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.
- Game of Thrones: Like Dungeons & Dragons, only there are few monsters, all the players are jerks, and the GM is a colossal dillhole.
- Alternatively: Way too many people for me to remember fight over who gets to sit on the world's most uncomfortable chair while nobody seems to consider the encroaching horde of unstoppable ice zombies important.
- Season One: A drunk guy asks his friend to do his job for him. Then he gets killed by a pig, a jerk ends up in charge, the drunk guy's friend gets beheaded, and everyone starts grabbing expensive headgear and trying to tell everyone else to kneel. Meanwhile, on the other side of the ocean, a girl sets things on fire.
- Season Two: Five guys with expensive headgear wave swords at each other. Very young girls make inappropriate friendships with older men. A bunch of guys in black take a road trip to someplace cold. Across the ocean, countless people die over a young girl's pets.
- Season Three: Like the above, plus a wedding that many find too aggressive.
- Season Four: Jerk is murdered, leading him to be replaced by a teenager, and the leading suspect to flee the law while killing his loved ones. Three siblings discover how seemingly the world is out to get them. Across the ocean, the young girl makes plenty of people change their jobs.
- Season Five: A mum gets tangled up with a persistent cult, an orphan girl gets tangled up with another persistent cult, and a father lands himself, his family and his career in hot water for putting too much trust in a different, but equally persistent cult. Somewhere else, two families try to reenact Romeo and Juliet and get all the characters wrong.
- Season Six: A soldier undergoes major surgery and tries to evict a renowned dog breeder from his home. An alcoholic makes a terrible trade agreement while his boss is out of town to make fiery speeches. A mum finally gets the promotion she's waiting years for after devising an unusual method of cleaning up the streets. Two siblings get their promotions screwed over by their Black Sheep uncle.
- Season Seven: The soldier tries to convince the girl and the mum that some aggressive squatters want to move into their homes. This ends up giving the invaders a powerful weapon.
- Season Eight: The soldier and the girl team up against the squatters and the mum. Then the girl goes crazy, to much fan outcry.
- House of the Dragon:
- Season 1: Building a stepfamily isn't always a good idea.
- The Games: Four people with a love/hate relationship are single-handedly responsible for putting on the Sydney Olympic Games and get into every problem imaginable.
- Game Shakers: A bunch of kids make cheap mobile games because Kel Mitchell is a fan.
- Garth Marenghis Darkplace: A talentless horror writer with a huge ego presents (with added cast interviews) an awful television show from The '80s that he wrote, directed, and starred in, claiming that it is a masterpiece.
- Get a Life: A perpetually doomed 30-year-old Manchild tries to grow up. Due to his views on life and the people around him, he routinely fails to do so.
- Get Smart: An inept spy fights crime with his girlfriend to save the world from an age-progressed Hitler and his henchman.
- Ghosts (UK): A woman and her Manchild husband inherit a house from a very, very distant relative. The woman is almost killed by a nasal politician, which allows her to see him. She spends the rest of the first season being tormented by the politician, a failed poet who’s infatuated with her, a homophobic old lady, an army guy who’s mad that his crush got to go to war and he didn’t, a man whose wife didn’t like him because he was too much of a Control Freak, an idiot caveman, an illiterate woman, a Literal-Minded Georgian and a head. They stop annoying her and decide to be her friend. All but the first two are dead.
- Ghostwriter: Kids solve mysteries with the aid of someone who never shows his face.
- Alternatively: The ghost of a runaway slave solves mysteries with a group of New York City area preteens with vaguely Canadian accents.
- Gilligan's Island: Seven people spend years on a deserted island driving each other up the wall and concocting Zany Schemes to get off, almost all of which are foiled by their stupidest member.
- Gilmore Girls: A mother and daughter with an extremely codependant relationship live in a small town full of weirdoes, drink coffee, and speak very very quickly.
- Girls: A group of young sociopaths live in New York. Most of them are female.
- Glee: A soap opera wrapped in High School Musical.
- Alternately, High School Musical with Issues.
- Alternately, teenagers work though their angst with group karaoke.
- The Goodies: Three Englishmen set up a "We Do Anything" agency. Hilarity Ensues.
- Alternatively, Monty Python meets The Three Stooges, with the same results.
- Good Luck Charlie: Every episode is life advice for the baby protagonist.
- The Good Place: A rude woman moves to a new neighborhood where everyone is nicer than her, and she has to pretend to be nice in order to avoid being sent to a considerably worse neighborhood.
- Alternatively, Everyone who has died in the past few centuries has gone to Hell, where they are horribly tortured. Except for four people who are put in an experiment where they are tricked in to psychologically torturing each other for all eternity. It's a comedy.
- Alternatively, Ethical Philosophy Class: The Sitcom.
- Alternatively, a rude woman dies, ends up in 'Heaven', and quickly learns that it's not all what it's cracked up to be.
- The Golden Girls: A snarky know-it-all, a Scandinavian Dumb Blonde, a well-to-do slut and a cranky old woman live in America's Wang.
- Good Eats: A nerdy kitchen whiz enlists the help of everyone from dead politicians to obscure relatives to teach the viewing audience how to cook. He has a crush on a fairy in his refrigerator.
- Alternately, MacGyver has a cooking show.
- Goosebumps (1995): The Outer Limits (1995) for kids.
