Jiminna Shillingford is an avid reader and a passionate storyteller. She is obsessed with all things TV, from anime and romantic fantasy to action-packed series. With that deep affection, Jiminna longs to share her excitement with all her readers through the Collider platform as a TV author. Through her writing she has created stories and blog posts of amazing book recommendations, showcasing her love of writing. Jiminna's goal is to inspire others to discover and embrace their love of stories in all of its forms.
There exist some television series that are genuinely good the first time around, but upon rewatching, they become slightly less entertaining. Then there are others — the more remarkable TV shows that move from good to great, becoming even better with each rewatch. These are the kinds of stories where layered character arcs, subtle foreshadowing, and skillfully crafted dialogue reward viewers who return to them later.
Even animated works of art like the action-packed Avatar: The Last Airbenderandthedark-humored BoJack Horseman can highlight just how layered writing, quality emotional depth, and carefully planted story arcs can grow clearer once viewers know and understand where the narrative is going. On this list are such stories — TV shows that become more and more impressive with every revisit, bringing to life tons of new insights and thrills.
1
'Dark' (2017–2020)
A young man wearing a yellow raincoat and standing on a vacant highway looking ahead in Dark.Image via Netflix
Netflix’sDark is a haunting science-fiction mystery that boasts a complex structure with carefully planted details that truly captivate audiences. Set in a German town, the show’s story begins with the disappearance of children, which soon exposes secrets linking multiple families across different time periods, with a rather supernatural twist.
Watching Dark for the very first time is an experience unlike any other, but rewatching the series reveals connections that were impossible to catch on the first time around. The show’s narrative is quite literally built on cyclical storytelling and clues, which only becomes more satisfying once revisited. Viewers have lauded the series as a rare gem where every revisit of the complex watch feels like a new experience. It’s a truly euphoric moment for fans rewatching Dark as they can finally track the full web of relationships and causal loops without getting lost.Dark may have a short runtime, but the series’ unusually scene-dense nature — where even transitional moments tend to carry timeline or relationship information — makes it a blast to revisit every time, especially knowing exactly what to look for.
2
'Fleabag' (2016–2019)
Phoebe Waller-Bridge smiling in a red dress outdoors in Fleabag.Image via Prime Video
This beloved drama has layers of emotion, stacked beneath the show’s fast-paced humor. The series Fleabag follows a woman only known as Fleabag (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) as she navigates sex, grief, and tension in London with an unfiltered inner monologue. From her relationship with her sister Claire (Sian Clifford) to an intense bond with “the Priest” (Andrew Scott), the series examines a woman’s loneliness, guilt, and her struggle to find connection.
Repeated watches of Fleabag expose just how skillfully crafted the emotional story is structured. On the surface, the series is simply a quick-witted comedy about a chaotic woman navigating modern life, but it proves to be so much more. With absolutely no filler or wasteful scenes, Fleabag has been dubbed as a near-perfect series that becomes richer and more emotionally significant each time it's revisited.
3
'BoJack Horseman' (2014–2020)
Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris) having dinner with BoJack Horseman (Will Arnett) in Season 1, Episode 1 of BoJack Horseman.Image via Netflix
BoJack Horseman is a brilliantly crafted Netflix animated series that wields dense storytelling and emotional complexity. The series, set in a world populated by humans and talking animals alike, focuses on the washed-up sitcom star and talking horse, BoJack Horseman (Will Arnett), as he tries to reclaim relevance while struggling with depression and addiction.
From its exploration of intense topics to dark humor, BoJack Horseman delivers one of the best stories not only in animation but also in the broader landscape of modern television. The show is extremely layered, and watching it even a second time exposes just how much. BoJack Horseman's mix of deeply personal storytelling and absurd comedy marks it as one of the best animated series to ever exist. With every rewatch of the fantastically dark-humored Netflix series, audiences are rewarded with new things to pick up time and time again. BoJack Horseman is one of those series that keeps on giving, making it the perfect addition to this list of shows that get better with every rewatch.
COLLIDER.
Collider · Quiz
Collider Exclusive · TV Medicine QuizWhich Fictional Hospital Would You Work Best In?The Pitt · ER · Grey's Anatomy · House · Scrubs
Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television — brutal, chaotic, romantic, brilliant, and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for. Ten questions will figure out exactly where you belong.
