We all have that one show we turn to when we have scrolled through all of Netflix and found nothing else, when we need a brief window of distraction from life’s stresses, or if we want a nostalgic reminder of another, simpler time.

Now, in lockdown and with bags of time on our hands, it seems like the perfect moment to revisit those box sets and indulge in hours of rewatching, away from the ever-present tyranny of choice.

We asked 10 writers to take us through their rewatches of choice, from the gripping drama (and culinary delights) of The Sopranos, to the fast-paced political intrigue of The West Wing, the romantic trials of New Girl and Gossip Girl, as well as the niche fascinations of Law and Order: SVU. Or, if you would rather not live in the TV screen of the past, one writer argues to stick with the endless stream of the new.

Taking care of business … The Sopranos. Photograph: Rex Features

The Sopranos

If the past is a foreign country, rewatching The Sopranos is like stepping into another universe entirely. The silken polo shirts and rattling gold bracelets, the flip-phones and leather-seated Sedans, the strippers and – above all – the sandwiches; David Chase’s late-90s epic on mobsters reckoning with their consciences is endlessly rewatchable. So much so that I am about to embark on my third viewing of the six-season, 86-episode odyssey of James Gandolfini’s masterful Tony Soprano and the enduring chaos of his New Jersey family of mafiosos. While I might dip in and out of Friends for a comfort-rewatch, or turn to Bob’s Burgers for an easy laugh, it is almost impossible to watch single episodes of The Sopranos; it is too granular and endlessly gripping. A tentative look back at a pivotal scene soon finds you four hours in, forgetting what happens next.

And there are myriad narratives to follow: the evolution of Anthony Junior from chubby-cheeked tween to emotionally devastated young adult; Meadow’s journey from daddy’s girl to fierce independence; Uncle Junior’s entire aesthetic; Livia’s decrepitude; and Carmella’s relationship rollercoaster, from loyalty to defiance to begrudging acceptance. Of course, holding it all together are the fantastic performances by Gandolfini – whose weight gain over the seasons starts to make his heavy breathing its own marker of dramatic foreboding – and Lorraine Bracco who plays his increasingly conflicted therapist Jennifer Melfi. Their therapy sessions are a masterclass in zippy dialogue and unspoken emotion, as close as we can get to riveting conversation in this time of social isolation.

The show ultimately manages to strike that ineffable balance between escapism and emotional realism, lending it endless depth and rewatch potential. If nothing else, the food is worthy of a repeat view: pepper-stuffed sandwiches, cannelloni, heart-busting ice-cream sundaes; mouth-watering culinary inspiration for your quarantine. Ammar Kalia

Made in Manhattan … Gossip Girl. Photograph: Warner Bros

Gossip Girl

Every few months, I like to imagine the decimal point of my bank account has shifted a few spots to the right and hang out with the hyper-privileged teens of New York City’s Upper East Side. The Gossip Girl world is so spectacularly removed from mine – even were I not self-isolating – that watching it gives me the same rush I imagine sci-fi fans get from films about sentient spaceships and alien incubators. The show follows a group of beautiful, obscenely wealthy teenagers living in palatial penthouses and the “poor” family that enters their orbit; ah yes, so poor are the Humphreys that they are confined to a loft in Brooklyn.



Their lives are so thrillingly interesting that an anonymous blogger, Gossip Girl, follows their every move by posting pap shots and salacious rumours. The plots sit somewhere between tabloid and high art: in one story arc, an 18-year-old billionaire trades his girlfriend for a hotel; in another, an incest storyline isn’t even close to the weirdest thing in that series.

Although things happen almost constantly, nothing ever really changes, which makes it perfect for unending rewatches. The script is overflowing with mixed metaphors and one character’s entire personality is that they love to cook waffles. It should be terrible. It should be consigned to the forgotten annals of Netflix for ever. And yet, it is amazing. The melodrama of your teens magnified by about one million percent and sprinkled with limitless money? Who wouldn’t want to watch that over and over again? Kate Solomon

Zooey Deschanel in New Girl. Photograph: Fox

New Girl

I have had the phrase: “Gave me cookie, got you cookie” swirling on a loop in my head for three days. Buried among every terrible coronavirus-related pun I have come up with to distract myself from the most bizarre and eerie global situation in my lifetime, is the grouchy voice of New Girl’s Nick Miller delivering this line. Startlingly, it has become a sort of meditative balm. Inhale … gave me cookie; exhale … got you cookie.