- Gotham A frustrated honest cop in a crimeridden city fights a losing battle to clean it up even while its gets more bizarre by the day. Meanwhile that detective will somehow rise in the ranks until he gets help from a mentally traumatized child who will grow up terrorize the city's criminal underworld with his way.
- The Great British Bake Off: A reality show where everybody's nice, starring two female comedians, a sweet grandmotherly lady and a George Clooney lookalike who is obsessed with bottoms. And lots of sugar. And sheep.
- The Greatest American Hero: A lovable doofus with ridiculous '80s Hair fights crime with alien technology he barely knows how to use.
- Green Acres: A strange city slicker couple runs a dilapidated farm in a bizarre farm community where the most admired resident is a super capable pig.
- Green Wing: A hospital show in which no patients are ever seen. There's no time - the doctors and management are too busy with funny and surreal hijinks.
- Grey's Anatomy: A hospital show where everyone is part of a giant Love Dodecahedron, which patients are occasionally dragged into. No one ever seems happy, even when they specifically state that they are happy, because of the Masochism Tango of always wanting their relationship status to be the opposite of whatever it currently is.
- Private Practice: Spinoff featuring the Ensemble Dark Horse of the previous show. The writers initially attempted to make it even less about the surgeries than its predecessor, but this plan was scrapped in order to save the show.
- Grimm: Homicide detective beats up fairy tales during his off-duty hours, frequently assisted by not-quite-werewolf clockmaker.
- "Fairy tales, but for adults" meets conspiracy theories "fairy-tales-for-adults"]].
- Hannah Montana: A girl who is only famous when she wears a blonde wig overacts, a lot.
- Hannibal: Morality is a gray zone. We know this because the characters live in a world where bad guys mutilate corpses and the good guys adopt fluffy stray dogs.
- Happy Days: A family deals with their three kids, one of whom disappears and is never heard of again, and a biker who moves in with them.
- Hard Quiz: A variant of Mastermind with a snarky host.
- Have I Got News for You: A show which can't hold down a host for more than one episode, is outdated within a week of broadcast, and whose only regular cast members are an eccentric comedian and a magazine editor. Allegedly.
- Hawkeye (2021): Family man is forced to extend his holiday trip because a girl (who absolutely adores him) discovered some old clothes of his.
- Alternatively: Arrow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a female archer.
- Hawking: A nerdy university student attempts to get his degree before he dies of an incurable neurological illness. (Spoiler: he succeeds.) Based on a True Story.
- Hawaii Five-0: Standard cop show, just with prettier scenery than most. Remade so you can recognize more of the actors.
- Hell's Kitchen: A British chef swears and yells a lot at people.
- Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares: Said British chef goes out of his way to save near bankrupt restaurants while insulting the people working there, and their cooking.
- Herman's Head: New York-based magazine editor leads a boring life, but his psyche is always working overtime.
- Heroes: A whole bunch of people with superpowers try to pretend that they've never heard of superheroes or supervillains while they play recreational sports with the Idiot Ball.
- Henry Danger: A Manchild hires a teenage boy to be his sidekick.
- Hey Dude!: Teenagers get paid to wreak havoc on an Arizona ranch in the early '90s.
- Highlander: The enduring battles between people who emanate lightning after getting their heads cut off. In the end, there can be only one, except that more appear every year.
- Highway to Heaven: A hobo and an ex-cop with anger issues tell people how to live their lives in Southern California. Miracles happen.
- Hit & Miss: A woman tries to balance her unorthodox job, her new family, and her love life.
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981): The Earth blows up. Hilarity Ensues.
- Hogan's Heroes: A comedy set in Nazi Germany, wherein a cocky allied commander and his multicultural comrades subvert the Third Reich from within a prison camp with a no-escape record.
- Oh, and most of the Nazis are played by Jews who survived Nazi oppression. And German viewers love it.
- Hollywood Squares: Tic-tac-toe featuring risqué remarks to simple trivia questions.
- Holmes on Homes: Burly man invades homes, rails against stupidity.
- Home Improvement: A home improvement show host tries to add more power to everything. When that fails, he consults his odd neighbor.
- A man is extremely passionate and knowledgeable about his profession, but ironically, when he tries to apply it to his life, it always blows up in his face. He hosts an informational show with a far more sensible assistant/friend whose personal life he is always making jabs at, and lives with a sarcastic and sharp-tongued companion with a set of personal tastes as different from those of the main character as possible. When faced with problems, the main character consults a highly knowledgeable but eccentric adviser whose most notable peculiarity is the fact that an essential aspect of the character is always kept off-screen. Wait, hang on...are we talking about Home Improvement or Frasier??
- Homeland: A beloved war hero's efforts to get justice for a group of murdered children are repeatedly thwarted by a psychotic stalker who is carrying on an affair with a married man. The stalker is the hero.
- Homicide: Life on the Street: A Bond villain guides a stand-up comic, a very tall man, a Fiery Redhead and a few Shakespearean actors and trade snarks with each other while solving murders in the South. It may or may not have served as a predecessor to The Wire.
- House: Crippled Doctor can't decide if he's Batman, Sherlock Holmes, or Nietzsche; solves medical mysteries to keep the crushing ennui at bay only to find that Victory Is Boring, so he takes drugs instead.
- House Hunters: Couples go comparison-shopping.
- How I Met Your Mother: A man tells his bored teenaged children stories about his sex life when he was younger.
