Although lots of people will swear that some of these are the greatest things ever transmitted, with so many slots to fill, some shows end up sounding really weird.
Please keep entries alphabetical to avoid accidental duplicates.
- 13 Reasons Why: A series of cassette tapes is found. Everyone's lives get miserable as a result.
- The 100 Lives of Black Jack Savage: The ghost of a pirate must help the same number of people that he killed in order to "move on", but some type of guardian ghosts prevent him from leaving the island he died on. So he gets the island's new owner to help the people. Actually not that much better than it sounds.
- 1000 Ways to Die: Lots of everyday people get killed in different gruesome ways.
- 24: A very determined government agent has a really bad day.
- 30 Rock: A woman who is Married to the Job is forced to add a Cloudcuckoolander to the cast of her sketch comedy show due to Executive Meddling.
- The main character is a "socially retarded" nerd who loves Star Wars and can't get a date. Her best friend is a minor celebrity who beds numerous members of the opposite sex and has an ongoing rivalry with a strange black guy. Their boss is Crazy Is Cool incarnate.
- The 4400: A bunch of people abducted from random points in time come back all at once in modern day Seattle... WITH SUPER POWERS. And one of them's Jesus.
- Ace Lightning: A show in which a superhero from a videogame comes to life as a result of a well timed bolt of lightning. Thirteen year old is elected as his sidekick. Chaos, an all but absent functional social life and eventual unraveling conspiracy and author avatarisation ensues. Obvious Aesop every single episode. Also fits in Western Animation due to being multimedia-created.
- Adam Ruins Everything: Hipster points out in great, painstaking detail why life sucks.
- The Addams Family: An independently wealthy family of semi-recluses must cope with their very weird neighbours.
- Wednesday: Their oldest daughter enrolls in the father's school, discovers the faculty has some long-standing issues.
- The Adventures of Pete & Pete: Brothers with the same name team up with a self-deluded superman to survive weirdness in their home town. Told in monologue.
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson: Classic British detective stories are reimagined for the sensibilities of Soviet Russia, which in practice seems to mean less cocaine and even more homoerotic subtext.
- The Adventures of Superboy: The adventures of the world's most famous superhero as an adolescent, often fighting younger versions of his future foes. Or Smallville with the star as an openly active superhero.
- The Adventures of Superman: A man from another planet uses his vast powers to fight a seemingly never-ending series of non-powered mobsters.
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Wisecracking guy that died comes back to life to recruit a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits to help his government agency. Together, they fight crime, superpowered people and have UST with each other.
- Agent Carter: The formation of said agency is told through a wisecracking gal whom no one respects, forcing her to do things by herself with the help of a stuffy English butler.
- Airwolf: A man refuses to return a helicopter he was ordered to retrieve..
- ALF: An intergalactic furball, played by a puppet, takes refuge in a SoCal family home and wants to dine on their pet.
- Alias: A supermodel genius with abandonment issues teams up with the group she thought she was working for to bring down the team pretending to be the other team. Then she goes back to working for the team she didn't know she was really working for when the real team hires the fake team to be on their team. Also, there's magic water.
- All in the Family: An ignorant, self-destructing bigot and his occasionally self-righteous child and her husband squabble about the issues of the day.
- All That: Recurring characters include a guy who's lactose intolerant, a kid who beats up a puppet, and a girl who is supposed to answer questions but just yells at people.
- Allein gegen die Zeit: Terrorists searching for a hiding scientist break into a middle school. The detention class tries to stop them á la 24.
- 'Allo 'Allo!: A series set in occupied France in WWII, whose protagonist is a middle-aged, adulterous Nazi collaborator. It's a comedy.
- Ally McBeal: An exceptionally thin lawyer, who suffers from delusions of a dancing cartoon baby, works at a firm with her ex-boyfriend and his wife, a loveable misogynist, and a man who uses a remote control to flush toilets.
- Almost Live!: An extremely low-budget provincial sketch-comedy show where rain, coffee, grunge music, and college were used as punchlines.
- America's Funniest Home Videos: Americans submit videos of themselves getting hit in the groin for a chance to win $100,000. The host makes snarky commentary over said videos.
- America's Got Talent: People across America will do anything for a shot at fame and fortune.
- American Gladiators: Physical competition against spandex-clad bodybuilders. Modeled off ancient Roman bloodsport.
- American Gothic (1995): A law-enforcement official tries to gain custody of his son.
- American Gothic (2016): A rich Boston family reunites just in time for them all to be implicated in a decades-old killing spree. Completely unrelated to another series with the same name.
- American Horror Story: Asylum: A woman is institutionalized because of her homosexuality, and a man is institutionalized for murdering his wife (a false accusation). Both are tortured by the mental hospital's staff.
- American Horror Story: Murder House: Due to full disclosure laws, a real estate agent is forced to admit that the house she is selling was the scene of a gruesome murder. As per usual, the buyers move in anyway, and surprise, surprise, the place is haunted.
- The Americans: Salt: the prequel series.
- America's Next Top Model: Twelve disparate young women allow fashion industry snobs and has-beens to play on their insecurities. Every season, er, cycle, there must always be a dumb one, an Alpha Bitch, a Sassy Black Woman and one with a troubled upbringing... that the show exploits for all it's worth.
- The Tyra Banks Show: Supermodel/Narcissist/White eyeliner aficionado does an Oprah Winfrey impression to appeal to gullible teenaged girls and college students.
- Andi Mack: A diverse group of teens deal with a variety of issues including family secrets, coming out, relationship problems, and mental health in this tween dramedy. This is a Disney Channel show by the way.
- The Andy Griffith Show: Small-town sheriff holds absolute power over town. Often considered one of the most feel-good sitcoms of the era.
