The Entertaining House

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30 TV shows from the 80s and 90s you should start streaming now!

As I sit down to write this many of us are in our 5th week of sheltering in place, some in our sixth week. We are reaching for those things that comfort us, from food to music to movies and television to offer up moments of calm and distraction. If you are like me, you are constantly wondering what to stream because nothing seems appealing. (No Tigers here. And it seems that everything else that is seemingly well scripted, acted and intelligent I have already watched.) And reliving bits of my you by streaming some of my favorite television shows from the 80s and 90s does help.

My daughter has recently taken a liking to Friends. The same group of friends who entertained me when I was in my 20s. We started watching together. The topics are timeless. The humor (long before PC became a thing) is spot on. I find myself delighting in their antics, their quirkiness and their humorous ways of handling real life situations. I find myself, after all these years, still laughing out loud.

We have a long way to go before we make it to the last episode but I decided to see what else was available from my youth (teens and twenties) and surprisingly, many of my former favorites can be found and enjoyed once again thanks to streaming services like Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime. For those of you who could also use some happy distraction, I offer you 30 TV favorites from the 80s and 90s. In no particular order they are:

  1. Friends

  2. Seinfeld

  3. Dawson’s Creek

  4. Party of Five

  5. Will and Grace (the original series)

  6. Daria (the cartoon that originally aired on MTV)

  7. My So Called Life

  8. Ally McBeal

  9. Felicity

  10. Cheers

  11. The Golden Girls

  12. The Wonder Years

  13. Charles in Charge

  14. Family Ties

  15. Growing Pains

  16. Saved by the Bell

  17. Facts of Life

  18. Different Strokes

  19. Thirty Something

  20. Fame

  21. St. Elsewhere

  22. The Golden Girls

  23. Designing Women

  24. Doogie Howser

  25. Spencer For Hire

  26. Absolutely Fabulous

  27. Murphy Brown (the original series)

  28. Moonlighting

  29. Cybill

  30. Married with Children

I went looking for The Love Boat but I couldn’t find it anywhere! Please feel free to add to the list.