- Or: A man tells his children the story of how he met a bunch of women who AREN'T their mother with the help of Doogie Howser, M.D.
- Or: A woman, her two ex-boyfriends, and their married friends stay up late drinking at their favourite bar every night for several years, until someone gets pregnant.
- The Wonder Years: A man tells his bored child(ren) stories about himself when he was younger. Evidently there's nothing good on TV in the present.
- Human Target: A killer steals the identity of the Six Million Dollar Man and is helped by a former high school principal and Rorschach (or possibly Freddy Krueger). Their enemy is Judge Dredd's clone.
- Human Trafficking: The graphic downside of international tourism. Features an Oscar winner, a Golden Globe winner and a man who once got naked with his friends.
- Human Wrecking Balls: A pair of brothers break stuff.
- Hustle: Rich, dishonest people are robbed in highly creative ways. We are supposed to believe that the thieves are the good guys.
- The Real Hustle: Ordinary people are robbed, and then the money is given back.
- H₂O: Just Add Water: After getting stranded on Neri's home island, three teenage girls are transformed into descendants of Ariel after coming into a contact with a strange pool — and during a full moon to boot. First found recognition in the U.S. via an infamous Same Language Dub on public television, then its original form airing on a certain channel that was trying to be more inclusive to live-action.
- Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure: Turns out magical creatures lived around and worshipped that pool the whole time, and somehow they never crossed paths with the above show's protagonists. Those magical creatures try to remove the powers of another magical creature like themselves because they think he's a human. Then they try to kill another magical creature like themselves because they think she's a dragon.
- I, Claudius: A man who was born into the world's most powerful family spends the entire series whining about his relatives.
- I Dream of Jeannie: A blonde Magical Girl who is a Genie in a Bottle annoys an astronaut for five years by calling him "Master" in order to have Happiness in Slavery and sparks controversy for exposing her navel. She also loves folding her hands and nodding her head, usually when she knows or thinks that something is about to go wrong. Alternatively, a man finds his life centering more and more around the contents of a bottle, and it's a dream of Howard Borden .
- I Love Lucy: A spaced-out, red-haired housewife tries to get on her husband's variety show and whines about it when she can't.
- I'd Do Anything: Women compete for the right to wear a corset in front of thousands of people and die horribly at the hands of Owen Harper, while children compete to play a miserable orphan.
- iCarly: A spoiled teen girl, her psychotic best friend, and the nerd next door host a webshow.
- Ice Road Truckers: "Guys drive on ice."
- In Living Color!: Predominantly Black series that constantly upset the censors and executives. Memorable characters include an "Angry Black Man" Stereotype, a guy who played with fire, and two Camp Gay guys.
- I'm in the Band: Washed-up '80s celebrities move into a teenage boy's house.
- Inazuman: Mothman fights blue Shrek and his army of SS soldiers.
- In the Night Garden...: A bunch of people live in a forest with a pair of semi-sentient vehicles.
- The Incredible Hulk (1977): A scientist with really serious anger management issues is a presumed dead fugitive.
- Insomniac: Bald drunk tours the U.S. to prove that the freaks really do come out at night.
- The Inspector Lynley Mysteries: A Lord with a dysfunctional personal life and a cranky, foul-mouthed junk food addict fight crime while clashing over class issues, elitism, and everything else. Somehow, they wind up best friends and possibly fall in love.
- Inspector Morse: He's an aging alcoholic frustrated academic singleton. He's a much younger family man from the North. Together, they fight crime.
- Inspector Rex: A cop show where the lead character isn't human.
- Interceptor: Hide-and-seek against a helicopter containing a mad Scotsman. Don't worry, though, you have a former tennis player to help.
- Alternatively: On one team — a sci-fi bounty hunter with a laser cannon, a quick-witted aerial ace, and their fleet of really cool black vehicles. On the other — two hitch-hikers who are usually yuppies. You're supposed to root for the latter.
- Iron Chef: Two people play a game to see who can cook the best food in one hour. They are judged by a panel of D-list celebrities. Home team wins.
- Iron Fist (2017): After returning home, hippie who likes punching people falls for teacher and discovers his new job has unethical business practices.
- Ironside (1967): Man fights crime without ever leaving his chair.
- The IT Crowd: A nerd with no social skills, an Irish drunkard, a goth who lives in a closet and a woman with no knowledge of computers work with computers in a basement.
- It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Fraternal twins, their dad and two friends run a bar and scheme to get money and/or sex. Everybody turns against everybody else. Antagonists are a nameless waitress and a homeless former priest.
- Alternatively, a show with absolutely unlikeable sociopaths for the main characters who all undergo flanderization and an entire episode dedicated to a mystery involving faecal matter. And the occasional blackface.
- Or, five alcoholics make an already crappy world an even worse place.
- iZombie: A zombie eats the brains of innocent people. Her former fiance from before she became a zombie gets out of a mental hospital and goes on a killing spree. They are the good guys.
- JAG: A tall dark and handsome former Naval Aviator turned lawyer together with an equally beautiful female jarhead partner; supported by an ensemble cast led by a bald former Navy SEAL; investigates, prosecutes, and defends service members in the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.
- NCIS: A retired Marine with a redhead fetish, a lecherous playboy, a malapropping Israeli assassin, a murder mystery writer / computer nerd and online gamer, an old British doctor and a Perky Goth with a caffeine habit work for the US Navy. They fight crime!
