My Favourite TV Shows

Two couples and their single friend, all at different stages in their relationships, deal with the complications of dating, commitment, and marriage.

Leonard Hofstadter and Sheldon Cooper are both brilliant physicists working at Cal Tech in Pasadena, California. They are colleagues, best friends, and roommates, although in all capacities their relationship is always tested primarily by Sheldon's regimented, deeply eccentric, and non-conventional ways. They are also friends with their Cal Tech colleagues mechanical engineer Howard Wolowitz and astrophysicist Rajesh Koothrappali. The foursome spend their time working on their individual work projects, playing video games, watching science-fiction movies, or reading comic books. As they are self-professed nerds, all have little or no luck with women. When Penny, a pretty woman and an aspiring actress from Omaha, moves into the apartment across the hall from Leonard and Sheldon's, Leonard has another aspiration in life, namely to get Penny to be his girlfriend.

This sitcom is about the fairly ordinary daily lives of young newlywed New Yorkers, too-nice-for-his-own-good filmmaker Paul Buchman and his assertive partner Jamie Stemple Buchman, who are almost constantly (working up to) bickering and making up with each other and just about anybody else, notably his parents and siblings, her sister, their colleagues, friends, superintendent, and neighbors, psychotherapist, all kinds of staff, customers, officials, bystanders etc., even their dog Murray and his dog-walker.

Fran Reeves, a frantic Jewish divorcée, fell madly in love with Riley Douglas Martin, a lovely, hunky contractor half her age, who moves in with her and her nasty ex Ted's two adolescent children, Joshua 'Josh', a timid med school drop-out, and Allison, a bitchy high-school girl. They all have a hard enough time finding out where they fit in this reconstituted, unofficial household, not an actual family, and things are even worse whenever outsiders wonder or ignore how it all works, given the shifted generations, Riley being barely older then his 'step-kids', actually an ideal big brother if only he were a sibling rather than the provider. Alliances and antagonisms shift, but ultimately true love triumphs and things work out.

Set in the East End of London, the show focuses on the tensions between love and family with stories ranging from hard-hitting social issues, to personal, human tragedies. And there's plenty of funny moments too. Classic characters old and new across thousands of episodes have shared a drink in The Queen Vic, shed tears of despair or joy, sat on Arthur's bench in the Square - and at some point or other they probably crossed paths with Ian Beale.

Thirtysomething Billie wants to settle down and have a family, but when she tells her boyfriend James this, he says he doesn't, so they break up. She gets drunk and hooks up with a younger guy named Zack. When she gets pregnant and he finds out, he moves into her place to try to help her.

Teenager Travis may live in Florida's leisurely Cougar Town, it's not easy being the son of his divorced parents: over-protective Jules and lazybones Bobby. Jules obsessively draws attention, wins sympathy and 'benignly' bosses everyone around. That includes her real estate office deputy Laurie, neighbor Ellie- who rules her devoted Cuban husband Andy Torres with iron hand- and in various modes hunky new neighbor and barman Grayson, all forming a quarrelsome gang.

Ted Mosby sits down with his kids, to tell them the story of how he met their mother. The story is told through memories of his friends Marshall, Lily, Robin, and Barney Stinson. All legendary 9 seasons lead up to the moment of Ted's final encounter with "the one."

The Harper brothers Charlie and Alan are almost opposites but form a great team. They have little in common except their dislike for their mundane, maternally cold and domineering mother, Evelyn. Alan, a compulsively neat chiropractor and control-freak, is thrown out by his manipulative wife Judith who nevertheless gets him to pay for everything and do most jobs in the house. Charlie is a freelance jingle composer and irresistible Cassanova who lives in a luxurious beach-house and rarely gets up before noon. Charlie "temporarily" allows Alan and his son Jake, a food-obsessed, lazy kid who shuttles between his parents, to move in with them after Alan's separation/divorce. The sitcom revolves around their conflicting lifestyles, raising Jake (who has the efficient, caring dad while having a ball with his fun-loving sugar uncle who teaches him boyish things), and bantering with Evelyn and various other friends and family. Other fairly regular characters include Charlie's cleaning lady Berta and his rich, self-confessed stalker neighbor Rose who often sneaks in to spy on Charlie.

Four female New Yorkers gossip about their sex lives (or lack thereof) and find new ways to deal with being a woman in the late 1990s.

A pair of newlyweds move in next door to a veteran married couple of 25 years.

After a family scandal leaves Mel, a local politician, in charge of her niece and nephew, she hires a man named Joe to become the family's male nanny, or "manny".

Jess, a bubbly, off-beat teacher, who is known to burst into song, catches her boyfriend with another woman. Newly homeless, she moves into a loft with three single guys she's never met before. Nick, a jaded, law-school dropout isn't the best of company. Schmidt is a flashy, eccentric businessman who believes he is Yahweh's gift to women. Winston is a former athlete who doesn't know what to do, but really needs a win. Can this dysfunctional group handle the adorkable new girl?

After his friends all go their separate ways, Joey Tribianni leaves New York for Hollywood to pursue his acting career full time. His sister Gina buys him a nice apartment, and he finds a new roommate in his 20-year old nephew Michael (Gina had him when she was 16), who is literally a rocket scientist. Michael's book smarts and Joey's people smarts allow them to help each other out whenever they can, and make them nice companions.

Mike, a Chicago police officer, meets fourth-grade teacher Molly one day when he speaks at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting and they fall in love, thanks in part to their mutual love of pie and the desire to resist it. Both face challenges in their quest to lose weight -- Molly from her slender sister and mother and Mike at the diner where he frequently eats. But having found each other, they will support each other as they try to achieve their goals, be it weight loss or Molly's decision to quit teaching and pursue her dream as a writer.

There could hardly be an odder match, but love knows no reason. Assistant D.A. Greg Montgomery, the son of successful businessman Edward and Kitty, the queen of socialite snob-ism, falls madly in love with the utterly unconventional free spirit Dharma Finkelstein, the daughter of hippie couple Abby O'Neil and Larry Finkelstein. The in-laws never agree on anything and stir up trouble as they're shocked by each other's lifestyles. Greg's lazy, incompetent colleague Pete Cavanaugh and Dharma's odd friend Jane likewise develop improbably chemistry as they observe their friends' relationship.

When Dave and Vicky were growing up, their parents had it easy. Back then, there were no "time-outs," no one had any "boundaries" and their parents had no idea what their kids were really up to. Now Dave and Vicky have teenagers of their own, and anything their kids might even think about doing, Dave and Vicky have already done at least twice. But knowledge isn't power, it's a giant pain as every day is a battle to keep their kids in line. Fifteen-year-old Larry isn't exactly a frequent diner at the 'cool kids' table in the cafeteria, while 16-year-old Hillary is a know-it-all and is just emerging onto the dating scene. Meanwhile, thirteen-year-old Mike is all hormones and video games. Dave and Vicky figure if they can send these three off to college without a police record or kids of their own, they've done their job. This witty, irreverent show goes inside the heads of a modern family through the use of a confessional space where the characters reveal everything they could never actually say to one another.

A television show centered around a macho everyman, his loving wife, and their three precocious children.