Cineciccia Picks: Series that will pull you out of a slump
To find out why comfort watching works and what the studies say about it, read the main article.
It is a mixed bunch in terms of genre, but the same principle applies as with the films. The characters are always dealing with something and they always manage in the end, whether with help from others, by changing how they look at things, or by realising that chasing some idea was keeping them from seeing what was right in front of them. The advantage of feel good series is that in most of them a problem comes up and gets solved within a single episode. Twenty minutes and it is over, you can stop whenever you like and you will not miss a thing. That is exactly what makes them ideal company for an evening when you have no energy for anything bigger.
The list is updated on an ongoing basis. Last updated: 16 September 2026
"You know what the happiest animal on Earth is? It's a goldfish. You know why? It's got a 10-second memory. Be a goldfish." Ted Lasso
Availability on streaming services changes. For older titles we therefore link to an overview of current availability on the Czech market.
30 Rock | 2006–2013
comedy 😆
Head writer Liz Lemon is in charge of a live comedy show and an unmanageable leading lady. What complicates her life most, though, is the new head of programming, a corporate shark with unexpected paternal tendencies. Fast, dense humour with the highest gag rate in American television.
Creator: Tina Fey. Cast: Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan, Jane Krakowski, Jack McBrayer.
Why it works: Such a barrage of jokes that there is no room left for your own thoughts. 30 Rock works as a very particular feel good title thanks to its uncompromisingly fast, absurd and satirical humour, which cynically parodies the television business while at its core offering a warm story of deep friendship and loyalty between neurotic writer Liz Lemon and her eccentric mentor Jack Donaghy, who hold this madcap family together alongside a troupe of eccentric performers.
WHERE TO WATCH: ▶ current availability
Frasier | 1993–2003
comedy 😆
Eccentric Boston psychiatrist Frasier Crane moves to Seattle to start a new life and dispenses advice to the listeners of his own radio talk show. In his private life he is far less capable, especially once his father moves in with an armchair that matches nothing in the apartment. A sitcom built on language, irony and the rivalry between two intellectual snobs.
Creators: David Angell, Peter Casey, David Lee. Cast: Kelsey Grammer, David Hyde Pierce, John Mahoney, Jane Leeves, Peri Gilpin.
Why it works: It is a perfect feel good title because it combines sophisticated intellectual wit with warm family relationships, where even the most chaotic and embarrassing situations are always resolved through the deep affection and tolerance the eccentric characters have for one another.
WHERE TO WATCH: ▶ current availability
Friends | 1994–2004
comedy | romance 😆❤️
Six friends in New York make their way through early adulthood with all its absurdities, from impossible flatmates to jobs that lead nowhere. Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Joey, Chandler and Ross discover that the pursuit of happiness raises far more questions than answers. The series that defined the shape of the sitcom for the next twenty years.
Creators: David Crane, Marta Kauffman. Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, David Schwimmer.
Why it works: This is the safest company television has to offer. Friends is the ultimate feel good phenomenon because it creates a safe, idealised world of twentysomethings in New York where the leads are closer than family, and its infectious humour and unbreakable bonds leave the viewer with the warm certainty that they will never face life's disasters alone.
WHERE TO WATCH: ▶ current availability
Ghosts (British original) | 2019–2023
comedy | fantasy 😆🐉
A young couple with no money inherit a grand country house, only to find it falling apart and full of the ghosts of its former residents. Over the centuries the ghosts have learned to get along, but they cannot leave, so their main concern is who gets to control the television today. A British comedy from the team behind Horrible Histories.
Creators: Mathew Baynton, Simon Farnaby, Martha Howe-Douglas, Jim Howick, Laurence Rickard, Ben Willbond. Cast: Charlotte Ritchie, Kiell Smith-Bynoe, Lolly Adefope.
Why it works: Kindness as the central theme, with even the dead treating each other decently in the end. The series turns the spooky subject of death into a warm and hilarious celebration of humanity, where a mismatched group of ghosts from different historical eras and a young married couple end up forming an odd, loving and fiercely loyal family.
WHERE TO WATCH: ▶ current availability
Ghosts (US version) | 2021–2027
comedy | fantasy 😆🐉
The American remake of the British original. Married couple Sam and Jay inherit a crumbling country mansion and want to turn it into a guest house, not realising that the place is home to ghosts from several centuries at once. When Sam gains the ability to see them after an accident, the strangest house share of her career begins.
Creators: Joe Port, Joe Wiseman. Cast: Rose McIver, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Brandon Scott Jones, Danielle Pinnock, Richie Moriarty.