- NCIS: Los Angeles: Robin (of Batman and...), LL Cool J, and a short white woman famous for playing a Chinese man work out of a resort that's supposed to be a secret base in the middle of Los Angeles. They also fight crime!
- NCIS: A retired Marine with a redhead fetish, a lecherous playboy, a malapropping Israeli assassin, a murder mystery writer / computer nerd and online gamer, an old British doctor and a Perky Goth with a caffeine habit work for the US Navy. They fight crime!
- Jane the Virgin: Virgin girl gets pregnant, and enters a love triangle with the father of her baby (who is also her boss) and her fiance. Everything gets much, much more complicated from there, so don't even bother trying to explain the basic plot beyond this.
- Jeeves and Wooster: Gay Victorian couple pose as upper class idiot and his more intelligent butler.
- Jekyll: A Victorian horror novel re-imagined as a modern sci-fi conspiracy with the star Acting for Two but providing enough ham for eight.
- Jeopardy!: A game show which is hard to win even though they give you all the answers.
- Get a stupid answer, ask a stupid question.
- Jessica Jones (2015): A not terribly good PI gets stalked by a man with a strange way of making friends.
- Jessica Jones (2015) Season 2: The PI discovers both her biological and adoptive families are screwed up.
- Joan of Arcadia: A girl talks to God.
- The Joe Schmo Show: A Reality Show where the only "real" thing about it is one unwitting contestant.
- The Joker's Wild: A game show where players spin a slot machine to determine their categories. Satan and Heath Ledger guest star.
- Jonathan Creek: A nerdy magician and a hot but dysfunctional journalist with a crush on him solve mysteries. Then the journalist suddenly turns blonde and skinny, but no one mentions it.
- The Joy of Painting: an ex-Master Sergeant paints nothing but nature scenes.
- Judge Judy: Every day, horrible rotten people come up to an old lady and tell her about all the horrible rotten things they've done. It's a miracle she hasn't lost all faith in humanity.
- Justified: Cowboy lawman spouts wisecracks and shoots hillbillies in crapsack rural community. Wisecracks some more with his ex-neo-Nazi, ex-preacher crimelord best friend who blows things up.
- Season Two: Cowboy lawman goes up against large woman who punishes those she loves with contaminated moonshine and ballpeen hammers.
- Season Three: Cowboy lawman goes up again a guy who dismembers dead animals, a drug-addicted albino deer, a skinny cripple with an 80s mohawk, and a redneck with four kidneys. Features barbecue pork and bondage.
- Kamen Rider: Long-running franchise about bugmen riding bikes.
- Kamen Rider V3: College student becomes bugman to fight animals mashed with objects.
- Kamen Rider Amazon: Guy from South America befriends children while encountering animal men.
- Kamen Rider Super-1: Astronaut learns Shaolin style.
- Kamen Rider BLACK RX: Gold-masked Destro throws man into sun, but it backfires.
- Kamen Rider Agito: Amnesiac experiences the joys of housework, cooking, and defeating agents of god.
- Kamen Rider Ryuki: Guys fight over cards.
- Kamen Rider Dragon Knight: Guys fight over cards IN AMERICA.
- Kamen Rider 555: Three friends who run a dry cleaning business deal with their annoying neighbors and a MegaCorp led by transhumanists bent on annihilating the human race.
- Kamen Rider Blade: 4 dudes collect cards.
- Kamen Rider Hibiki: Demons play music to other demons.
- Kamen Rider Kabuto: Man fights worms.
- Kamen Rider Den-O: A luckless klutz saves history by getting possessed by one of four demons.
- Kamen Rider Kiva: A vampire boy has to break a lot of glass.
- Kamen Rider Decade: Struggling photographer also uses cards.
- Kamen Rider Double: Lovable poseur and amnesiac know-it-all use USB Drives to share a body.
- Kamen Rider OOO: Homeless man is made to fight for spare change.
- Kamen Rider Fourze: Ordinary High-School Student makes loads of friends through their shared love of outer space.
- Kamen Rider Wizard: Magician battles monsters by helping people with their personal problems.
- Kamen Rider Gaim: First arc: Dance teams are serious business. Second arc onwards: Fruit is serious business.
- Kamen Rider Drive: Police detective gets a new belt and Cool Car.
- Kamen Rider Ghost: Guy gains superpowers by dying.
- Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: Medical intern discovers that video games are serious business.
- Kamen Rider Amazons: Green tries to save his species, while Red eats raw eggs.
- Kamen Rider Build: Gay rabbit boy and dumb athlete get drafted into the military, made to fight Loony Fan of idol singers.
- Kamen Rider Zi-O: Kid collects watches in the hopes it will make him a better person.
- Kamen Rider Zero-One: Failed comedian inherits tech enterprise and beats up robot cultists.
- Kamen Rider Saber: A novelist joins a crew of badass swordsmen who fight monsters with the power of BOOKS.
- Kamen Rider Revice: Three siblings take grappling with inner demons to new and much more literal levels while fighting a mariachi trio who deal demonic stamps.
- Kamen Rider Outsiders: A gathering of returning bad guys in the franchise to form a resistance against an artificial intelligence with a messiah complex that seeks to establish new world order.
- Kamen Rider Geats: People play a game where they dress up as animals and fight plant men. And one of them is on a massive winning streak.
- K.C. Undercover: It's Kim Possible...only she's black.