🚨The Pitt
🏥ER
💉Grey's Anatomy
🔬House
🩺Scrubs
QUESTION 1 / 10APPROACH
01
A critical patient comes through the door. What's your first instinct?Medicine under pressure reveals who you actually are.
QUESTION 2 / 10MOTIVATION
02
Why did you go into medicine in the first place?The honest answer says more about you than the one you'd give in an interview.
QUESTION 3 / 10COLLEAGUES
03
What do you actually want from the people you work with?Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are.
QUESTION 4 / 10PRESSURE
04
How do you actually perform under extreme pressure?The worst shifts reveal things about you that the good ones never will.
QUESTION 5 / 10LOSS
05
You lose a patient you fought hard to save. How do you carry it?Every doctor who's worked a long shift has had to answer this question.
QUESTION 6 / 10STYLE
06
How would your colleagues describe the way you work?Your reputation on the floor is usually more accurate than your self-image.
QUESTION 7 / 10RULES
07
How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure?Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice.
QUESTION 8 / 10SPECIALISM
08
What kind of medical work do you find most compelling?What draws your attention when you walk through those doors matters.
QUESTION 9 / 10TOLL
09
What does this job cost you personally?Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What's yours?
QUESTION 10 / 10PURPOSE
10
At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back?The answer to this question is the most honest thing about you.
Your Assignment Has Been MadeYou Belong In…
Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for.
PITTSBURGH TRAUMA MEDICAL CENTER
The Pitt
You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown. The Pitt doesn't romanticise the work — it puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn't let you look away. You are someone who needs their work to be real, who finds meaning not in the drama surrounding medicine but in medicine itself, and who has made peace with the fact that this job will take from you constantly and give back in ways that are harder to name. You don't need the chaos to be aestheticised. You need it to be honest. Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center is exactly that — and you would not want to be anywhere else.
COUNTY GENERAL HOSPITAL, CHICAGO
ER
You are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most essential. County General is built on the shoulders of people who show up, do the work, absorb the losses, and come back the next day without requiring the job to be anything other than what it is. You care deeply about patients as individual human beings, you believe in the system even when it fails you, and you understand that emergency medicine at its core is about holding the line between order and chaos for just long enough. ER is television about endurance, and you have it.
GREY SLOAN MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, SEATTLE
Grey's Anatomy
You came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door. Grey Sloan is a hospital where the personal and the professional are permanently, chaotically entangled, and where that entanglement produces both the greatest disasters and the most remarkable saves. You are someone who feels things fully, who forms deep attachments to the people you work with, and who understands that the most extraordinary medicine often happens at the intersection of clinical skill and profound human connection. It's messy here. You would not have it any other way.
PRINCETON-PLAINSBORO TEACHING HOSPITAL, NJ
House
You are drawn to the problem above everything else. Not the patient as a person — though you are capable of caring, even if you'd deny it — but the case as a puzzle, the symptom that doesn't fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one. Princeton-Plainsboro is a hospital that exists to house one extraordinary, impossible mind, and everyone around that mind is there because they are smart enough and stubborn enough to keep up. You work best when the stakes are highest, when the standard answer is wrong, and when the only way forward is to think harder than everyone else in the room. That is exactly what you would do here.
SACRED HEART HOSPITAL, CALIFORNIA
Scrubs
You understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure, and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time. Sacred Heart is a hospital where the laughter and the grief are genuinely inseparable — where a terrible joke can get you through a terrible moment, and where the most ridiculous people are also, on their best days, remarkably good doctors. You are warm, self-aware, and funnier than most people in your field. You lean on the people around you and you let them lean back. Scrubs is a show about learning to become someone worthy of the job — and you are still very much in the middle of that process, which is exactly right.
4
'Bridgerton' (2020–Present)
Simon and Daphne in 'Bridgerton' Season 1.Image via Netflix
Bridgerton is a phenomenal Netflix book-to-screen adaptation that offers a unique blend of modern storytelling and historical romance. Set in Regency-era London, the iconic romance centers on the romantic and social lives of the Bridgerton family, as well as other upper-crust families, as they navigate reputation, courtship, and scandal within high society.
