SomeTV showsrequire that the viewer watch them more than once to fully understand them. Whileyou can turn a sitcom onwhile you cook dinner, or you scroll your phone, other TV shows require a greater amount of attention if you ever hope not to be lost in their complex and dizzying plots. Not every complex series is a great one, and not every great series needs to be complex. All things considered,Breaking BadandThe Sopranosare fairly straightforward. The only reason to watch them again is because it’s a joy to do so.
There are some series, however, that require more than one rewatch in order to fully grasp what makes them good, or even great, television. These shows often have twisting storylines and don’t offer much in the way of answers, at least not at first. Sometimes things mentioned in one season are not brought up until a later season, anda viewer will need to juggle multiple ideas, characters, motives, and themes to see the shape of what a show is trying to say. Thankfully, they’re also a pleasure to return to, so you kill two birds with one stone.
Unlike most shows on this list, you don’t need to watch Dan Harmon’sCommunitymore than once to understand it, butif you liked it once, you will like it even more the second time. There are so many hidden callbacks, references, and jokes that slip under the radar that it would be impossible to even list the best of them. Over six seasons of admittedly varied quality,Communitybrought together a group of strangers and showed how they could believably become friends.
The little nuances of their characters are slowly drawn out throughout the series, and their pasts are often referenced, events which were usually a part of an older episode. There are background events, visual gags that take a while to understand, clever wordplay that you might miss, and more. WatchingCommunitya second time is like going back to a foreign language show after learning how to speak it yourself.
There have been four seasons ofTrue Detective, and while not every one of them is worth watching more than once, it’s commonly agreed that season 1 is worth returning to often. However, season 3 is a less celebrated season, but it’s also worth returning to for a slightly different reason. In season 3, Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff play detectives in both their younger years and their elderly ones, as the show goes back and forth.
It’s a complex and intriguing season where Ali’s character has to grapple with his slowly developing memory problems, making him an unreliable narrator. It’s hard to guess what’s real and what’s not inTrue Detectiveseason 3, but once you figure it out after multiple rewatches, you find an insightful and heartfelt look at friendship, responsibility, and the things we forget in life.
Severanceis a science fiction series on its second season now, and withSeveranceseason 3 on the way, it’s a great time to go back and rewatch the series. The Apple TV+ series follows the lives of the employees at Lumon, a biotechnology corporation. All employees undergo a process called “severance” so that they retain no memories of the outside world at work, and when they leave, have no memories of their lives inside Lumon.
It’s a philosophically deep series that considers questions about identity and free will, and there’s an intriguing mystery at the center of it all that has yet to be fully uncovered. Even the characters often don’t know what’s going on in the show, so going back to watch it more than once will be a good way to reorient yourself before the next season comes out.
Whilesome people may sayWestworldfell off, there are still enough incredibleepisodes in seasons 2 through 4 that make returning to the show a worthwhile endeavor. The series, based on Michael Crichton’s science fiction book of the same name, follows the android hosts of the themed attraction known as “Westworld”, where rich clients can do anything they want to the animatronic hosts, who are nearly impossible to tell from real humans.
It’s a simple series with a convoluted mask over it, and rewatching it helps remove that mask.
The series is filled with backtracking episodes and mysteries that change the way you view earlier episodes. As the series goes on, the world gets bigger, and watching it again, knowing one key fact: that the hosts are indeed gaining sentience, makes all the technical jargon and red herrings easier to digest. It’s a simple series with a convoluted mask over it, and rewatching it helps remove that mask.
The German-language series,Dark, premiered in 2017 and follows the strange events that occur after several tragic disappearances in the fictional town of Winden, Germany. Four troubled families encounter a sinister time-travel plot which pits them against one another and themselves as they attempt to solve what’s happening. It’s not just one of thebest foreign language original shows on Netflix, it’s one of the best shows on the service.
It’s also an incredibly complex and twisting story, and if your attention drops for even a moment, it can be easy to get lost. That’s where a rewatch comes in handy, andseeing each episode again will help place you in the right timeframes to better enjoy the story.
Over six seasons of Lost, the brain trust of J. J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber, and Damon Lindelof developed a complex, mysterious, and often shocking story about the survivors of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815. Viewers learned about the ensemble cast of characters' histories, futures, and even parallel selves in alternate universes. It’s a show that spawned still-active message boards trying to decode every hint and clue.
While it’s true that not every mystery led somewhere satisfying, the series is packed with so much thought and detail that you have to rewatch the show just to see the wealth of clues dotted throughout. Lost may never fully reveal its entire story, but watching it again will remind you why it was such a beloved TV show in the first place.
The Leftovers
Cast
The Leftovers is a three-season drama that follows a group of people as they deal with the effects of the sudden disappearance of 2% of the word’s population. It was created by Lost co-producer Damon Lindelof and Election writer Tom Perrotta, with famous actors such as Christopher Eccleston, Liv Tyler, Margaret Qualley, and Justin Theroux in the ensemble cast.
Damon Lindelof’sThe Leftoversis the natural progression of what he was trying to accomplish inLost, and instead of focusing on the mystery,The Leftoversfocuses on how the mystery of the show affects the people in it. It’s a deeply philosophical, moving, and brilliantly told story with a surprise around every corner, but you never feel like you can’t handle what it’s throwing at you.
The series is set in the aftermath of an event that saw 2% of the world suddenly disappear. Upon the first watch, you probably want answers to what happened to those people, but that question is never truly answered, save for vaguelyinThe Leftoversfinale. That’s why a second and even third watch is required. To truly understand and appreciate the series, you need to accept the mystery of the show and realize it’s about what happens after.
Twin Peaks
Conceived by Mark Frost and David Lynch in 1990, Twin Peaks is a supernatural mystery-drama series that brings FBI Agent Dale Cooper to the quiet town of Twin Peaks to investigate the murder of a young woman named Laura Palmer. As Dale continues his investigation of her death, he learns that Laura’s life wasn’t as she advertised it, and the town itself is hiding far more secrets than they let on. The show received a revival for a third and final season two decades later to resolve the cliffhanger left at the end of the second season.
David Lynch’sTwin Peaksis such a complex show that it includes a special film,Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and a season 3 revival that premiered in 2017, 16 years after the second season of the show. The series is a bit hard to describe, but on its surface, the show is about a detective, Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), investigating the murder of a teenager, Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee).It’s a strange, melodramatic, and purposefully campy showthat’s unsettling for reasons that are hard to explain.
Rewatching the series may not reveal too much more about the plot, but it will help explore the world Lynch created in more detail, and it is quite an exceptional world to explore. There’s a mystery around every corner in thisTV show, and watching it again will reveal these critical details.