- Kickin' It: Kids try to keep an overweight former action movie star's karate dojo from going out of business.
- Kings: A Farm Boy saves the prince's life and everything goes to hell. Also known as: Ian McShane gets dicked over by NBC.
- Kirby Buckets: A teenage boy becomes a local celebrity by drawing cartoons to bully his older sister.
- Kirby Buckets: Warped: The boy manages to break the space-time continuum by playing with a metal sphere.
- Knight Rider A man and his talking computer-controlled car wander the country, fighting crime.
- Knightmare: A Dungeon Master sends children into his dungeon to deal with problems he doesn't want to take care of himself. They almost always fail.
- Alternatively: Kids play a video game which has no controls, no continues, and a habit of freezing mid-level.
- Kojak: Bald Greek guy sucks on lollipops while doing his job.
- Krypton: A show about Superman but without Superman, and the only superhero around wants to help the Big Bad to kill a lot of people.
- Kyle XY: A loving family raises a teenage savant who was literally born yesterday.
- K-tai Investigator 7: one's an Ordinary High-School Student. One's a transforming cell-phone robot. They fight cyber crime!
- Lab Rats: A teenager convinces his scientist dad to let him bring three top-secret bio-weapons to school.
- Lab Rats: Bionic Island: The scientist opens a school to assist in the development of more bio-weapons.
- Lab Rats: Elite Force: Two of the bio-weapons join forces with amateur doctors and their alien friend.
- Land of the Lost: A family gets lost in an acid trip. Maybe.
- Land of the Lost (1991): Remake where a family gets lost during vacation.
- Last of the Summer Wine: Inexplicably long-running series about three old northerners. One is gynophobic, one is a short, scruffy liberal, and the other is one of various tall, pompous conservatives. They wander around Yorkshire, argue about politics and crash things. All the female characters are prudes. It's a comedy.
- The Last Man on Earth: Survivors of a pandemic bicker a lot as they scramble to rebuild society, only to end up predicting an actual pandemic.
- Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: A British guy sits at a desk and goes on long monologues about topics such as mislabeling of vitamin supplements, pharmaceutical marketing and infrastructure funding. He tries to alleviate the heaviness of some topics with photoshopped pictures and mascots in ridiculous costumes.
- The Late Show: Host interviews people and makes a top 10 list.
- The Late Late Show: Host reads mail and interviews guests with help from a robot, a horse, and puppets.
- Law & Order: Police officers investigate crimes. Lawyers argue about them in court.
- Or, crime-solving duo helps grandfatherly mentor teach cynicism to a series of supermodels.
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: A recovering alcoholic tries to keep a Cowboy Cop, a closet lesbian, a gangsta rapper, and John Munch from taking their frustrations out on rapists and child molesters.
- later part of season 15: The same closeted lesbian sans likeability, an unlikeable gambling addict, and the same Cowboy Cop BUT LATINO! try not to take their frustrations out on rapists and child molesters. A snarky caffeine-addicted ADA tries to keep them in line.
- Law & Order: Criminal Intent: A strange detective with an unconventional approach and a diminutive snarker (both of whom were once psychotic killers) head to the other side of the law to team up with two other classically trained actors and investigate really nasty people and manipulate them into confessing. They are later assisted by Mr. Big and Brundlefly.
- Law & Order: UK: Police officers investigate crimes. Lawyers argue about them in court. With wigs. And no guns.
- LazyTown: Ugly man is repeatedly woken up by a pink-haired girl and an ambiguously elvish sports maniac forcing a hopeless mayor, a boring secretory, an idiot with a Sweet Tooth, a Black and Nerdy guy, The Prankster, and a kleptomaniac hoarder to be active.
- The League of Gentlemen: A Sitcom / Sketch Comedy set in a Town with a Dark Secret, whose best-loved characters are a pair of incestuous Small-Town Tyrant Serial Killers and a polygamist Monster Clown who runs a Circus of Fear and calls everybody "Dave".
- Psychoville: A mysterious figure attempts to blackmail a group of disabled people and medical personnel.
- Leave It to Beaver: Classic Kid Com starring goofy little brother and, to a degree, his level-headed, athletic older brother. Older brother's friend ends up stealing the show whenever he appears.
- The Leftovers: Several different religious leaders, lay people, and bureaucrats have an argument over the significance of an interrupted download.
- Season 1: Handsome small town cop is reluctantly drawn into the argument and enters intimate relationships with two different women: a bureaucrat and a religious leader. It’s not clear if the interrupted download ever had any religious significance.
- Season 2: Handsome small town cop tries to escape the aforementioned conflict by moving to Texas. He dies a couple of times. It’s not clear if the interrupted download ever had any religious significance.
- Season 3: Handsome small town cop tries to escape the conflict by traveling to Australia. He dies several times. It’s still not clear if the interrupted download ever had any religious significance.
- Legend of the Seeker: A young woodsman embarks on a mystical quest with an elderly wizard, a beautiful woman who mind-rapes people with her eyes, and a reformed dominatrix. Along the way they collect magical objects, rescue villagers, and try not to doom the world by having sex.
- Legends of the Hidden Temple: Game show where All Myths Are True and kids compete for the right to rob tombs, meet a talking stone head, and fail to put together a monkey statue.
- Legends of Tomorrow: A Ragtag Bunch of Misfits are brought together by a time-traveling Englishman to protect history. They usually screw it up worse than it was before they manage to fix it.
