6 TV shows you need to be watching this year
January is a tough month. The holidays are over, it’s cold outside, and you put more pressure on yourself to go to the gym and not eat donuts everyday. Luckily, your old favorite TV shows (Downton Abbey, Girls) are returning after a dry spell of reruns. But there are also a slew of new shows all about the ladies making their debut this year (but we’re also including a few on their sophomore season that you may not even be aware of). So when you aren’t watching Friends on Netflix, we suggest you check these out.
1. Hindsight
If you could do your 20s over again, would you? Well, most of us don’t get that choice (or you are in your 20s so you can’t even do that!). But on this show a woman does get to go back and rethink all of her decisions, from her love life to her career. Plus, it has an awesome 90s soundtrack (it is on VH1 after all) and great fashion (though most of it would still be very chic today. Hello crop tops!).
2. Agent Carter
Think Alias but in the 1940s, so even more glamorous. It’s all about a woman (Haley Atwell, who originated the role in the Captain America and Avenger films) making a way for herself professionally in what was very much a man’s world. Plus, cool spy fights and costumes! For anyone who loved the early spy show starring Jennifer Garner, this may fill your void because at the end of the day, most girls just want to throw on a wig and kick some ass. Read this great article in The Atlantic on the show.
3. The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Still missing 30 Rock? Well this is the closest you’re going to get. Tina Fey created this new Netflix series starring Ellie Kemper of The Office and Bridesmaids. Now the premise is a little odd: After living in a cult for 15 years, Kimmy (Kemper) decides to start her life over in New York City, the city of fresh starts. With only a backpack and light up sneakers (the essentials) she quickly finds a new job (working for 30 Rock‘s Jane Krakowski), a new roommate (Tituss Burgess), and a new beginning.
4. CSI: Cyber
Fresh off her Golden Globe win for Boyhood, Patricia Arquette will star in the latest CSI: Cyber. Arquette plays Special Agent Avery Ryan, a role inspired by the technological work of real-life cyber psychologist Mary Aiken. Arquette’s character, who debuted last year on CSI, heads the Cyber Crime Division of the FBI, a unit that tracks and solves online illegal activity.
“Part of the reason I was drawn to this material was because CSI is the largest global franchise in the world. It’s connecting to audiences everywhere,” Arquette told reporters. “To be a woman in law enforcement on TV is an important, powerful position for me to be in.” Plus, James Van der Beek is in it!
5. Younger
We seriously can’t wait for this new TV Land show, which is part of a rebranding by the network to attract a younger audience. Produced by Darren Starr of Sex & the City, it centers around a 40-year-old single mother (Sutton Foster) who, after taking time off for her family, gets a job opportunity in her dream field (publishing). The one problem? Her getting the job is contingent on the fact that everyone involved (including actual 26-year-old coworker and uber-Millennial Hilary Duff) thinks she’s in her 20s. Cue the makeover and modern wardrobe (supplied by the amazing Patricia Field) and you have a career do-over. ”That character took matters into her own hands, and that’s what Liza does,” Foster told The LA Times. “She’s a survivor, and she needs to reinvent herself.” We’re all for it.
6. Broad City
This show actually had it’s Season 2 premiere this week, but we still think it’s worth talking about. Starring improv vets and funny ladies Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, this is a show about making your way in New York in the most non-glamorous and hysterical way possible.
Yes, you may think, but isn’t that what Girls is all about? Perhaps, but I seriously relate to the humorous situations these girls find themselves in–like being convinced by a broker that a windowless hallway is an awesome studio apartment (which led to my favorite line of the series uttered by Amy Sedaris, “Where’s the bathroom? Umm where isn’t the bathroom?”)–than any of the things that have ever happened on Girls. Plus, the way this show started was inspiring. After working with the Upright Citizens Bigrade, but not making it into the top troupes, Jacobson and Glazer started making video shorts that caught the attention of none other than Amy Poehler, and soon a series was born! Jacobson told TIME, “You’re waiting for someone to be like ‘you’re funny, you’re on a [UCB] team.’ No, you have to do stuff to like find how youre funny. I find young people talk about what they want to do, which is great because you get to form the words, but its also like: you gotta just get in there.”
