The Office won’t be leaving Netflix until 2021, but it’s never too early to start bingewatching a new show to fill the sitcom-shaped hole in your life.
The time will soon come when you cannot listlessly scroll through Netflix looking for something to watch only to decide — an hour and many rejected series later — to rewatch The Office for the fourth or fifth time.
Well, you can still do that first thing, but you will no longer be able to use Michael Scott, Jim Halpert and the shenanigans of The Office as your reliable fallback plan.
Netflix announced last week that The Office will be leaving and heading on over to NBC’s own streaming service in 2021 (which left many like myself wondering what was even the point of cutting cable if I was going to have to start subscribing to a dozen different streaming services anyway).
It’s a tough blow for those who consider The Office to be their comfort show. Luckily, there are plenty of other great sitcoms still available on Netflix for you to binge that you may have overlooked in your journey to watch Jim prank Dwight for the hundredth time. Here are five of our favorites to help soothe the pain of losing The Office.
‘Kim’s Convenience’
Kim’s Convenience centers on the Kim family, which includes Mr. and Mrs. Kim (or Appa and Umma as they are referred to by their children), Korean immigrants who run a neighborhood convenience store in Toronto; Janet, their photography major daughter; and Jung, their estranged son who works at a car rental dealership. If The Office is a workplace comedy with shades of found family storylines, then Kim’s Convenience is a family sitcom with shades of being a workplace comedy. The thing they both have in common? They’re both laugh out loud funny with just the right amount of heart and cringe comedy (the latter often coming from the shenanigans of the well-meaning but often clueless Appa, played to perfection by Paul Sun-Hyung Lee). It’s a genuinely funny and often very touching story of family, love and acceptance, and one which provides one of the few three-dimensional, genuine and honest depictions of an Asian-American family on television.
‘Norsemen’
The Norwegian comedy Norsemen is like the strange lovechild of Vikings and The Office. It has all the tropes and characters of a workplace comedy, but with all the blood, gore and violence befitting its 8th century Viking setting. Those are two vastly different genres and shows, I know, and looking at it on paper, it doesn’t seem like it should work at all. Luckily, Jon Iver Helgaker and Jonas Torgersen, who write and direct all the episodes, do a fantastic job letting the mundane village concerns playout against the backdrop of Viking pillaging with wit, charm and a surprising amount of emotion. The actors, too, throw themselves into their roles with gusto, with Kåre Conradi playing Orm — Norsemen’s version of Michael Scott — being a real gem. There are two seasons on Netflix right now, with a third season already confirmed. If you find yourself missing Michael Scott and all his incompetence, I suggest you queue this one up right away.
‘Schitt’s Creek’
Schitt’s Creek, which heads into its sixth and final season in 2020, is a show that sneaks up on you. At first you think it’s just your run of the mill fish out of water story — a rich family suddenly going bankrupt and being forced to live among small town normal folks (I honestly was picturing something similar to A Simple Life) — one that will shoot small, aim low, go for crass). Schitt’s Creek is anything but. It’s absurdly funny in a way that never tries to be mean or cutting for its own sake, energetic and ridiculous in all the best ways, and also surprisingly evocative and sincere. Other than One Day at a Time (another sitcom you should absolutely check out), it’s the funniest show to also make me weep. It’s a family sitcom and workplace comedy in one, about ridiculous, imperfect people who grow — grow up, grow together and grow closer to one another — and provide you with a lot of great laughs along the way.
‘Crashing’
There’s only one six-episode season out of this U.K. show, but it earns its way onto this list by having a high level of rewatchability. It’s a show for anyone in their 20s desperately trying to figure out their life, as this show features a cast of characters doing the same, while also a way for you to feel better about your life. Because hey, unlike the individuals in Crashing, you probably aren’t legally squatting in a rundown old hospital. The show follows these six individuals who are all living together and trying — mostly succeeding, sometimes failing — to live together while they sort out their own individual shit. Part Friends, part New Girl but with more a droll, British twist, Crashing is the perfect show for those of you into the genre of roommate comedies. And hey, if you just binged Fleabag and are missing Phoebe Waller-Bridge, this is the perfect show for you — she not only stars in it, but she wrote and created it, too!
‘Space Force’
There isn’t much that we know about Space Force, but what we do know is basically enough to get us excited. It’s a workplace comedy co-created by Greg Daniels — of The Office fame. His fellow co-creator? None other than Michael Scott himself, Steve Carrell, who is also set to star in the show. Nevermind the fact that it’s based on a buffoon’s already clownish idea for a sixth branch of the armed forces, those two alone are enough for us to want to tune in.
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