What to Watch
Underrated 1990s Shows Worth Finding Now
By Jordan A. · · Updated · 5 min read
The 1990s are remembered through about eight shows, and most of them were sitcoms with theme songs. The decade actually running underneath that is stranger: network dramas that were too bleak for their slot, comedies that got canceled inside a year, and the first HBO shows figuring out that television could be its own thing rather than small cinema.
Everything below premiered between 1990 and 1999. Season counts and networks are listed because that is the information that decides whether you can actually take one of these on. Where each one streams changes and rights on older series move often, so the title page on BingeNext shows current US options.
The dramas that got there first
Homicide: Life on the Street ran on NBC from 1993 to 1999. It came from David Simon's reporting years before The Wire, and it is the show that made a police drama about paperwork, dead ends and the board on the wall where names go up in red. Andre Braugher's interrogation episode, Three Men and Adena, is still the high point of the form. Choose it if you want the argument that everything prestige television did in the 2000s was already happening on a network at nine o'clock.
Oz started on HBO in 1997, two years before The Sopranos, and it is the reason The Sopranos got made. Six seasons in a prison unit, an enormous cast, and a willingness to kill anyone. It is much rougher than what came after, both in violence and in construction. Watch it as the origin story rather than as a comfortable binge.
Millennium ran three seasons on Fox from 1996 to 1999, from Chris Carter while The X-Files was at its peak. Lance Henriksen plays a former FBI profiler who sees what killers see. Season one is a bleak procedural, season two turns apocalyptic, and the shift is either the best thing about it or the reason you stop. It has never had the reappraisal it deserves.
Profit lasted nine episodes on Fox in 1996 and was too much for 1996. Adrian Pasdar plays a corporate executive who is a genuine sociopath, and the show is on his side. Every antihero drama of the following twenty years is downstream of it. Nine episodes is one evening.
The comedies that deserved another year
The Larry Sanders Show ran six seasons on HBO from 1992 to 1998, with Garry Shandling as a late-night host and Rip Torn as his producer. The whole grammar of the modern awkward comedy starts here, and it is funnier than the shows that copied it because the people in it are professionally competent as well as terrible.
NewsRadio ran five seasons on NBC from 1995 to 1999 and is the most rewatchable workplace comedy of the decade. Dave Foley, Phil Hartman, Maura Tierney, and a writing room that gave up on plot early to just let the cast talk. Start with season two.
Sports Night was Aaron Sorkin's first show, two seasons on ABC from 1998 to 2000, and it is the best place to see his style before the speeches got long. The laugh track on the early episodes was forced on the show and it fades. Push through the first four.
Spaced ran two series on Channel 4 in the UK, starting in 1999, fourteen episodes total. Simon Pegg, Jessica Hynes and Edgar Wright before any of them were famous, and the visual jokes are the reason Wright's films look the way they do.
The teen shows that were not really teen shows
My So-Called Life got nineteen episodes on ABC across 1994 and 1995 and then died. Claire Danes at fifteen, playing someone with no idea what she wants, and a show that treats a teenager's inner life as a serious subject rather than a phase. Everything from Freaks and Geeks to Euphoria owes it.
Freaks and Geeks got eighteen episodes on NBC in 1999 and 2000. Paul Feig created it, Judd Apatow produced, and half of American comedy for the next twenty years is in the cast. It is much gentler than its reputation and the parents are written as well as the kids.
The Adventures of Pete & Pete ran three seasons on Nickelodeon from 1993 to 1996 and is the strangest thing a children's network has ever aired. Suburban surrealism, an unexplained superhero, and a run of guest stars from the American indie music scene. Fine for kids, better for adults.
Two more if you want the deep end
Cracker started on ITV in 1993, with Robbie Coltrane as a criminal psychologist who is a wreck. The cases run as two or three part stories, which makes it feel more like a run of films than a series. Coltrane's performance is the whole reason to go.
Space: Above and Beyond got a single season on Fox in 1995 and 1996, twenty-three episodes about marines in a war with an alien species, and it treats military service as grim work rather than adventure. It ends without resolution. Go in knowing that.
Where to start
If you want the best show on this page, it is Homicide, and it is a long road at seven seasons. If you have one night, watch the nine episodes of Profit and see how early somebody worked out the antihero. If you want something you can put on with anyone and be happy, take NewsRadio.
If you would rather describe what you liked and let something else do the digging, BingeNext's TV recommendations take a couple of shows you love and return picks with a reason and where each one streams. A run takes about a minute.
Topics covered: underrated, 1990s, classic-tv, throwback, nostalgia
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and is responsible for every guide published on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu. Dates, season counts and where-to-watch details in these guides are checked against official sources before publishing, and corrections are welcome at Jordan@Bingenext.com.