To say New Girl is my favourite show would be an understatement. I mark my life through New Girl rewatches and sometimes I lay in bed and genuinely wonder if Nick, the recalcitrant bartender turned YA author with questionable hygiene habits (I would definitely have got the ’Rona from him) is my ideal man. The seven-season sitcom starring Zooey Deschanel as the titular character has its axis in friendship. Zooey’s sweet, quirky Jess becomes a room-mate to three men with wildly different personalities (douchey Schmidt, grumpy Nick, unexplainable weirdo Winston), and along with her feisty best friend Cece, becomes enmeshed in ridiculous hijinks with them as they meld into a highly dysfunctional and incestuous family.

The show is funny without losing its heart and sweet without becoming cloying. It has all the intimate tenderness of a dear friend roasting you before pulling you into a hug. I started watching New Girl while depressed in my final year in university and, eight years later, it remains a show I watch when I need laughter to alleviate the darkness of the world; to remind myself of joy and where it lies: within our connections.

In season two, episode five, Schmidt buys Nick a cookie. He saw it and thought of him. The emotionally reticent Nick is uncomfortable with the display of tenderness and, throughout the episode, agonises over how to reciprocate. Eventually he settles on returning the favour, verbalising his affection the only way he knows how: like a Neanderthal. “Gave me cookie, got you cookie. You gave me cookie, got you cookie! Gave me cookie, got you cookie, man!” In my language that means: “I love you and I’m here for you” and I think that’s beautiful. New Girl remains a reminder that hope and joy finds a home in love and its expression. Bolu Babalola

All the president’s men … Martin Sheen, Richard Schiff and Rob Lowe. Photograph: Steve Shapiro/AP

The West Wing

From the moment that cheesy theme tune kicks in, I feel at home. Perhaps it is because I mainlined the series while suffering from extreme exam-related anxiety at university, but The West Wing will always be my happy place. Its depiction of late-90s Clintonian politics may seem increasingly dated, yet in the creation of a group of well-meaning, if flawed, politicos, Aaron Sorkin solidified for many the way politics should be done.

From Rob Lowe’s puppyish Sam Seaborn, to the gruff but ultimately warm-hearted Toby Ziegler (a pitch-perfect role for Richard Schiff), every West Winger has something about them to love (except Mandy; nobody liked Mandy; she was swiftly disappeared at the end of season one). Watching Alison Janney’s bizarre performance of the Jackal never fails to bring a smile to my face – and there is a simple joy to those first four seasons of Sorkin dialogue at its best. The walk-and-talks are the stuff of legend, and the rapid-fire, flirty banter between Josh Lyman and his secretary Donna (this was of course pre-#MeToo) are reminiscent of the best black-and-white screwball comedies.

There is even a quarantine lockdown episode – No Exit, in season five – but perhaps that’s too close to home just now. Instead, I can revel in that opening episode as the word “Potus” rings around my head, or Martin Sheen’s Latin excoriation of God in the season two finale, Two Cathedrals. I might be stuck inside, and Donald Trump might be terrorising the White House out there, but I can always depend on President Bartlet. Toby Moses

Coming unspun … Peter Capaldi’s Malcolm Tucker tries to save his career in The Thick of It. Photograph: Mike Hogan/BBC

The Thick of It

Comfort television suggests something warm and swaddling, but one of my go-to watches when I need a shot-in-the-arm is the extended, penultimate episode of the final series of The Thick of It. It is an episode that mirrored and coincided with the real-life Leveson inquiry and its themes, but also brings to mind Chilcot.