- Let's Make a Deal: Costumed audience members exchange cash and merchandise for exotic vacations and luxurious cars, as well as smelly farm animals, massive quantities of produce, and oversized TV show props.
- Leverage: A Five-Man Band of criminals. They fight crime.
- Basically an updated version of those four ex-military fellows in the van above.
- The Librarians 2014: Former NATO counter-terrorism agent becomes a bodyguard for three geniuses who work for a secret organisation that safe guards magic after a librarian's Library goes missing.
- Lie to Me: An obnoxious Brit and a quirky team accuse people of lying and are usually right.
- Life On Mars: A policeman gets run over and wakes up in 1973. His boss is a misogynistic, racist homophobe, he himself is and is not hallucinating everything, and he's being stalked.
- Ashes to Ashes (2008): Alex Drake gets seriously injured and wakes up in 1981. Somehow, she's ended up in Sam Tyler's world, working for his boss, and it's anyone's guess whether or not Alex is hallucinating the whole thing.
- Or: A police detective gets stalked by a freaky clown who probably doesn't exist in 1981.
- Brimstone: Police detective gets seriously injured, travels forward in time to 1998, and meets the devil.
- Ashes to Ashes (2008): Alex Drake gets seriously injured and wakes up in 1981. Somehow, she's ended up in Sam Tyler's world, working for his boss, and it's anyone's guess whether or not Alex is hallucinating the whole thing.
- Living Single: A well-known rapper-turned-magazine editor living in New York has the world and her eccentric/arrogant friends bend to her every whim, regardless of how insensitive she may come off across at times.
- Lizzie McGuire: A cartoon character snarks about the daily mundane life of her live-action counterpart.
- Loki (2021): The most untrustworthy person in the universe tries to save his life by getting a job in a Vast Bureaucracy, and falls in love with himself.
- The Lone Ranger: A cowboy and an Indian fight crime. Together.
- Long Ago and Far Away: Darth Vader hosts children's stories from around the world.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Local Elf Karen insults everyone and forces the workers to follow her orders just to prove that she is right to the the managers. Underage girl hides her relationship with an old man from her parents.
- In a story about great battles between the armies of good and evil, everything goes wrong because they lose track of one elderly cultist at the worst moment.
- Lost: People stuck in a place where weird things happen and no one has any idea what's happening. Also features a soap opera set in East Asia.
- Alternately: People learn about boar hunting and killing each other brutally.
- Or: An angry Momma's Boy wants to pull the plug out of a drain. His brother recruits a diverse group of people to try and stop him. They all end up dying.
- Lostin Space: Hopelessly lost preteen boy hangs out with a robot and a Miles Gloriosus villain.
- The Lost Room: A plucky single dad finds the magic key to a Negative Space Wedgie and meets a cast of colorful characters on a quest to find his daughter.
- Or: Shady people fight over a key to a non-existent room in a long-abandoned hotel.
- Luke Cage (2016): The owner of the local club and his cousin discover it is a bad idea to make the local bartender angry.
- Luke Cage (2016) Season 2: Local bartender-turned-barber gets dragged into an argument between the club owner's cousin and a very angry Jamaican while dealing with his own anger issues.
- MacGyver: A spy who can't fire a gun helps people by using everyday items in unconventional ways.
- Mad Men: The man in the grey flannel suit commits identity theft, votes for Nixon, and provides an object lesson in why the women's movement was a Good Thing.
- Alternately: A bunch of sexist, racist, homophobic dicks get drunk, smoke and screw hot chicks a lot en route to huge paychecks.
- Maddigan's Quest: Two boys and a baby run away and join a circus in order to fight a cockroach that doesn't exist yet.
- Alternately: Renewable energy good, radiation bad.
- The Magicians: A college student finds out his favorite book series is real, and now he and his friends have to stop the characters from destroying the world. But after he sings Taylor Swift in a mental hospital.
- Malcolm in the Middle: Teen Genius narrates the life of his severely screwed-up family through his own eyes.
- Mama's Family: A crotchety old Midwestern woman raises her eccentric, slow-witted, feuding and ungrateful children, grandchildren and in-laws. It's notable for the old woman of a Vague Age being portrayed by an actress who ranges from being years to even decades younger than her on-screen children.
- The Mandalorian: Struggling single man unexpectedly becomes a struggling single parent after he fails to do his job properly.
- Man vs. Bee: Possibly the most Rowan Atkinson thing to ever exist.
- Man vs. Wild: A man goes hiking around the world.
- Also he drinks his own piss.
- Married... with Children: Loser Protagonist lives through hell on earth with his lazy red-headed wife, two bumbling kids, and a pair of annoying neighbors.
- Unhappily Ever After: Loser Protagonist lives through hell on earth with his lazy blonde wife, one bumbling kid, one hottie genius kid and masochistic plush toy.
- Martin: A black radio DJ pisses people off.
- The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: Woman decides to attempt a new career after a drunk tirade against getting dumped.
- M*A*S*H: A bunch of Americans living abroad in the 1950s talk and act like it's the 1970s, and crack a lot of jokes about death.
- The Masked Singer: Celebrities wear fursuits and adopt fursonas.
- The Mclaughlin Group: People discussing politics loudly under the watch of an ex-Jesuit with a penchant for Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness.
