By now you have probably read a hundred articles about how this is a good time to do this, this, or that, but let's just be real, this a not a good time to do anything. Just finding the mere strength to survive another day is a task and here, we look for comfort in every possible little thing that can bless us with a temporary relief. To distract your brains that have been wired with numbers, I suggest five shows on Netflix that you can possibly binge over the weekend (which feels the same as weekday) by now, but we tried:
Yeh Meri Family
Yeh Meri Family is a criminally underrated dramedy on Netflix. It’s one of those light watches that you fall in love with because they remind you of your own childhood. The show revolves around an early teen boy who belongs to a middle-class family, based in the 1998 of India, and goes through the same everyday things that we all went through to grow up to be cynical from pure. It has a rating of 9.2/10 on IMDb.
Unorthodox
This show was a rare find, because I have never watched anything that explores the Hasidic Jews of Williamsburg in New York with such detail. Unorthodox is a German-American mini-series that takes a dive into the life of an 18-year-old girl who is just trying to figure herself out in a suffocating, conservative and extremely heteropatriarchal community. Surprisingly, the happenings of her life are painstakingly relatable for a coming-of-age girl in a Pakistani society. IMDb rates Unorthodox as 8.2/10.
Taj Mahal 1989
Adding a bit of romance to our dud quarantine lives, I would recommend Taj Mahal 1989 for it’s sheer cinematic and nostalgic value. The script might not ensure award winning writing but the political atmosphere in a university that struggles to lean towards a progressive left hit too close to home. The characters trying to explore the dichotomy of love in their early twenties and late forties is also a great combination of how generational gap affects relationships. IMDb rates it to 7.6/10.
Man Like Mobeen
This is one of the most intelligent comedies ever written about the lives of Birmingham Muslims, by Guz Khan, who also stars as Mobeen in the show. This British mini-series shows the blatant racism and generational stereotypes that Muslims have to keep up with on a daily basis, not to forget the constant fight for upholding an identity that you can resonate with. The 28-year-old Mobeen also looks after his fierce and rebellious teenage sister, Aqsa, meanwhile looking for a partner for himself. Would recommend for a laugh-out-loud binge watch this weekend. Man Like Mobeen is rated 7.9/10 on IMDb.
When They See Us
Pakistan’s obsession with capital punishment is nothing when it comes to the racist police system in the United States united against their people of colour. This show is about a jogger in 1989, who happened to be a white woman, was assaulted and raped in New York's Central Park, and five, innocent teenage, African Ameican boys were subsequently charged with the crime. The case went on till 2014. The show won an Emmy award for being an outstanding limited series, and I agree, fully. The craft that is involved in making and editing this show is remarkable. The background scores make you fear your entire existence as a person of colour existing in a system that is inherently biased against you. If nothing, it leaves you with the information on how the US justice system works, inside out. IMDb rates this show highly as 9/10.
Yeh Meri Family
Yeh Meri Family is a criminally underrated dramedy on Netflix. It’s one of those light watches that you fall in love with because they remind you of your own childhood. The show revolves around an early teen boy who belongs to a middle-class family, based in the 1998 of India, and goes through the same everyday things that we all went through to grow up to be cynical from pure. It has a rating of 9.2/10 on IMDb.
Unorthodox
This show was a rare find, because I have never watched anything that explores the Hasidic Jews of Williamsburg in New York with such detail. Unorthodox is a German-American mini-series that takes a dive into the life of an 18-year-old girl who is just trying to figure herself out in a suffocating, conservative and extremely heteropatriarchal community. Surprisingly, the happenings of her life are painstakingly relatable for a coming-of-age girl in a Pakistani society. IMDb rates Unorthodox as 8.2/10.
Taj Mahal 1989
Adding a bit of romance to our dud quarantine lives, I would recommend Taj Mahal 1989 for it’s sheer cinematic and nostalgic value. The script might not ensure award winning writing but the political atmosphere in a university that struggles to lean towards a progressive left hit too close to home. The characters trying to explore the dichotomy of love in their early twenties and late forties is also a great combination of how generational gap affects relationships. IMDb rates it to 7.6/10.
Man Like Mobeen
This is one of the most intelligent comedies ever written about the lives of Birmingham Muslims, by Guz Khan, who also stars as Mobeen in the show. This British mini-series shows the blatant racism and generational stereotypes that Muslims have to keep up with on a daily basis, not to forget the constant fight for upholding an identity that you can resonate with. The 28-year-old Mobeen also looks after his fierce and rebellious teenage sister, Aqsa, meanwhile looking for a partner for himself. Would recommend for a laugh-out-loud binge watch this weekend. Man Like Mobeen is rated 7.9/10 on IMDb.
When They See Us
Pakistan’s obsession with capital punishment is nothing when it comes to the racist police system in the United States united against their people of colour. This show is about a jogger in 1989, who happened to be a white woman, was assaulted and raped in New York's Central Park, and five, innocent teenage, African Ameican boys were subsequently charged with the crime. The case went on till 2014. The show won an Emmy award for being an outstanding limited series, and I agree, fully. The craft that is involved in making and editing this show is remarkable. The background scores make you fear your entire existence as a person of colour existing in a system that is inherently biased against you. If nothing, it leaves you with the information on how the US justice system works, inside out. IMDb rates this show highly as 9/10.