- Angel: A broody vampire with a soul, a former Rich Bitch, an Upperclass Twit, a formerly enslaved scientist, a green demon who reads people's futures when they sing Karaoke and a gang leader live in a hotel, then run a law firm.
- Alternatively, a mass murderer claims to have reformed, but occasionally relapses. Also, all your favorite characters die.
- Are You Afraid of the Dark?: Unsupervised kids tell horror stories.
- Alternatively: The Twilight Zone (1959) for kids.
- Ark II: What Fallout could be where the denizens of one Vault left their shelter to do something to help their world After the End.
- Arrested Development: A widowed man tries to redeem a corrupt organization, but his father won't have it; meanwhile, his brother is breaking his heart and his sister is having marital problems. It's a comedy, with a heaping helping of Large Ham.
- Arrow: A man keeps up his archery skills after coming home from an extended vacation.
- The A-Team: Four shell-shocked Vietnam veterans with varying levels of mental problems become criminals for hire. They get paid to help small businesses by harassing their competitors, cause massive property damage and even do illegal mercenary work.
- The Army runs around Los Angeles looking for four fugitives who endanger the lives of everyone with their horrible shooting and reckless driving.
- Army veterans who can't shoot straight try to solve people's problems with cunning and violence.
- Auf Wiedersehen, Pet: A mismatched gang of British builders, mostly from the North of England, bicker and get into scrapes on various international building sites.
- Babylon Berlin: He's a morphine-addicted, shell-shocked vice squad cop with family issues. She's a hooker-cum-Lower-Class Lout-cum-secretary with even more family issues. Together, they fight Communists! And Monarchists! And Nazis! And porn! Not nearly as moralistic as it sounds.
- Babylon 5: A war-hero, a cynical Russian bisexual, a recovering alcoholic police chief and a bunch of other people start a fight with God and The Devil, win, destroy the world government and take over the entire galaxy. None of that was hard. Meanwhile, the expies of Hitler and the new Moses get married.
- Or: The Lord of the Rings In Space!
- A bunch of politicians meet on a space station to make schemes against each other. Then they team up to make schemes against giant space spiders covered in motor oil. They are very heroic.
- A lizard man, a drunken Italian, and Joan of Arc plot against each other in front of two militaristic Ultimate Authority Mayors, the first of which is really Moses and the second of which is named after a famous Cavalry Officer. Then they all beat up space spider-demons, and then Joan of Arc and the second Ultimate Authority Mayor Take Over the World so that the two of them can get married.
- After this, Joan of Arc's valet feels left out, the drunken Italian's valet is pleased to see Judas' head cut off, and the lizard man and the Italian become friends and then strangle each other. The Ultimate Authority Mayor then goes to heaven to talk with the space spider demons he used to fight while Joan of Arc just grows old.
- Baggage: A man/woman looking for love makes snap judgments about three potential suitors of the opposite sex based on their personal confessions. Later on, only one of the three suitors gets the chance to make a snap judgment on the original person's biggest personal confession. Punny reactions based on these revelations are inevitably made by the host.
- Balamory: The adventures of people who live in a Scottish island town.
- For the spin-off Me Too: Replace "island town" with "big city."
- Balls of Steel: A cast of professional comedians take on characters in order to go out and prank people with a hidden camera recording them.
- Band of Brothers: What if Saving Private Ryan was 7 hours long. And more people died. And it actually happened in real life.
- Bates Motel: Mother and son run a small business together, and love each other very very very much.
- Batman (1966): Obviously insane rich white guy with a compulsion to label everything lives with a younger guy. They both put on tights and go out looking for other men in tights so they can rough them up.
- BattleBots: Remote controlled machines dubbed "robots" Duel to the Death in an arena for three minutes for the chance to win the Giant Nut.
- Battlestar Galactica (1978): A group of Big Damn Heroes re-enact westerns IN SPACE while fighting robots with no sense of tactics or stealth.
- Battlestar Galactica (2003): A group of dysfunctional people are chased by their pissed-off children. In Space!
- Monotheists attempt to end paganism.
- Bear in the Big Blue House: A giant, talking bear invites viewers into his house and instills life lessons into the young animals who live with him.
- Beat the Clock: Ordinary people do silly, timed stunts on national television. For money.
- Beautiful People: Two young teenage boys get up to lots of gay hijinks. Often in public.
- Being Erica: A woman meets a time-travelling therapist who helps her with her regrets.
- Being Human: A recovering addict, a neurotic in denial, and a woman with serious confidence issues share a house in Bristol.
- The original trailer simply said "A vampire, werewolf and a ghost all share a flat in Bristol".
- series/Benidorm: Mostly poor British people get a chance to visit another country and waste almost the entire time shut away in one commercial building complex lying motionless, destroying their skin, ingesting various poisons insulting or arguing with each other. We laugh at them.
- Ben Casey: An angry, hairy doctor tells people he’s better than them. His elderly mentor also has a hair problem.
- The Ben Stiller Show: A sketch comedy series, created for MTV, adapted for FOX.
- Best Friends Whenever: Teenage girls travel through time by touching each other.
- Better Call Saul: A manager of a Cinnabon in Omaha looks back on his life.
- Alternatively, after defecating through a sunroof (don't ask), a former con-man attempts to impress his brother and his girlfriend by becoming a lawyer. It really, really doesn't work out.
- Said sunroof-defecation leads to a series of events where, amongst other things, the brother commits suicide in a house fire, the girlfriend may or may not be alive, two planes crash and kill 167 people, a drug kingpin operates the largest meth empire in America, three drug cartels get dismantled, a man gets enslaved and is forced to run away to Alaska, and several hundreds of people get murdered.