- The Mentalist: a Jerkass ex-conman pisses people off while his short Brainy Brunette reprimands him. Plus, a stoic Asian, bumbling big guy, and Fiery Redhead.
- Merlin: A bumbling manservant uses non-specified superpowers to protect his unwitting and unappreciative master while taking advice on their relationship from a dragon who basically speaks in subtext (and ships them). Corny CGI ensues.
- Merv Griffin's Crosswords: Classic pencil puzzler turned into a game show. Poor formatting turns this into the game show version of the Macguffin Delivery Service.
- Metal Heroes: Semi-long running Japanese franchise about lawmen who wear shiny outfits.
- Jikuu Senshi Spielban: Man and his female partner (who can defeat people by sitting on them) fight villains trying to steal water.
- Sekai Ninja Sen Jiraiya: Crooks try to steal a clay board from a family struggling to make ends meet.
- Kidou Keiji Jiban: Cop undergoes major reassignment, finds out his new boss is a little girl.
- Tokkei Winspector: Rescue but with a Sentai team.
- Juukou B-Fighter: Three people befriend beetles and gain superpowers, team up with a private academy to fight guy trying to destroy Earth by making a big hole.
- Miami Vice: An hour long music video compilation about a set of cowboy cops who out-cool all the bad guys.
- Midsomer Murders: Local detective lives in a county where everyone is a murderer. His wife complains he's a workaholic.
- The Mighty Boosh: A glamrocking pretty boy and a middle-aged virgin with a jazz fetish go on ridiculous, surreal adventures with an alien stoner and a talking gorilla who's supposed to be dead.
- Mighty Med: The health and safety of Philadelphia's most valuable residents is in the hands of high schoolers.
- The Middleman: A young painter living with her ditzy blonde roommate is hired by a quirky superhero with a grumpy robot secretary. Memorable opponents include a super-smart gorilla, a mud monster, and a boy band.
- Mimpi Metropolitan: A Country Mouse befriends a pirated-DVD seller on his first day in the city. Meanwhile, a struggling actor is mouthed off by his boss.
- Misfits: Five juvenile delinquents—consisting of a nerdy arsonist, a shamed athlete, a snarky jerkass, a violent chav, and a sex-mad drunk-driver—get caught in a freak storm while on community service, and get magically lumbered with some of the most debilitating and ridiculous superpowers EVER.
- Mission: Impossible: A Five Smart Guy Band takes on Magnificent Bastard after Magnificent Bastard and wins.
- Mister Ed: A horse talks to an architect and says nothing to anyone else.
- Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: A Presbyterian minister shows children how various things are made, sings to them, and then tells serial stories set in a kingdom in his wall.
- Modern Family: An extended family allows an unseen mockumentary crew to record every detail in their lives.
- Mock the Week: Seven people talk about how terrible Britain and the world is using Black Comedy.
- Monk: A man with OCD annoys everyone around him in the process of solving murders.
- The Monkees: Four teenagers sing songs, break the fourth wall and go on zany adventures.
- Monty Python's Flying Circus: Five educated British men make complete fools of themselves on national television until they run out of ideas, at which point their American colleague cuts bits of famous paintings out and moves them in front of the camera.
- Alternatively: A history of Irish agriculture.
- Moon Knight:
- In a series that partly aired during Passover, a Jewish man serves an Egyptian god.
- Alternatively: a man argues with himself about whether he should be a British museum tour guide or an American hitmen.
- Mork & Mindy: Cloudcuckoolander from space and sweet innocent young woman live together in Boulder, Colorado and seem to swing back and forth between Just Friends and a real romantic relationship for three years until they get married and give birth to Jonathan Winters.
- The Morton Downey Jr. Show: A man brings various guests onto his show to argue with them. In some cases the arguing will escalate into outright violence. Known for launching the "trash talk" genre of shows.
- Mr. Bean: A manchild is overwhelmed by the most basic tasks. Most of the time something goes wrong, and for some reason, instead of asking someone for help, he tries to fix everything himself, but just ends up making it worse.
- Mr. Belvedere: An English butler lives in the Pittsburgh suburbs and writes in his diary about the mundane goings-on of his host family.
- Mr. Brain: A Ginza host with impossibly good hair is crushed under a building, has his brain rebuilt, and gathers a ragtag band of misfits to solve crimes by eating bananas and playing children's games.
- Mr. Robot: A misanthrope does hard drugs while ranting about how much he hates corporate America.
- Mr. Young: A kid is hired as a high school teacher.
- The Munsters: A caring, considerate family do their best to improve their community but are shunned and discriminated against by the rest of civilization.
- The Muppet Show: A variety show—starring assorted singing and dancing animals, not to mention talking food—where nearly all of the acts end in total disaster. Comes complete with its own MST3K riffers. Oh, and Mark Hamill is the son of Padmé's sister.
- Murder, She Wrote An elderly female author moonlights as a homicide investigator in her idyllic hometown and on the road. The author is a lovely woman, but an astonishing number of her friends, relatives, and neighbors die every year, such that her hometown has a murder rate 3 times that of Detroit in 1974. Murders are solved through keen observation skills, clever verbal traps, and convenient confessions.
- Alternatively, an elderly woman is friends with a shocking number of people in her small town, which has a reputation of being idyllic despite its sky-high murder rate. She often assists in the apprehension of the murderers, and is miraculously never harmed despite her age and the fact that many of them have weapons.