Laughing obviously makes one feel better and The Thick of It is hilarious, but it is not just that. Seeing intelligence, creative competence, incredible art – if that does not sound too pretentious – is also immensely cheering. Whether it is the brilliant lines we came to expect – “I’m just a lad from Leeds with a lust for life”; “If you make eye contact with Malcolm Tucker, you have spilled his pint”; “He was only homeless in the sense that he didn’t have a home” – seeing the regulars at the very top of their game, or the sublimely handled mix of tone, it is an hour of perfect television.

Some insist that the early New Labour focus of TTOI was superior, but this episode does not merely induce pleasure in its one liners but in its depth and resolve; the quiet, oblivious truth-telling by the much put-upon Robyn, and the exquisite Peter Capaldi with his Rachel Dolezal-esque facial expression when everything comes crashing down. But his final bravura speech is arrow-accurate by the writers. These days it is hard not to shove one’s fist into one’s mouth every time someone on Twitter grabs a clip of modern-day politics and makes the same joke: “Missed this episode of The Thick of It!!!!” But even that cannot stop the boost this hour gives me. Hannah Jane Parkinson

Tituss Burgess and Jane Krakowski in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Photograph: Eric Liebowitz/Netflix

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

I very, very rarely rewatch drama; at least not without a very big gap in between. Comedy, however, I can and do watch and rewatch, virtually on a loop. It might be Silicon Valley, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Cheers, and for most of the 90s it was of course Friends (when it was not Will & Grace); but most often these days it is Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Tina Fey’s first post-30 Rock venture and arguably her masterwork.

It has everything that normally makes rewatching a comedy worthwhile, turned up to 11. The jokes are not just plentiful but fast and might be pulled from any genre at any moment. Daft puns, slapstick, callbacks, character jokes, topical gags, broadbrush generic or tiny little things that depend on a Spelunker-level knowledge of the nichest of niche pop-culture references. And then there’s all of Tituss.

The individual and ensemble playing is endlessly watchable, awe-inspiring and prompts an urge to dissect it, even as such a project will and should for ever elude you. Had you world enough (and time) could you ever teach anyone else to hit the beats like Jane Krakowski does so perfectly and seemingly effortlessly? And finally there is the sheer oddity of the thing. From the premise – 30-year-old woman emerges into the world after 15 years held in a bunker by her kidnapper the Rev Richard Wayne Gary Wayne – to the collection of eclectic characters. But it does, harnessing a series of idiosyncrasies to a singular, ridiculous vision and going all in on it. Utter mastery. Utter joy. Lucy Mangan

Ice-T and Mariska Hargitay in Law & Order: SUV. Photograph: Startraks Photo/REX/Shutterstock

Law and Order: SVU

You know you have watched a lot of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit when you can recite the opening narration (“In the criminal justice system, sexually based offences are considered especially heinous …”) with the same ease as an NYPD cop reading a perp his rights. And there is a lot of SVU to watch. There have been 21 seasons and nearly 500 episodes since 1999, when Law & Order franchise supremo Dick Wolf first debuted this particularly moreish combo of police procedural and courtroom drama. The choicest rewatch cuts, however, are found between season two – when Munch (Homicide: Life on the Street transfer, Richard Belzer) was partnered with Tutuola (Ice-T) – and the season 12 departure of the lead detective, Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni).

Dogged devotion to TV formula is what Law & Order does best, but those “ripped from the headlines” plots also keep things fresh over repeated viewings, while squad room chats on issues such as consent and gender identity provide fascinating snapshots of changing social attitudes. Like the man says, these offences are “especially heinous”, but there is something both cathartic and comforting about watching Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and her team put away all manner of unsavoury individuals.