- Alternatively, after defecating through a sunroof (don't ask), a former con-man attempts to impress his brother and his girlfriend by becoming a lawyer. It really, really doesn't work out.
- Better Things: A single mother spoils her over-entitled children.
- Between the Lions: A family of lions runs a library and teaches reading skills.
- Bewitched: A girl wreaks havoc by twitching her nose and fights with her mother about who she married.
- Big Bad Beetleborgs: Young comic fans become bug-themed superheroes thanks to a ghost that looks like a cross between Elvis Presley and Jay Leno.
- Beyond Scared Straight: Murderers and drug dealers scream profanities at children for an hour.
- The Big Bang Theory: Underappreciated Asexual Genius is mocked for his social difficulties despite large circle of close friends including hot neighbour.
- It's like Red Dwarf only not In Space! And Cat, Kryten and Lister are replaced with toned down versions of Rimmer.
- Two nerds who live across the hall from a hottie. One of them steals her mail just to get a chance to talk to her, the other gives her advice.
- Nobody likes the awesomest guy on TV.
- Big Brother: People are locked in a house for three months and forced to obey the whims of a hidden task-master to beg for food. Swearing and fights ensue.
- Big Time Rush: Four hockey players from Minnesota are gathered and brought to Los Angeles to make music and become a boy band.
- Big Wolf on Campus: A hyperactive geek-goth, a hairy American football player, and a tomboy go on adventures together.
- The Bill: Police work in East London. Where the cops die a lot.
- Bill Nye the Science Guy: Man lectures children about science.
- A Bit of Fry and Laurie: Sketch show where almost all roles are played by two really tall, upper-class men from Oxbridge.
- Black Books: The weird life and homoerotic misadventures of a sadistic drunk who owns a bookshop, his Cloudcuckoolander assistant / punching bag and their best (and only) friend.
- Blackadder: A historical Sitcom, in which every generation of a charismatic but extremely unlucky man's family both looks the same and possesses the same name, as does almost everyone else he encounters. Each man is unfortunate enough to be surrounded by half-wits, incompetents and lunatics, and is waited upon by a servant whose standards of personal hygiene are barely human at best.
- Black Mirror: Cynical Brits tell various stories about how technology can get us screwed.
- Aptly described by a reviewer as: "What if phones, but too much?"
- Blackpool: Murder investigation is frequently interrupted by song-and-dance numbers using well-known pop songs.
- Blake's 7: A bunch of people get together on a spaceship to battle a sadistic glam goddess and her massive personal army.
- Blood Over Water (no relation to a book by the same name): Murderous thugs can't figure out which twin brother they're supposed to kill. A friend of both brothers can't decide whether or not he prefers them to a fat paycheck.
- The Bold and the Beautiful: Blonde woman sleeps her way to the top of the fashion world. Some of her most famous conquests include a married man and both of his sons, having children along the way with two of them.
- Bones: A gorgeous but socially clueless genius anthropologist solves murders involving really icky decomposition with a street-smart and equally gorgeous wisecracking FBI agent. UST ensues. They are helped by a socially retarded supergenius, a conspiracy-theorist slime expert, and a good-hearted, free-spirited artist.
- A crime drama which is mainly just close-ups of rotting bodies falling apart and scientists saying lengthy pieces of techno-babble. This may, if you are very lucky, be followed by just a few minutes of actual action with their Book Dumb Law Enforcement Liason.
- Boohbah: A bunch of multicolored creatures do strange dances. Each episode contains a segment where a man gives unnecessary narration for normal people doing ordinary things.
- The Book of Boba Fett: A mercenary crawls out of a hole and retires to a peaceful life in the desert. The story gets much more interesting when he is upstaged by the tangentially related adventures of a single father.
- Bottom: Two brainless alcoholic perverts beat each other up.
- The Boys (2019): After the death of his girlfriend, a young man is coerced into joining a group of mentally deranged people who use shady methods to fight against even more mentally deranged superhero expies, and ends up dating the only non-mentally deranged superhero.
- Boy Meets World: Immature kid grows up into a neurotic dork and marries the girl he used to torment, has the same teacher for every grade.
- The Brady Bunch: A widow and a widower get married and bring their children from previous marriages to live together in a really big house the man designed himself. (Which nonetheless has only one bathroom.)
- Brainiac: Science Abuse: An educational programme that does a lot of specials about caravans.
- Breaking Bad: Quiet family man takes up a second job to pay his medical bills.
- High school chemistry teacher shows how badass he is by claiming he would knock on a door.
- The biggest menace in the show is a guy who owns a restaurant.
- The Brittas Empire: Arnold Rimmer runs a leisure centre. Chaos ensues.
- Broadchurch: A grumpy Scottish detective with zero social skills teams up with a local detective to solve a murder case in a seaside town where a bunch of Doctor Who characters (including the two detectives) live in for some reason.
- Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Seven possibly mentally endangered cops save New York from crime - mostly drugs. Starring a sexy black man as a side villain.
- Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: All-American guy takes a 500-year-plus nap, wakes up, and promptly sets about saving the Earth from fascistic regimes with help from a talking clock, a robot with a weird Verbal Tic, and a Colonel Fanservice. (Depending on whom you ask, it might be just as bad as it sounds. In its defense, it was popular when it first came out.)
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: A cheerleader, a nerd, a slacker, and the school librarian fight the horrors of American High School while their lives turn into a soap opera. Beloved people die with depressing regularity.
- Bullseye (UK): People throw things. If they do it well, they might win a vehicle they can't possibly use.
- Burn Notice: A spy loses his job and tries to find out why while helping the helpless.
- or three spies make clever plans while gorgeous women in bikinis walk around. One of the spies gives lectures.
