
- The BBC historic farm series (Tales from the Green Valley, Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm, Secrets of the Castle) — Living-history documentary. Historians spend a year using only period tools, food, and methods; immersive, hands-on, quietly absorbing.If a lot of this resonates with you, we'd probably get along. ✨