Ask Lemmy

The Good Place

Old episodes of MST3K. I don't know what it is, but it's really relaxing to watch. Puts me right to sleep if I watch it at night :)

I'm not saying this as criticism though, I love the show. It's just that combination of old movies with bad sound and the fact that I don't get a lot of the outdated jokes puts me in a very relaxed mood.

How It's Made

Vice Grip Garage (YouTube)

James May The Reassembler (YouTube)

The detectorists, very gentle comedy but not in a shit way.

Britbox has a category called Cozy Mysteries. They’re all formulaic and easy watching.

Death in Paradise
Beyond Paradise
Murder in Suburbia
Father Brown
Sister Boniface
Agatha Christie’s Marple
The Mallorca Files

Puffin Rock

A kids show about puffins and other animals on a small island.

"Nailed it!" is my goto chill show, all the contestants are failing miserably at making fancy cakes but they're also not taking it too seriously and Nicole Byers keeps up a positive and encouraging attitude even when she's making cracks about the cakes.

I always liked No Reservations when I wanted to zone out. Anthony Bordain not being here anymore bums me out though.

Edit: Community , Shaun the sheep, and Good Eats

Relaxing Footage with Joe Pera

Joe Pera Talks You to Sleep

There was another one I forgot the name of on Adult Swim that was just like videos of rivers/streams, fireplaces, and other relaxing elements put to a lo-fi girl style soundtrack. Look Around You? Or something like that. When they started that one, I used to fall asleep to it nightly.

Edit: Not Look Around You; that was the BBC science show parody. Also good, but not the relaxing thing I am thinking of.

I don’t know if it’s “weirdly” relaxing given how chill it’s supposed to be, but Joe Pera Talks With You is perfect.

Mortimer and Winehouse gone fishing.

Want a seat next to two comedy legends as they enter their chill years and ponder things while fishing? Look no further

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b0b7r2k6/mortimer-whitehouse-gone-fishing

When I was having long term medical problems Shark Tank helped me survive. Every episode is exactly the same and nothing really bad happens.

Here's a list:

• Shark Tank (didn't want to leave it out)
• Taskmaster which has full episodes on YouTube
• Pawn Stars (uncountable numbers of episodes)
• Forged In Fire
• Lego Masters

Not sure if anime fits your bill here but Mushi-shi is incredibly relaxing and even though i don't really watch anime anymore it still jumps out to me when i think of chill/mellow/relaxing. Traveler investigating forest spirits and whatnot, soft Japanese music score, taps hard into those nature vibes, more of a rainy day relaxing though not really happy-chill.

Jinny’s Kitchen, which is on Amazon right now. It has different titles depending on the cast member's name they want to use for the season. It’s basically a bunch of Korean actors/celebrities that are tasked to run a pop-up restaurant for a week. I like that there are no egos and they actually hunker down and do the work. No American tv show style drama. It’s a good show if you just want to watch something and not want to think or understand plotlines or dialogues.

Shrinking is pretty chill. Kind of reminds me a little bit of Ted Lasso in that people aren’t total pieces of shit and try to learn from their fuck ups. Also, Harrison Ford.

Maybe a little out of left field, but the animated show Star Trek: Lower Decks. I'm not much of a Trekkie at all, but Lower Decks is funny, endearing, and even though each season has an overarching plot, much of the episode plots are relatively self contained.

Highly recommend it.

The Mentalist. Weird I know