- California Dreams: A re-imagining of The Zack Attack but with better music, more drama and somewhat more likable people. One of the most noticeable differences is while its original vision had high school students who also had a band, here it's members of a band who also attend high school.
- Cannon: Crimes are solved and conspiracies are broken up ... by an obese insurance investigator.
- The Cape: A cop gets fired for being too honest by a guy with the creepiest contact lenses ever. He resorts to a comic book character's wardrobe for vengeance, and is aided by a gang of carnies and a sneaky hacker who he has much sexual tension with.
- Caprica: A teenage girl is killed in a terrorist attack organized by her friends. A copy of her soul ends up in the body of a robot killing machine that will one day destroy human civilization. It's a family drama.
- Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons: A group of colour-coded soldiers with very odd accents try to stop a bunch of glowing green lights from destroying all life on Earth.
- Cash Cab: In New York (and Toronto!) , taxi pays YOU!!
- Castle: Mystery author stalks hot detective, hitting on her and making cruel jokes about murder scenes. Then he writes about it and gets even more rich and famous. She loves him for it.
- Catchphrase: Robot with a neckerchief plays charades. People get paid for solving his clues.
- Celebracadabra: Pseudo-celebrities try to perform magic tricks. Seriously.
- The Champions (1968): Three people survive a plane crash and learn new skills, which they put to very good use.
- Charmed (1998): Ordinary people are given magical powers, forbidden from using them for anything but fighting deadly monsters for no pay, while getting punished for violating arbitrary rules and suffering from romantic problems and being expected to uphold the masquerade at the same time. This is considered a good system, and disobeying it is always evil.
- Charmed Season 1: Women get magical powers and use them to kill people, while trying to avoid letting their cop friend know about it. Many cops are killed by collateral damage. God sends the ghost of a medic killed in World War 2 disguised as a handyman to help them cover up.
- Charmed Season 2: Three women learn three separate times that they should let their sister die if it came to it. Meanwhile, one of them is caught in a Love Triangle between her neighbor and the ghostly handyman.
- Charmed Season 3: Amoral Attorney seeks redemption after having sex with a college student, gets it, is turned evil again by magic against his will, then turned good again by more magic. Meanwhile, the most heroic and active woman with powers is killed by wind because of off-screen drama.
- Charmed Season 4: Two women go looking for a new sister to replace the one who died, just in time to battle the demonic ruler of the underworld. Meanwhile, the attorney becomes fully good by giving up his powers, is turned evil by magic again against his will, tries to turn good again with more magic, and is prevented from doing so by his wife, who willingly turned evil. She turns good again and kills him for being turned evil, refuses to bring him back to life, and leaves him in demonic hell.
- Charmed Season 5: Three women encounter nymphs, mermaids, fairy tale creatures, and the Sword in the Stone before battling Greek Gods with the help of a deceptive time traveler. The ghostly handyman becomes an angel king, but is imprisoned by the time traveler. The attorney comes back to life on his own, turns good again, is turned evil again against his will by magic, snaps out of it, is driven mad by magic against his will, tries and fails to commit suicide, turns evil again, and accidentally commits suicide successfully by traveling to an alternate reality.
- Charmed Season 6: Ghostly handyman turned angel king attempts to expose the deceptive time traveler as the Big Bad, but then realizes that his beloved mentor is the real Big Bad, and kills him. Romantic drama, a Wizarding School, attempted baby-murder, demonic reality TV, and a Kid from the Future are all involved.
- Charmed Season 7: Tired of the rules of their bosses, three women and their ghostly handyman attempt to aid a revolution aiming to create Utopia, but betray their allies at the last second for being too draconian. The ghostly handyman becomes human following a career crisis and Memory Gambit, and everyone is assisted by a terminally ill demon who dresses as Robin Hood, which was all planned by the ghost of the attorney.
- Charmed Season 8: Three women attempt a massive identity scam on the entire world while training a Reality Warper to do their job for them. The Reality Warper's sister becomes a problem because of the ghosts of three sore losers from back in the third season.
- The Chase: A gigantic maths teacher, a studious barrister, an icy ex-journalist and a sarcastic doctor in a tasteless suit hunt people down by knowing more trivia than the contestants. It's teatime entertainment, with lots of jokes about knickers.
- Cheers: A group of people meet at a bar every night. Some of them consider leaving but they usually realise that they have no life and come crawling back.
- Chernobyl: Ever wanted a dramatic crash course on the functioning of nuclear reactors?
- Chouseishin Series: Knockoff Power Rangers fight knockoff Godzilla monsters.
- Chouseishin Gransazer: 12 people discover their Zodiac signs, get giant animals as a bonus, and wind up fighting aliens.
- Genseishin Justirisers: Teenagers with attitude are chosen to battle a hermit sealed inside a mountain.
- Chousei Kantai Sazer X: Young adult grapples with conflicting feelings towards his grandfather... while at the same time getting caught up in a war between two groups of time-traveling aliens.
- Chuck: A nerd gets kidnapped and forced to fight crime by a hot blonde CIA agent who wants him and a hot but grumpy male NSA agent who hates him.
- Clarissa Explains It All: A teenage girl talks to a camera for 20 minutes.
- The Closer: Southern Belle who is also a CIA-trained interrogator and her quirky side-kicks fight crime.
- Cobra Kai: Washed-up asshole resurrects a Thug Dojo from the 80s. We're supposed to root for him.
- The Colbert Report: Exaggerated right-wing pundit reinterprets the English language, itemises things that are dead to him and attempts to alert America to the increasing threat posed by bears.
- Cold Case: Detectives solve crimes through lots of Flashbacks.
- Alternately, A Police Procedural takes place in an urban city that isn't New York or Chicago that is complete with era-appropriate music, cops that occasionally have shaky grasps of the law, hallucinations and lots of LGBT friendliness...often at the expense of blatant bigotry (especially towards Blacks) and/or misogyny.