Why it works: The CBS version works beautifully as a feel good title thanks to its brisk pace, light sitcom tone and the unrelenting optimism of the central couple, who manage to turn a chaotic cohabitation with a band of oddball ghosts into a safe, warm and enormously entertaining home despite their financial and supernatural troubles.
WHERE TO WATCH: ▶ current availability
Modern Family | 2009–2020
comedy | romance 😆❤️
Three families that together make up the Pritchett clan. At its head is sixty-something Jay with his much younger wife and stepson, alongside his daughter with three children and his son, who has just adopted a child with his partner. Shot as a mockumentary, the series follows what family looks like at the start of the 21st century.
Creators: Christopher Lloyd, Steven Levitan. Cast: Ed O'Neill, Sofía Vergara, Julie Bowen, Ty Burrell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Eric Stonestreet.
Why it works: Modern Family is wonderful feel good viewing because, through the funny and chaotic situations of three different branches of one clan, it shows that despite differing generations, lifestyles and constant misunderstandings the family bond is unshakeable and always full of unconditional love, tolerance and mutual support.
WHERE TO WATCH: ▶ current availability
My Family | 2000–2011
comedy 😆
Dentist Ben Harper takes a mildly cynical and laid-back view of the world, while his wife Susan needs to have everything under control. Together they are raising three children, each impossible in a different way. A classic British sitcom that puts on no airs and builds on entirely ordinary everyday situations.
Creator: Fred Barron. Cast: Robert Lindsay, Zoë Wanamaker, Kris Marshall, Daniela Denby-Ashe, Gabriel Thomson.
Why it works: A pace that is in no hurry and family chaos that always stays within safe limits. My Family works as a great feel good title because, with its trademark dry humour and irony, it shows that despite the constant arguments, sarcastic needling and total chaos the Harpers stay firmly together, leaving the viewer with the reassuring sense that no family is perfect. Ben also has an endless supply of excellent one-liners.
WHERE TO WATCH: ▶ current availability
New Girl | 2011–2018
comedy 😆
New Girl brings a young cast and a fresh take on friendship. After a painful break-up, Jess Day (Zooey Deschanel) needs somewhere new to live. An online search leads her to a great loft apartment and to three single men she has never met before. Nick (Jake Johnson), a law graduate turned bartender, is the most down to earth and the most stubborn. Schmidt (Max Greenfield) is a lavish young professional rather proud of his abs. Winston (Lamorne Morris) is a fiercely competitive former athlete with no idea what to do next. The group is completed by Jess's childhood best friend Cece (Hannah Simone), a model with a killer deadpan. The five of them come to realise they need each other more than they thought and end up forming a charmingly dysfunctional, or oddly functional, family.
Creator: Elizabeth Meriwether. Cast: Zooey Deschanel, Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield, Hannah Simone, Lamorne Morris, Damon Wayans Jr., Gillian Vigman, Justin Long, Lake Bell, Rachael Harris.
Why it works: New Girl settles the viewer into an unusually warm loft full of eccentric but deeply human flatmates, whose endless silly rituals, romantic sparks and unconditional support create a safe harbour where even the biggest upheavals and failures of your twenties and thirties feel bearable and rather endearing.
WHERE TO WATCH: ▶ current availability
Parks and Recreation | 2009–2015
comedy 😆
Leslie Knope works at the parks department in the backwater town of Pawnee, Indiana, and wants to turn an ordinary pit in the ground into a park for the locals. The fact that nobody wants it and that the town hall works the way it does does not put her off for a second. A comedy about people who take their unimportant jobs entirely seriously.
Creators: Greg Daniels, Michael Schur. Cast: Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman, Rashida Jones, Aziz Ansari, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Pratt, Adam Scott, Rob Lowe.
Why it works: Parks and Recreation is a first-rate feel good title thanks to its indomitable optimism and warm faith in human decency, as an initially cynical small-town council staff led by the infectiously enthusiastic Leslie Knope turns into a deeply loyal family of friends who make the world a better place together.
WHERE TO WATCH: ▶ current availability
Schitt's Creek | 2015–2020
comedy 😆
The nouveau riche Rose family lose everything overnight. All they have left is a backwater town Johnny once bought for the children as a joke, and a room in the local motel. Four people who have gone through life with staff at their disposal learn to live among ordinary people and gradually discover that they never really knew each other.
Creators: Dan Levy, Eugene Levy. Cast: Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Dan Levy, Annie Murphy, Chris Elliott.
