Binge Your Way Through 99 Days of Summer

Is there any time better than summertime? Summer is vacations. It’s rooftop cocktails and backyard parties. Also, you can swim and grill things. It’s pretty great.

Except, of course, when it’s not. Depending on where you live, there’s a chance you’ll get to do few or none of those things this summer because of the pandemic shutdown. Luckily, there’s TV. But what if you’ve already watched “Tiger King” and “The Last Dance”?

Maybe now is when you tackle that big show you never made time for in summers past — you know, because you were too busy having fun.

Unofficially, 99 days of summer lie ahead, counting from June 1 through Labor Day. That’s already two nines, so we decided to make it a trend by finding nine great series for you to binge this summer at roughly one episode per night. I’m feeling inspired to rewatch one of my favorite series, “Mad Men.” My boss, Jeremy Egner, seems very excited about “The A-Team.” We seem to be in different moods.

You might be in a different mood from both of us — or maybe just “in a mood,” as we say. Chances are the coronavirus has you feeling some kind of way, so we’ve organized the options below with an eye to what you may be experiencing or missing. (Streaming information was current as of late May and includes only subscription services; most titles are available to rent or buy on other digital platforms.)

Sure, TV is no substitute for a beach or an outdoor concert. But it’s been here for you so far, and it won’t abandon you now.

Think of the most influential television shows of the modern era — adult-grade writing, flawed heroes, meta-narratives — and the usual suspects come to mind. “Hill Street Blues.” “Twin Peaks.” “The Sopranos.” All strong contenders, all dramas.

But no such list would be complete without “The Larry Sanders Show,” a comedy that aired for six seasons on HBO, beginning in 1992.

“Sanders” helped set the stage for the network’s later age-defining series like “The Sopranos,” “The Wire” and “Sex and the City.” But more important, it helped establish many of the characteristics and motifs we think of most when we consider the best TV today.

Its central character, Larry, is a loosely fictionalized version of the deeply flawed but lovable man who plays him, Garry Shandling, making it the forebear of many an auto-fiction comedy (“Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Louie,” “Fleabag,” “Better Things”). He hosts a late-night talk show, a show-within-a-show concept that prefigures series like “30 Rock” and “The Comeback” but also TV mockumentaries like “The Office,” which take the audience inside a fictitious production. Along the way, it drew A-list comedians and actors to play lightly fictionalized — and even self-parodying — versions of themselves. It was, as our chief TV critic, James Poniewozik, wrote, “one of those sitcoms that you’ve seen even if you never watched it,” creating “the visual vocabulary (fly-on-the-wall naturalism) and voice (scathing) for a generation of comedy. What are Armando Iannucci’s ‘The Thick of It’ and ‘Veep’ but the ‘Sanders’-ization of politics?”

Want more reminders that humans can be overrated? “Curb Your Enthusiasm” (100 episodes) and “Arrested Development” (91 episodes) deliver lots more cringe-inducing humor and hilariously terrible people.

Probably all you need to know about “The A-Team” is the title of the pilot: “Mexican Slayride.”

The show, which debuted in 1983 on NBC, was a dopey mayhem machine with a bitchin’ van, because no 1980s action series was complete without a sweet ride. (See also “Knight Rider,” “Magnum P.I.” and “The Dukes of Hazzard,” with its deeply problematic Gen. Lee.)

But who are we kidding? The show is notable mainly for turning Mr. T, a mohawked and blinged-out former bouncer, into a phenomenon, with a cultural footprint that included a cartoon, motivational videos and his own breakfast cereal. As B.A. Baracus, Mr. T was the A-Team’s muscle and drove the van, while the crew was rounded out by Dirk Benedict as Faceman, the handsome one, and Dwight Schultz as Murdock, the crazy one.

With its disguises, explosions and consequence-free violence, “The A-Team” is the TV equivalent of Doritos: salty and addictive, with little nutritional value. Wrongs will be righted. Plans will come together. Fools will be pitied. But if you’re weary of total societal disruption and want to spend your summer seeing things work out for a change, you could do worse. Want more vintage capers? Try “Charlie’s Angels” (115 episodes) for a different kind of elite team, although the truly elite lineup of Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and Farrah Fawcett lasted only one season. “Starsky & Hutch” (92 episodes) and its Gran Torino pioneered the action + attitude + awesome car formula.

Note: All of these series show their age in various socially benighted ways, so consider yourself warned.

Bernie Mac, who died in 2008 at 50, was an explosively hilarious comic whose act generally veered deeply into blue territory. So it was a surprise when his sitcom, which debuted on Fox in 2001, found him portraying a father figure taking care of his troubled sister’s three children.

But it worked, thanks to Bernie Mac’s gift for expressing the kind of flabbergasted exasperation most parents know well, especially during these days of quarantine cabin fever and remote schooling. “America,” he frequently said, addressing the camera, “I’m going to kill one of them kids.”