- The Collector: About a catholic priest who becomes the devil's repo man. A new Aesop WILL be hammered home every episode.
- Columbo: Bloke who dresses like a hobo and drives a banger follows rich celebrities, generally annoying them so much that they confess to crimes just to get rid of him.
- Comedy Central Roast: A group of people hurl insults and tear down a mutual friend. Hilarity Ensues.
- Community: Sitcom about a group of dysfunctional college students (most of whom are in their 30s) with nothing in common but their Spanish study group, in which they never study Spanish.
- Alternatively, the lives of seven friends who attend the weirdest college ever.
- Continuum: A group of democratic-republican revolutionaries attempt to overthrow a corporate-fascist dictatorship by travelling back in time from their dystopian future to the present to prevent the dictatorship from ever forming in the first place. They are pursued by a cyborg agent of the dictatorship equipped with futuristic weapons and tools who is attempting to stop them from changing the future. The cyborg, who regularly uses torture in interrogations, supports the dictatorship despite being fully aware that the dictatorship deliberately starves segments of the population as a tool of control and teams up with the younger version of one of the future leaders of the dictatorship. The cyborg fascist is the good guy, and the freedom fighters are the villains.
- Corner Gas: Quirky yet lovable people in rural Saskatchewan. One of them runs a gas station!
- Coronation Street: Working-class people live in a working-class place. Drama and various hijinks ensue.
- EastEnders: Working-class people live in a working-class place. And it is bloody depressing. All. of. the. time. Drama and various hijinks ensue.
- The Cosby Show: A doctor and a lawyer raise their children. Then they raise other people's children.
- Counterpart (2018): A lowly bureaucrat discovers that his Alternate Universe doppelganger is a spy.
- Cracker: Hagrid plays a Scottish Patrick Jane.
- Crash & Bernstein: A young boy gets purple felt for his birthday and calls it his best friend.
- Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: A high-flying lawyer leaves her job to stalk a guy she dated in high school across the country after realising she needs him to make her happy, while singing songs to herself about loneliness and feminine hygiene. It's a feminist show. Oh, and it's on The CW.
- Criminal Minds: A group of FBI agents, including a socially awkward young genius with a schizophrenic mother, a really serious guy with family issues, and a former cop who likes to kick down doors, fly to different parts of the country in order to pretend that they are crazy people.
- Crossing Jordan: A Boston medical examiner with a big mouth and a big heart solves crimes with the help of her neurotic boss, a bubbly grief counselor, an Indian entomologist, an ambiguously bisexual British man, her ex-cop father, and an attractive policeman with whom she shares a lot of UST.
- The Crystal Maze: Game show where contestants make fools out of themselves to earn cubic zirconia in order to collect pieces of colored foil for adventuring days out.
- CSI Verse:
- CSI: An entomologist, a former stripper, a gambling addict, and a group of nerds and geeks perform obscure activities in a lab to musical accompaniment. They fight crime... somehow.
- CSI: Miami: Suave supercop visits crime scenes, makes wisecracks about innocent victims and plays with his sunglasses in a series of 5-minute shorts.
- CSI NY: A former Marine and 9/11 widower, a wisecracking cop, a Greek-American with a stalker problem and some other geeks and nerds solve crimes in The Big Apple...somehow.
- The Cube: A daytime TV host who used to be in a double act with a gopher presides over the public's failure to outwit a talking geometric solid.
- Cupid: A matchmaker has to set up a certain number of couples before he can go home.
- Curb Your Enthusiasm: Wealthy but socially inept and neurotic perpetual victim of circumstance offends and antagonizes everyone he comes into contact with.
- Cutie Honey: THE LIVE: An Innocent Fanservice Girl and a bunch of homeless dudes fight crime.
- Cutthroat Kitchen: Four competing chefs get their prize money upfront, but spend it to buy crazy props, steal ingredients, and create unwanted diversions against each other.
- Cybergirl: Before being the host of a certain Saturday morning block on a Canadian network, she was the star of one of its little-known Tween Dramas as a rogue cyborg from outer space on the run from its creators, taking refuge on Earth, where she befriends a family on the road and ends up a public hero.
- Dad's Army: A group of bungling old men and a mummy's boy prepare to fight the Nazis that will probably never arrive.
- World War II has never been so funny.
- The Daily Show: New York comedian makes commentary on current events by playing clips, making a funny face, and occasionally launching a Precision F-Strike.
- Dallas: Three millionaire businessmen live in one house because they apparently can't afford more than one dwelling between them. One of them gets shot.
- Dante's Cove: Set around a resort town populated by a number of users of a magic enhanced by Fantastic Drugs, and an unusually high percentage of homosexual residents who enjoy little more than having as much sex as possible. No one can act, the writing is stilted, and everyone is gorgeous and naked.
- Da Vinci's Inquest: A coroner from Vancouver walks around a lot, talks with people on the street, and acts sarcastic towards the local law enforcement. He also wants to legalize drugs and prostitution. Which he does...after he becomes the Mayor of Vancouver. Based on a true story.
- Daredevil (2015): A blind Catholic lawyer and a possibly-autistic urban planning enthusiast battle over gentrification.
- Daredevil (2015) Season 2: A man with a serious addiction to shooting people draws the ire of a corrupt DA, meanwhile the blind Catholic lawyer's ex-girlfriend moves back into town.
- The Defenders (2017): The lawyer's ex returns again, forcing him to ask the help of a drunk, a convict and a hippie millionaire.
- Dark (2017): Back to the Future as rewritten by Stephen King and then made into a TV show by German philosophy students who really loved the timey-wimey aspects of modern Doctor Who.