From hidden emotional beats to subtle character dynamics, every rewatch of the sweeping romance reveals just how carefully the brilliant series is put together as it builds multiple relationships. Every revisit to Bridgerton is genuinely a good time. The series is a highly entertaining one, with just enough heat and angst to have audiences yearning for more. Even small glances, background reactions, and seemingly meaningless conversations often foreshadow major romantic developments not only within the present season but also those that come after. Each season of Bridgerton centers on a different sibling’s search for love, with deep gossip and thrilling unfolding drama, which keeps the series from being boring, no matter how many times fans watch.
5
'Breaking Bad' (2008–2013)
Walter White (Bryan Cranston) sitting in a van with a vest on in the pilot episode of 'Breaking Bad'.Image via AMC
This crime drama allows viewers to fully appreciate its subtle foreshadowing woven throughout its story and meticulous character development with each revisit. Breaking Badfollows struggling chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston), who, after he’s diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, turns to a life of crime in a bid to secure his family’s future.
Breaking Bad is an early TV icon that remains extremely significant even today. The series’s core story of a desperate man slowly becoming the very villain he once feared is a captivating one that truly leaves a lasting impression. Watching Breaking Bad multiple times highlights how carefully scenes set up future consequences as the series is built a lot like a domino line — tiny early choices become later disasters. Revisiting scenes and conversations effectively point out how many small details and lines feel newly loaded within the beloved series.
6
'The Good Place' (2016–2020)
Eleanor (Kirsten Bell) points out to Michael that she's really in The Bad Place during The Good Place.Image via NBC
This underrated sitcom is one of the best philosophical comedies to make it onto TV. The Good Placefollows the ethically questionable Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) as she wakes up in a heaven-like afterlife and almost immediately realizes she may be there by mistake. With the help of new friends, Eleanor sets out to turn her afterlife around and become a “good” person in hopes that she may be worthy of staying in “The Good Place.”
Revisiting The Good Place offers more rounds of genuine emotions and laugh-out-loud comedy. The series is compellingly heartfelt, comedic, and bingeable. Its bingeability lies in its cleverly layered storytelling with tons of philosophical ideas and character growth, which allows for repeat viewers to fully take in hidden clues, subtle jokes, and the peak emotional groundwork that is planted all over the story. The Good Place may be an underrated good time, but the fantasy sitcom is one that is addictively rewarding.
7
'Avatar: The Last Airbender' (2005–2008)
Zuko and Aang surrounded by colorful fire in 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' Season 3's "The Firebending Masters"Image via Nickelodeon
Avatar: The Last Airbender stands as one of the best animated series ever created. The beloved series focuses on a world divided into elemental nations, where Aang (Zach Tyler Eisen), the Avatar, is the only person who can master all four elements and restore the balance that the Fire Nation has broken.
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Avatar: The Last Airbender is far from an ordinary children’s series. Its audience includes a wide range of people, from young to old, who have all lauded the series as peak storytelling. Avatar: The Last Airbender is as entertaining as they come, and every rewatch only enhances the story's emotional character arcs and rich world-building. The show is genuinely satisfying the first time around, but Avatar’s rewatch value only proves just how amazing a “kid” show can be, as it delivers episodes that quietly set up emotional payoffs that are capable of stunning any audience.
8
'Heated Rivalry' (2025–Present)
Connor Storrie as Ilya and Hudson Williams as Shane get intimate at the cottage on 'Heated Rivalry.'Image via Crave
This recent series is one that has taken over the world with its addictive story. Heated Rivalry, based on the novel of the same name, follows Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), two professional hockey players, as their fierce on-ice rivalry gradually evolves into a complicated secret relationship.
Heated Rivalry is a fantastic first-time watch, and viewers have often dubbed it as one of the greatest romance series ever created. Fans have fun gasping, ooing, and swooning, but by the time the show’s first season concludes, viewers end up practically feral for more. It’s a series that heavily entices its audience to dive right back in almost immediately, only to reward its viewers on rewatch as they take in subtle gestures, lingering glances, and restrained dialogue they may have somehow missed the first time.Heated Rivalry may appear to be a simple, straightforward series, but it is quick to reveal its core, as well as other story clues, jokes, and subtler spicy moments upon re-watching, marking it an ideal rewatch.
Connor StorrieIlya Rozanov
Hudson WilliamsShane Hollander
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