He spent much of most episodes breaking the fourth wall, a format that played to his strengths as a veteran standup. He starred as a version of himself, and his celebrity resulted in an array of fun cameos over the years, including comics (Chris Rock, Don Rickles); entertainers (Ice Cube, Isaac Hayes, Penn & Teller); athletes (Shaquille O’Neal, Sugar Ray Leonard); and others best filed under “random famous people” (Hugh Hefner, Dr. Phil).

But for all the bluster, kindness and joy were at the core of “The Bernie Mac Show.” The child actors gave endearing performances (the kids make or break family sitcoms), especially Jeremy Suarez as the nerdy Jordan. Inevitably all the lamentations to “America” would take on a softer tenor as the cranky comic’s gruff facade crumbled to reveal his inner family man. Want more mashups of sharp edges and nonsaccharine sweetness? “Jane the Virgin” (100 episodes) used the plot devices and wild emotion of telenovelas to tell one of TV’s most charming stories of self-determination and familial love.

Depending on your taste — and perhaps your geography and social circle — the advent of short-shorts season was maybe something you were looking forward to. Fair enough: It’s been a long couple of months. But for Lt. Jim Dangle (Thomas Lennon) of the Reno Sheriff’s Department, short shorts are appropriate year-round. No matter that he’s on duty. And no matter that they seem a bit ... constricting.

Absurd? Most assuredly. But “Reno 911” is a ridiculous show for ridiculous times, and Dangle’s shorts pair nicely with the other apparent necessities of “Reno”-style law enforcement, which include aviator sunglasses, handlebar mustaches, excessive firearm use and a lot of doughnuts. And drugs. And inappropriate sex.

A mockumentary style spoof of police reality series like “Cops,” “Reno 911” doesn’t require much attention, which makes it a perfect summer binge; episodes are more like strings of short, off-color vignettes than concrete stories. Fans of the cult ’90s sketch comedy series “The State” and “Viva Variety” will recognize much of the cast, including Lennon’s co-creators, Robert Ben Garant and Kerri Kenney-Silver. Others in the ensemble include great comic actors like Niecy Nash, Cedric Yarbrough and Wendi McLendon-Covey. And cameos abound, turning each episode into a game of Spot Your Favorite Comedian. Want more badly behaved essential workers? Try “Childrens Hospital” (86 episodes) for more demented riffs on a different hoary genre.

Horrified? Probably — just pick a reason. But at least some forms of horror have clear beginnings and ends.

When Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, creators of the flamboyant teen musical dramedy “Glee,” first debuted their horror series, reviews were mixed (“the Gleeks should feel perfectly at home,” the Times’ Mike Hale noted, before warning of “a certain hollow theatricality”). But there was one bit of consensus: This show was exuberantly over the top in a way that fixed it within a long tradition of ultragory horror-camp — the stylish Italian art-house horror of Dario Argento is an obvious influence — and left a certain type of viewer appalled and another, well, gleeful.

“AHS” is a seasonal anthology series, which means that each of its nine seasons (and counting) tells a different story, often playing with some distinct subgenre of horror. Season 1 is about a haunted house; Season 8 involves a nuclear apocalypse. The most recent season, titled “1984,” went all-in on the conventions of ’80s slasher movies like the “Friday the 13th” and “Sleepaway Camp” franchises. Many of the cast members stay on from one season to the next or drop out and then reappear — notably, Jessica Lange, Dylan McDermott, Denis O’Hare, Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters and Emma Roberts. As Hale noted, “The cast alone makes the show worth checking out,” and part of the fun is watching the actors take on different roles over time.

We can’t guarantee, however, that bingeing 103 hours of this much blood and guts won’t do some kind of permanent damage. But you’re immune to that by now, right?

Want more pulp and gore? “True Blood” (80 episodes) delivers carnage and sexy vampires.

Think Vic Mackey would wear a mask and maintain social distance? Definitely not, but not out of any sense that his personal liberties were being infringed.

As one of the most corrupt cops in the history of television, Vic Mackey did only what was good for Vic Mackey, wetting his beak all over Los Angeles and brutalizing (or arresting, or both) whoever got in his way. A pandemic-era Mackey would have hijacked a mask shipment and bloodied anyone who refused to buy them at a steep markup.

Created by Shawn Ryan, “The Shield,” which premiered in 2002, reinvented the gritty cop show for the prestige TV era and helped establish FX as basic cable’s answer to HBO. The supporting cast is uniformly great, especially Walton Goggins as Mackey’s sidekick and CCH Pounder as one of the few honest cops in the precinct.

But the reason to watch is Michael Chiklis, who played Mackey as a volatile but cagey pit bull, quick to violence but also two steps ahead of everyone else. He was frequently appalling but almost impossible to root against, entertaining us with his shenanigans while making us ponder why we’re so susceptible to vulgar bullies who play by their own rules. Want more male angst and misanthropy? There is also, of course, the ur-antihero cable drama “The Sopranos” (86 episodes) as well as “Mad Men” (90 episodes), in which Don Draper (Jon Hamm) is to women, colleagues and American consumers what Mackey is to the people of LA.