- Dark Oracle: Two teenagers find a comic-book that lets them predict the future. Weirdness and Angst ensue.
- Dateline's To Catch a Predator: A handsome, snobbish and quasi-nerdy journalist embarrasses perverts via entrapment and scolding them like a disappointed father.
- Dave Allen at Large: Chain-smoking Irishman sits on a chair and talks about life, death, drinking, religion, and the English.
- Dawson's Creek: Teenagers in Massachusetts use big words.
- Alternatively, "Pretty White Kids With Problems".
- Dead Like Me: An apathetic virgin gets press-ganged into a dead-end job and hanging out in a diner with her dysfunctional co-workers.
- Deadliest Catch: Guys go out, year after year, to subject themselves to constant torture at the hands of Nature, all for the sake of money.
- Deadliest Warrior: Two groups of guys hit jelly babies with stuff, all the while arguing about which is better at hitting stuff until a fight breaks out.
- Dead to Me: A woman with serious anger issues befriends another woman at a grief retreat. Unbeknonwnst to her, her new friend murdered her husband in a car crash. We're supposed to like these two people.
- Alternatively, a woman and her friend are pursued by the friend's ex-fiance and the woman murders said ex-fiance. We're still supposed to like her.
- Deadwood: Complex compound sentences, none shorter than twenty words or containing fewer than three clauses or two profanities, delivered while standing in either dust or mud.
- Alternatively: A dramatized series of ongoing philosophical debates about the relative merits and drawbacks of centralized democratic government and anarchocapitalist libertarianism.
- Deal or No Deal: Watch with anticipation as people discover what is inside a suitcase.
- Degrassi Junior High: Teenagers act and behave like adults while going through the normal growing pains in a setting one step above your average public access television program.
- Degrassi: The Next Generation: A continuation of the above series starring the self-righteous Granola Girl progeny of one of the show's peripheral characters and both of their groups of friends, enemies and others. It ends up appealing more to a whole different nation than its own and like its predecessor did years earlier inspires a Sequel Series to that show with a similar plotline.
- Dempsey and Makepeace: Guy takes his job too seriously, gets transferred overseas, and is stuck working alongside an aristocratic blonde.
- Denkō Chōjin Gridman: A group of kids use Transformers technologies to get rid of computer viruses.
- Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad: Same as above but the bad guy is Tim Curry.
- Department S: A foppish spy novelist, a quick-tempered American, and a computer whiz are brought together to solve weird cases that Scotland Yard and Interpol won't touch.
- DesChiffresEtDesLettres: Long-running game show from France that asks the questions, "can you combine these 6 numbers to achieve a target sum?", followed by "how long a word can you make from 9 random letters?"
- Series/Countdown UK remake of the above show.
- Dexter: The main character is charming, personable, and homicidal. He's a cop by day and a killer by night...
- Dharma & Greg: A lawyer and a hippie get married on a whim. Their parents don't approve.
- Dinosaurs: A family of pre-historic animals grows accustomed to modern-style civilization.
- Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: The adventures of a detective who is too inept to look for clues, and instead just meanders around until things happen.
- Dirty Jobs: Reality Show involving a former opera singer who can't keep a job for more than a day at a time.
- Dirty Sexy Money: A lawyer investigates the suspicious circumstances of his father's death while taking over his duty as personal lawyer to the richest family in New York City.
- When Telemundo meets Dallas.
- Doctor Who: A senior citizen spends several lifetimes convincing hot young things to join them inside a box. They are routinely harassed by tin men, Nazi saltshakers and their old college buddies.
- Alternatively, a time traveller fights aliens, makes new friends and changes their face periodically.
- Still alternatively: A time-traveling scientist with no fashion sense attempts to have a jog around every rock quarry in the universe, only to find that they are frequently infested with monsters.
- Alternatively-alternatively and even more alternatively: Producers find canonical excuse to keep a popular character and just replace all the actors.
- Alternatively to all of the above: A homeless vagrant travels around in a box and claims to have a degree in medicine.
- The First Doctor (1963-66): A grumpy old man goes on educational adventures through space and time, with the first lesson being to not be an asshole. He is accompanied by his granddaughter, two of her teachers, Cressida, a downed pilot, a temple acolyte, a security agent from an interstellar empire (revealed 27 seasons later to have been built on slave labor), a teenager, a sailor, and a Mad Scientist's secretary.
- The Second Doctor (1966-69): The old man becomes a younger hobo who travels with the sailor, the secretary, a piper who forgot his pipes, a Victorian orphan, and a genius. Sadly, the records of their adventures are gutted.
- The Third Doctor (1970-74): A Technical Pacifist scientist works for a military force and fights an old college buddy. He gets help from a couple of civilians, one of whom marries an activist who may or may not be extreme. Then he gets help from a reporter.
- The Fourth Doctor (1974-81): The scientist turns cloudcuckoolander and flies away, much to his CO's annoyance, travelling with the reporter, a physician in the military force, a Jungle Princess, a robot dog, a young lady who appears to throw centuries of her life away on a whim, a troubled genius who just lost his brother, a recently-orphaned princess who loses her civilization, and an opinionated flight attendant.
- The Fifth Doctor (1982-84): A cricketer fails to save the day a lot, while in the company of the genius, the ex-princess, the flight attendant, a youth who tried to kill him, a robot who doesn't appear much, and a botany student.
- The Sixth Doctor (1984-86): Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat does time and space, only with less dancing and more fanservice. The botany student (now a vegetarian) either dies or marries a barbarian king and Mr. Dreamcoat escapes execution only because the powers that be owe him a favor. Then he travels with a Non-Action Girl who desperately needs to Take A Level In Badass.