- Murphy Brown: Recovering alcoholic can't keep a secretary, but can keep a painter. Hilarity Ensues.
- Mutant X: Geneticist composes team of human guinea pigs to fight against a Corrupt Corporate Executive with plastic skin. Not related to the X-Men.
- My Name Is Earl: A white-trash crook is hit by a car after winning the lottery, then his trashier (but hot) wife leaves him for the black man who fathered his Chocolate Baby. He learns about the concept of Karma from a talk show and it scares him into writing a list of everything bad he's ever done and setting out to make up for every item so that this "Karma" thing won't kill him.
- My So-Called Life: A show about the problems of white, middle-class teenagers in the '90s. Is retroactively praised by people who weren't white, middle-class teenagers in the '90s.
- Mystery Diagnosis: People are sick. Their doctors don't know why, until they do.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000: A man is stuck in a satellite orbiting earth with some robots he made out of spare parts, and they are forced to watch bad old movies while mocking them. Join the fun!
- Alternatively: A man, hated by the people he serves, is jettisoned into a spaceship. Each day, he is forced to watch torturous films that make the ones shown in A Clockwork Orange look mild. In a losing battle against loneliness, he builds several machines from various parts of the ship, who treat him worse than his employers. A truly sad story.
- Alternatively: A scientist gives poor movie recommendations to three men with nothing better to do, but they still take constant breaks to play pretend.
- Alternatively: Some people won't shut up about awful movies.
- The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nóg: Power Rangers in ancient Ireland.
- MythBusters: Two overgrown geeks and their three younger sidekicks try to prove whether urban legends are true or not by playing with an overly abused crash test dummy and blowing stuff up.
- Or: Four guys and a girl blow stuff up — all in the name of science.
- My Two Dads: A preteen girl deals with grief and an identity crisis while living in your average episode of Maury due to a dead woman who forced two incompetent ex-boyfriends to raise her and live together but aren't gay.
- Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide: Slice of Life anime, only it's live-action. Set in American Junior High with No Fourth Wall.
- New Tricks: A widower, a compulsive gambler, and a neurotic with OCD join forces with a dog-murderer to solve mysteries.
- Nick Arcade: A game show where kids play video games and answer trivia questions in order to win a chance at jumping around in front of a green-screen.
- Night Court: A barely qualified judge rules on a series of petty crimes, while the prosecutor makes inappropriate remarks about the duty counsel, and one of the bailiffs is really tall.
- Ninja Warrior: 100 people fail to pass several obstacles and a rope ladder twice a year.
- No Ordinary Family: The Incredibles In Live Action!!!
- Northern Exposure: A New York doctor goes to Springfield, Alaska. He tries to leave. Hilarity ensues. Don't call it fantasy.
- Nowhere Man: A photographer gets very convincingly erased. Over his course of Walking the Earth trying to unravel the conspiracy and get his family back, he becomes less and less convinced he was ever real.
- NUMB3RS : A nice Jewish math genius writes on a chalkboard and finds criminals. The first criminal they find is always dead. The second is arrested.
- Obi-Wan Kenobi: Amber Alert forces old man out of retirement.
- The Odd Couple: A priggish intellectually pretentious Neat Freak and a down to earth, if short tempered, slob try to live together as roommates and friends.
- Odd Girl Out: A quasi-Hispanic girl is continuously bullied by her two best friends, a Manipulative Bitch and a Sociopath.
- The Office (UK): The boring lives of a group of people who work in a paper merchant's in Slough.
- The Office (US): the surprisingly interesting lives of a dysfunctional group of people who work at a paper company in Scranton, PA.
- Occupied: 20 Minutes into the Future, the Russians plot to steal all of Norway's oil and book all the good tables in their restaurants. To add insult to injury, they then try and steal away the bodyguard of the Norwegian prime minister as well. Meanwhile, an Intrepid Reporter gets in trouble for writing headlines that are too juicy. Meanwhile, a couple of guys in very silly hats decide to re-enact Red Dawn (1984). Europe and America watch the whole thing from afar and Pass the Popcorn. It's a serious Conspiracy Thriller.
- Ocean Girl: A lonely islander with only a whale for a friend comes into contact with two boys, their mother, and their underwater society.
- Once Upon a Time: After getting into a fight with her son's custodial parent, a successful woman moves back in with her single mother, who is trying to get back together with her father.
- Meanwhile, the son tries to prove that everyone in town is really from Disney's fantasy menagerie.
- Once Upon a Time in Wonderland: Two lovers navigate an acid trip while fleeing Disney villains.
- One Tree Hill: Two poor outcasts bond with rich popular kids over a basketball. Also, they all have several run-ins with and obsess over the opinion of a Jaded Washout with an emo haircut who is basically a cross between Scar and Mitch Hiller.
- Only Murders in the Building: Two old men and a woman discover a body, and decide that the most logical thing to do would be to start a podcast.
- The Order: Modern American teenagers join secret societies. They are scarily good at it.
- The Orville: The mind behind Family Guy and similar shows stars in his own sendup of Star Trek.
- The Outer Limits (1963) ("Demon with a Glass Hand") (Single episode of anthology series): An emotionless man with amnesia does everything his hand tells him, including walking into a hail of bullets. (He gets better.)
- Oz: An in-depth look into U.S. federal prisons which entails that it's really gruesome, really into nudity and really unfair.
