Prestige TV Needs More Weirdos and Fewer Sad Men Staring at Windows

This week’s entertainment landscape feels like a buffet where every dish is “prestige drama” and every entrée comes with a tiny side of grief. I’m begging television to stop treating a man silently looking at a lake as a plot. Give me jokes, monsters, bad decisions, and at least one person who owns a truly alarming coat.

Benny’s Picks

Severance — Apple TV+
Still the gold standard for making a fluorescent office feel more terrifying than a haunted house. Its genius is that the central gimmick isn’t just clever sci-fi; it turns the modern workplace into an existential prank played by people with excellent carpeting. Watch it for the mystery, stay for the office party that feels like it was planned by Satan’s most anxious intern.

The Rehearsal — Max
Nathan Fielder continues to make television that looks like a documentary until your brain quietly exits through the fire door. It is funny, creepy, oddly tender, and impossible to explain to someone who hasn’t seen it without sounding like you’re describing a cult. This is not comfort viewing, unless your idea of comfort is watching a grown man build a life-sized Applebee’s to prepare for a conversation.

Sorry to Bother You — streaming rental
If you missed Boots Riley’s gloriously unhinged satire, correct that immediately. It begins as a sharp comedy about telemarketing and ends somewhere that would make a corporate retreat facilitator faint into a decorative bowl. The movie’s politics have teeth, but it never forgets that the best way to destroy capitalism is occasionally to make it extremely, magnificently weird.

What We Do in the Shadows — Hulu
The vampire mockumentary is one of the rare shows that stayed funny because it understood its assignment: immortal idiots behaving badly. Laszlo, in particular, is what happens when a haunted mansion develops the personality of a man who has been banned from three country clubs. It’s silly, specific, and far more rewatchable than another prestige series about a billionaire’s childhood trauma.

Skip It

The latest “event” thriller everyone is calling addictive. You know the one: eight episodes, six trailers, three unexplained accents, and a finale that turns out to be a brochure for season two. Popular is not the same as compulsive. Sometimes you’re not hooked; you’re simply too annoyed to quit.

Sleeper Pick

Los Espookys — Max. This beautifully strange comedy about friends who stage fake supernatural events is too funny, too odd, and too good for the amount of attention it received. It has haunted hotels, amateur monsters, deadpan romance, and the general feeling that reality has been left unattended. In other words: television with a pulse.