- The Seventh Doctor (1987-89): The Chessmaster throws the bridge dropped on the above person off and raises a troubled teenager when the Non-Action Girl goes off with a scoundrel.
- The Eighth Doctor (1996 TV movie): A cloudcuckoolander dabbles in xenophilia, meets with his old college buddy, then disappears into a realm where he can only be heard, but not seen for 17 years.
- The War Doctor (2013): The cloudcuckoolander drinks a magic potion and turns into Winston Smith to fight a war. After many years in combat, he ends up in a rickety hut arguing with a box.
- The Ninth Doctor (2005): An angry, bitter man destroys a girl's place of employment and then befriends her. They pick up another companion and then send him away for making trouble, and later pick up a man whose addiction is Played for Laughs.
- The Tenth Doctor (2005-10): The personification of Beware the Nice Ones travels with a girl from a council estate, her ex-boyfriend, a medical student, and a temp, until he has to neuralyze the temp. He travels alone from then on. Also, his old college buddy returns as part of his Myth Arc.
- The Eleventh Doctor (2010-2013): An angry absent-minded professor who may be Crazy Is Cool incarnate tries to stay out of trouble badly and fails to keep a hat. He spends a lot of time with his family until they die. After this, he pouts for a while until he meets a new friend who keeps reincarnating in his life and tries to figure out how that works.
- The Twelfth Doctor (2013-2017): Grumpy Scotsman rebels against all authority and saves the day while being incredibly rude to everybody. He debates his morals frequently, and eventually mellows out with the help of a guitar and sunglasses. His best friend repeatedly lies to her boyfriend, and then eventually just becomes the Scotsman. After she dies/leaves, he's assisted by a bald alien in a duffle coat and a university cafeteria worker. His old college buddy who has had a facelift returns again as part of his Myth Arc.
- The Thirteenth Doctor (2017-2022): Energetic blonde woman travels with an old man, his step-grandson, and a young cop who has a crush on her, becoming much less bubbly and more secretive as time goes on. Her college buddy returns with another facelift just to tell her that her past was a lie, which she struggles to deal with, not helped by her lost past deciding to stage a comeback. After the old man and his step-grandson leave, she and the cop (who's now left her job) adopt a himbo, who teaches the cop how to admit her feelings to the blonde.
- The Fugitive Doctor (2020-2022): Black ops agent tries to find a way to leave her employers.
- The Fourteenth Doctor (2023): Emotional Guy gets an old face back, reunites with his best friend, meets some other old friends, fights a being of unimaginable power, and retires. All within three hours.
- River Song arc: Boy meets girl. Girl knows boy. Girl dies. Boy meets girl’s mum. Mum meets girl. Mum and Dad get married and create girl. Girl gets kidnapped. Girl is actually parents' friend. Girl meets boy for the first time. Girl kills boy. Girl revives boy. Girl gets kidnapped again. Girl pretends to kill boy. Girl gets married to boy. Girl comes back as a ghost. Boy takes girl to dinner. Boy leaves girl. Boy meets girl.
- Saxon arc: Politician lies about his credentials, makes it to Number Ten, gets found out, falls from grace, gets shot by his wife, and ends up homeless. It's a sci-fi.
- Day Of The Doctor: A bunch of doctors get together to fix one doctor's greatest failure. Some guy from the future shows up to tease people. A guy from the past's face also shows up to fans' delight.
- The Timeless Child arc: Scientist adopts an abandoned child and subsequently becomes an Abusive Parent while making themselves and their home look better.
- K-9 and Company: An ex-time-traveller turned journalist and an anachronistic robot dog face down religious fanatics.
- The Sarah Jane Adventures: An investigative journalist turned time-traveller turned investigative journalist uses tricks learned from a former road trip buddy in her efforts to save the world. She enlists local teens to help her, without the consent or knowledge of their parents. Oh, and it is revealed in one episode that Cambridge has a genuine knight from the Crusades in its science department.
- Torchwood: A pack of inept sex-crazed maniacs attempt to fight aliens in Cardiff, fail repeatedly, and die often.
- Torchwood: Children of Earth: An alien took children as drugs in the 1960s, and now it demands more. The team dissolves.
- Torchwood: Miracle Day: Death is no longer there to cause pain and grief, and whatever sex-crazed maniacs are still around treat this like a bad thing.
- K9: A crazy scientist, a teenage rebel, a petty thief, and an upper class girl team up with a robot dog to fight other robots.
- Dollhouse: A semi-deranged FBI agent investigates a detective agency/bodyguard service/high-class brothel run by a manipulative British businesswoman, a nerdy scientist, and an ex-cop. Moral ambiguity ensues.
- Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23: Woman experiences life in the big city through a very unpleasant roommate and weird neighbors that include a washed up TV star.
- Double Dare: Two teams are Covered in Gunge for fun and profit. Hosted by an obsessive-compulsive neat freak.
- Dragnet: A By-the-Book Cop chronicles some of his more memorable cases. Based on Hundreds of True Stories.
- Adam-12: The same as above, in a patrol car.
- Drake & Josh: Two stepbrothers costantly get pranked by their little sister.
- The Drew Carey Show: The adventures of an alcoholic fat guy with glasses.
- Due South: A Mountie and his pet wolf are kicked out of Canada for being too polite. They decide to clean up the streets of America...politely.
- The Dukes of Hazzard: A family fights the government in a town that won't let the Confederate States die.
- Early Edition: A newly-divorced man in Chicago gets tomorrow's newspaper delivered a day early by an orange tabby cat.
- EastEnders: The miserable lives of a collection of dysfunctional families in London.
- The Ed Sullivan Show: A newspaper columnist hosts an hour of virtually every field of entertainment on Sunday nights for twenty-three years. One musical act draws so big an audience that they set a new record for TV viewing percentage.