Why it works: Humour without mockery, the series laughs at its characters but never humiliates them. Schitt's Creek is an exceptional feel good title because it takes the viewer on an incredibly warm journey of transformation, as an initially shallow and suddenly impoverished family finally discovers real human values, love and itself in a backwater town full of quirky yet remarkably tolerant and accepting people.
WHERE TO WATCH: ▶ current availability
Ted Lasso | 2020–2026
comedy | drama | sport 😆🎭🏆
American football coach Ted Lasso is offered the job of managing an English football club. He knows nothing whatsoever about European football, the players are cynical and the city is hostile, but he deploys the only weapon he has, which is relentless decency. A series about kindness being a choice rather than naivety.
Creators: Jason Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly. Cast: Jason Sudeikis, Hannah Waddingham, Brett Goldstein, Juno Temple, Brendan Hunt, Nick Mohammed.
Why it works: Kindness as the central theme, extended even to people who by every rule do not deserve it. Ted Lasso is the absolute peak of modern feel good television, because through an infectiously optimistic American coach it transforms the cynical world of British football into a warm celebration of kindness, empathy and resilience, where the greatest victory is not a trophy but personal growth and human understanding.
WHERE TO WATCH: Apple TV+ (original)
The Big Bang Theory | 2007–2019
comedy | romance 😆❤️
Physicists Leonard and Sheldon understand black holes and the structure of the atom, but the moment those atoms form a woman they are both completely lost. When waitress Penny moves in next door, their carefully ordered world starts expanding in ways they never imagined. Twelve seasons over which a group of hopeless outsiders grows up.
Creators: Chuck Lorre, Bill Prady. Cast: Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar, Melissa Rauch, Mayim Bialik.
Why it works: A fixed ritual, with the characters sitting in the same flat in the same seats, and that does not change in twelve years. The Big Bang Theory works as an iconic feel good title because it turns the world of socially awkward scientists and pop-culture geeks into a warm and safe refuge, where even the greatest eccentricities and communication barriers are always overcome by genuine friendship, love and the feeling that everyone can find a group of people they fit into perfectly.
WHERE TO WATCH: ▶ current availability
The Golden Girls | 1985–1992
comedy 😆
Four single women of middle age and older share a house in Miami Beach. Divorced teacher Dorothy with her sardonic humour, southern belle Blanche, kind-hearted and slightly otherworldly Rose, and Dorothy's mother Sophia, who says everything out loud. One of the first sitcoms to put four women over sixty in the leading roles and turn them into stars.
Creator: Susan Harris. Cast: Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, Estelle Getty.
Why it works: The Golden Girls is a timeless feel good gem because, with sharp humour and an enormous heart, it shows that the autumn of life need not be lonely but can be full of energy, friendship and freedom, as four eccentric women in one Miami house prove that the best family is the one we choose for ourselves.
WHERE TO WATCH: ▶ current availability
Two and a Half Men | 2003–2015
comedy | romance 😆❤️
Charlie is a wealthy bachelor with a beach house in Malibu who has never had the slightest trouble getting a date. His comfortable life ends the moment his brother Alan moves in mid-divorce, along with his eight-year-old son Jake. Three generations of men under one roof, not one of them entirely in control of his own life.
Creators: Chuck Lorre, Lee Aronsohn. Cast: Charlie Sheen, Jon Cryer, Angus T. Jones, Ashton Kutcher, Holland Taylor.
Why it works: Light humour, likeably flawed characters and the reassuring knowledge that no matter what chaos breaks out in the characters' lives, everything eventually settles back into the same carefree, easy-going groove.
WHERE TO WATCH: ▶ current availability
Young Sheldon | 2017–2024
comedy 😆
Nine-year-old genius Sheldon Cooper grows up in East Texas, where religion and football rule and he is good at neither. While he tries to make sense of the world, his entirely ordinary family tries to make sense of him. A prequel to The Big Bang Theory that is far more a family drama with humour than a sitcom about science.
Creators: Chuck Lorre, Steven Molaro. Cast: Iain Armitage, Zoe Perry, Lance Barber, Montana Jordan, Raegan Revord, Annie Potts.
Why it works: A family that loves each other despite not understanding each other, and it never slides into cynicism. Young Sheldon is perfect feel good viewing because it offers a nostalgic glimpse of small-town Texas in the eighties and nineties, where unconditional love, self-sacrifice and the warm solidarity of the whole Cooper family take centre stage despite the eccentric behaviour of a gifted boy.
WHERE TO WATCH: ▶ current availability