The abundance of available reruns also makes it enjoyably easy to forget which you have seen and which you have not. Do I instinctively know that the friendly-seeming schoolteacher is lying about his whereabouts because I half-remember how this one ends? Or has Law & Order: SVU transformed me into a damn fine detective at last? Ellen E Jones

Spaced cadets … Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Jessica Stevenson and Mark Heap. Photograph: E4

Spaced

If you really put your mind to it, you can get through Spaced in a single day, horsing through its two short seasons on DVD or All 4 in under seven hours. (“Skip to the end!” as Simon Pegg’s rudderless skater-boi Tim might put it.) At various times in the two decades since it debuted, that is exactly what I have done, hunkering down with Jaffa Cakes and other indulgent supplies for a concentrated blast of heightened daftness. Each time, it still manages to feel fresh.

Has any other sitcom arrived so fully formed from the outset? With their slacker tale of slapdash flat-sharing – a relatable milieu of sloppy hoodies, Rizlas and PlayStation – writers and stars Jessica Hynes (then Stevenson) and Pegg produced writing as deft and dense as The Simpsons. Their cleverly nested verbal gags and unparalleled physical mugging were further enhanced by the director Edgar Wright’s lickety-split aesthetic: a reaction shot unexpectedly framed through a girl power V-sign still triggers a giggling fit.

And even after you have parsed the cascade of pop-culture references, catalogued each cameo by future Britcom luminaries and fully internalised the David Holmes/Coldcut/Prefab Sprout soundtrack, what you are left with is the sheer pleasure of hanging out with characters who feel like real people, with all the shared in-jokes and tolerated failings that signal true friendship. It used to be a nostalgic portal back to my time-wasting 20s. Now Spaced’s chaotic tale of found-family solidarity offers genuine solace. Graeme Virtue

James Marsters and Sarah Michelle Gellar in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

For someone who watches a lot of television (back off, it’s my job), I find it hard to rewatch many shows. There is so much that is new and worthy of our attention that going back to old, familiar ground often feels like a waste of time. There are a couple of exceptions, however, the greatest of which is Buffy, which has taken on a therapeutic role in my life.

Many, many years ago, after a breakup, I measured the duration of my sadness by how long it took me to rewatch all seven seasons in their entirety. By the time Buffy was over, so was the heartbreak. Now, I dip in and out of my favourite episodes, but some – Hush, The Wish, The Body, Once More With Feeling, Who Are You? and Restless, to be precise – are frequently revisited. The sound of the theme music alone is the equivalent of a hot bath in mood lighting.

There is something particularly soothing about its ultimate moral simplicity. People are flawed (and flayed), they make mistakes, and they learn how to be better. Buffy is the Chosen One, and she has to face her toughest challenges alone, but the biggest, most world-threatening villains require collective action. They need a whole graduation class’s worth of students to destroy a big snakey mayor, the support of one’s friends to combat a secret military base filled with monsters, a whole army of new slayers to battle the First. Now, more than ever, that feels like a message to take comfort from, from the comfort of indoors. Rebecca Nicholson

‘The thought of rewatching fills me with dread’

Rewatching TV shows, especially at a time of massive global crisis, sounds like a genuinely lovely idea that will doubtless bring a warm feeling of comfort and joy to many people’s lives. Except, I won’t be one of them. The thought of a repeat viewing with shows I love and which have serious rewatch potential – Arrested Development or The Office – fills me with dread. That is even true of rewatching a casual, noncommittal episode (something I only ever allow myself to do “for work”).

But outside of that: absolutely not. Never. Ever. The feeling of shame, of drowning in 10,000 other, newer shows begins to set in within milliseconds. “Why haven’t you finished Cheer yet?” my brain says. What about Schitt’s Creek? Sure, you don’t know anyone who actually watches it and you have no idea what it’s about, but people are always talking about it on Twitter aren’t they? What about the new series of This Country, or Shrill, or literally anything else that you’ve not already seen? And that’s before you even get to the classics. What about Breaking Bad, that show you watched one series of and never thought about ever again? Maybe now’s the time to get really, really into that like everyone else did 10 years ago. Or Game of Thrones: that was a bit of a big deal, maybe you ought to finish that one?

The whole thing is just another source of anxiety, to be honest, which is a shame because I would love to watch The Office Christmas specials guilt-free. Just once, ideally this summer, while all my other plans are off. Hannah J Davies