- El Chavo del ocho: A starving orphan lives inside a barrel in a slum and is regularly ostracized. It's a comedy.
- The Electric Company (1971): A cast that includes Morgan Freeman, Rita Moreno, Bill Cosby, and a man who voiced an X-rated cartoon character teaches reading through psychedelic sketch comedy.
- Elementary: A woman becomes a companion for a recovering junkie Cloud Cuckoo Lander from England who works with the NYPD. They fight crime.
- Alternatively: Lucy Liu babysits a twitchy recovering addict Bunny-Ears Lawyer. They fight crime and have mostly-platonic femdom subtext.
- Alternatively: CSI starring Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu.
- Eli Stone: A lawyer's tumor makes him see original show tunes.
- Entourage: A hot actor, his Heterosexual Life Partner, his washed out brother, and their chubby friend, along with the actor's snarky agent and the agent's flamboyantly gay secretary have misadventures in Hollywood.
- The Equalizer: A retired member of a vaguely defined government organization decides to protect the defenseless people of New York from organized crime. He does it pretty well.
- The Ernie Kovacs Show: An eccentric uses the new medium of television as his own personal plaything.
- The Expanse: A grizzled cop, a freighter crew, and a politician get involved in sprawling interplanetary conspiracy.
- Described by one review as Battlestar Galactica meets Game of Thrones.
- Eureka: A law enforcement official moves to a small town in the Pacific Northwest. Hollywood Science ensues.
- Eurovision Song Contest: Campy weirdos compete for national glory.
- Extraordinary Attorney Woo: Monk, but IN KOREA!
- The Facts of Life: Wise and bubbly redheaded woman babysits and solves the problems of four teenage girls in Westchester County, New York.
- The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Two war buddies deal with their friend's legacy, including arguing with the government-sanctioned new guy, while a teenager rages against The Man. A villain of a previous movie wins people over by dancing.
- Family Feud: Two families compete to predict the outcomes of surveys.
- Family Matters: A cop has issues with his neighbor.
- Farscape: A scientist and a Nazi commando help criminals escape on a living spaceship with a giant spacecrab pilot, then run and hide from the authorities- who are represented by a madman with No Indoor Voice, a weirdly assertive gimp with an interest in theoretical physics, and a date rapist who sweats love potion from her cleavage.
- Alternatively: An unfortunate astronaut gets sucked into a wormhole where he is tortured by aliens and slowly loses his mind.
- Quoth Warren Ellis: "Farscape is one American's descent into Australia's S&M scene."
- Father Ted: An embezzler, a simpleton and an alcoholic all live under one roof with their insane housekeeper, and they all live in fear of their boss's psychopathic rages.
- Fawlty Towers: An angry British hotelier hates his guests, lies to his wife, and physically assaults the hotel waiter. The underpaid maid is the only competent person. It's a comedy.
- Finders Keepers: Game show where trashing a house is profitable.
- Firefly: A pair of bitter war veterans, a sexual ambassador for hire, a mercenary with a cunning hat, a hot mechanic, a childish pilot, a preacher with a Mysterious Past, a medical genius and the cutest little psychotic killing machine ever all get together on a ship. They do crime!
- First Wave: A former criminal on the run from the law for murdering his wife (which he didn't) teams up with a paranoid hacker/online newspaper editor who lives in a trailer, and later also some chick with a private army. They fight aliens! Using ancient prophecies!
- The Flash (2014): A comatose police forensic investigator becomes a vigilante, with the help of a group of scientist enablers.
- Fleabag: A hapless, camera-mugging Londoner sleeps with a lot of people and owns a guinea pig café.
- The Following: A college professor ends up in jail following a midlife crisis, and starts a blog which then gets fans. His fans proceed to murder dozens of people across the United States as part of the professor's plan to get revenge on the unemployed alcoholic his wife had an affair with.
- Forever Knight: Vampire with a conscience works as a night cop, dates a mortician, and goes through a series of partners and captains. Also, he kills his vampire sire, who goes on to host a late-night radio show of some sort. This all takes place in Toronto.
- Forged in Fire: Yep, blacksmithing is now a reality competition.
- The Fosters: She's a cop keeping the peace on the streets of San Diego. She's a school principal keeping the peace in the halls. They adopt and foster emotionally-scarred teenagers.
- Foyle's War: A detective is very good at solving murders, but keeps having to let the killers go free so that they can help kill lots of Germans. His assistant only has one leg.
- Fraggle Rock: Furry, colorful vermin infest a mad inventor’s walls and floorboards, steal fresh produce from delusional ogres, and learn about the human world via a self-appointed ambassador.
- Frasier: A psychiatrist gets a new job. His brother, who drops by often, gets a crush on a nurse despite already being married. Craziness ensues.
- Freaks and Geeks: Teenage girl spends time learning that an old army jacket and playing hookey is more important to her than academia and general adoration. Her younger brother spends the same time contemplating how it's possible to be adored at all.
- The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: A street-smart teen moves in with his rich relatives.
- Alternatively: A boy's life playing outdoor sports is inverted by a group of miscreants, prompting his mother to send him away. His transport is quite unusual, but he disregards it.
- Friends: Three incredibly hot guys and three incredibly hot girls live together in varying combinations at varying times while doing crazy stuff and drinking lots of coffee.
- Or, a Control Freak, Deadpan Snarker, Endearing Dork, Lovable Alpha Bitch, Cloud Cuckoo Lander and The Casanova try to figure life out by never going to work, never interacting with anyone else and drinking lots of coffee.
- Fringe: A DHS agent, a terminally unemployed man and his mentally ill father solve mysteries with mad science and recreational drugs.
- Full House: Widower asks a punk and a manchild to help raise his three terminally cute little girls.