“I think there’s something comforting about having somewhere you can go in your head,” says British spy Helen Flynn (Lisa Faulkner) in the pilot episode of “MI-5” (also known in Britain as “Spooks”), thus echoing the sentiments of everyone who is stuck at home with other people right now. (Of course you love them. That’s not the point.)

Among a group of spy shows that emerged after 9/11 (“24,” “Sleeper Cell” and later “Homeland”), “MI-5” stands out as distinctly less focused on Islamic terrorism than most — and distinctly less inclined toward Islamophobia than some. Debuting in 2002, the series began with a terrorist bombing by anti-abortion activists led by an American religious extremist. Episode 2 is about white supremacists and politicians fond of pushing a racist “both sides-ism” agenda — a reminder (and a statement, perhaps) that terror has many faces. The changes wrought by the global War on Terror are ever-present. The show’s focus on homegrown terrorism is in part a function of the role of MI-5, which is confined to domestic counterintelligence, but 9/11 is the backdrop against which the agency operates, and the show nicely captures its fight for resources, its complicated relationship with the Yanks and the thorny politics of a multicultural society whose tensions are running high.

“MI-5” is an easier binge than some other shows of its ilk because it is strongly episodic: Although the main characters and their related subplots evolve over the series’s 10 seasons, each episode centers on a different terrorist threat, making it easy to dip in and out. The cast — which includes Matthew Macfadyen, David Oyelowo, Keeley Hawes and Richard Armitage — is excellent even when the writing is inconsistent, which rarely matters because it’s always thrilling.

Want more ways to indulge your paranoia? Try “Homeland” (96 episodes) for American spy games or “Alias” (105 episodes) and “Chuck” (90 episodes) for lighter spins on the genre.

— Considine

“Superstore” began as a silly-people-in-a-silly-place kind of sitcom, with America Ferrera and Ben Feldman overseeing a menagerie of goofballs working inside a cavernous Walmart analog. The store is called Cloud 9, an American paradise where you can buy bluejeans, a few frozen pizzas and a set of tires in one stop.

But it quickly jelled into a charming workplace comedy that actually felt more like America than most shows. The cast is one of the most diverse on TV, and the characters’ concerns feel real: teen pregnancy, immigration woes, jobs without benefits. In Season 2 the store, located in St. Louis, was destroyed by a tornado. In a later season a character is arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That the show manages to introduce such crises but still brings the laughs without minimizing them is a minor miracle. But it pulls it off most weeks. The goofballs are more than mere bundles of quirks — especially Nico Santos, as a snide but likable sales associate; and Lauren Ash, as an assistant manager too in love with the job who manages to out-aggro even Dwight Schrute, the patron saint of such characters.

The fifth season of “Superstore” was cut short by the pandemic, and Season 6 will begin with the departure of Ferrera, so now is a great time to catch up.

Want more workplace shenanigans? One of the best TV comedies of the ’90s, “NewsRadio” (97 episodes), had one of the greatest sitcom casts ever assembled, including Maura Tierney, Dave Foley, Andy Dick, Stephen Root and Phil Hartman (RIP). Few would have predicted that Joe Rogan would have the most lucrative career of them all, but here we are.

— Egner

“Orange Is the New Black” was based on the memoir by Piper Kerman about her stint in federal prison for money laundering. But in the series Piper (Taylor Schilling) was a Trojan horse, as creator Jenji Kohan described it, used to introduce a phalanx of remarkable women trying their best when they weren’t succumbing to their own worst tendencies.

“Orange,” which premiered in 2013, was the first great Netflix series. (“House of Cards” went off the rails quickly, and for any “Lilyhammer” die-hards out there ... jeg beklager.) It packs an enormous amount of plot and character development into seven seasons as the inmates clash, rebel, give birth, die, escape, reunite and otherwise try to get by inside Litchfield, the show’s penitentiary. Along the way “Orange” fulfilled its stated goal of getting underrepresented faces and stories on television, not coincidentally introducing many terrific actors in the process, including Laverne Cox, Uzo Aduba, Danielle Brooks, Ruby Rose and Asia Kate Dillon.

The show’s structure relies heavily on flashbacks that fill in the stories of its various characters, a device that both deepens the world of the show and pointedly restores humanity to its prisoners. It kept up its critique of the corrections industrial complex throughout its run. Management corruption, guard brutality, racial discrimination, overcrowding — all made it into the story at some point. A private corporation eventually buys Litchfield, and the company’s callous oversight results in a seasonlong revolt. Later, an ICE detention center figures into the action.

But the heart of the show was always the story of the women, their struggles and victories, rivalries and redeeming bonds. “Orange” could be the funniest, harshest and most heartbreaking show on TV, sometimes all within the same episode. (It was sometimes more heartbreaking than it should be; some fans will never forgive the show for killing off [spoiler redacted].) Other shows have created larger worlds, but none have been more immersive or empathetic. Want more drama behind bars? For more of a lockup thrill-ride, try “Prison Break” (90 episodes), which got more mileage out of its premise than anyone would have predicted, thanks to layered performances by Wentworth Miller, Dominic Purcell and Sarah Wayne Callies.