Streaming’s best trend right now is shows where nothing happens

There are TV shows out there that demand your strict and undivided attention. If you blink during an episode of Game of Thrones (or any of the many shows like it), you’ll miss an important plot point. If you look at your phone during an episode of Mindhunter, you’ll miss out on the careful direction and Emmy-worthy acting.

And those kinds of shows are great, but they’re also taxing to watch. An open secret about the streaming wars is that they’re kept going in large part by shows you can put on in the background while you drift in and out. They’re kept going by shows where nothing happens, and that’s not an insult.

“Nothing” is a relative term

More like “nothing much”

First up, let’s define what we mean by “a show where nothing happens.” The ’90s sitcom Seinfeld is often held up as an example of such a show. “It’s a show about nothing,” or so the logline tell us.

But that’s not exactly accurate, is it? It’s not that “nothing” happens on Seinfeld; it’s more that what happens isn’t important. Elaine getting banned from a soup takeout restaurant counts as “something” happening. Ditto George quitting his job and then going back in as if nothing happened, or Kramer trying to make a coffee table book about coffee tables. It’s not about nothing; it’s about something that doesn’t matter very much.

And if we expand our definition of “a show where nothing happens” to include those kinds of series, then they dominate streaming. There’s a reason why Netflix paid $500 million for the privilege of hosting Seinfeld: because people want shows they can turn on and enjoy without needing to bend all of their attention towards it.

A lot of sitcoms fit that description, and they routinely prop up streaming services. Every service tries to keep at least one big legacy sitcom in their catalog, because they know people will return to them again and again. HBO Max has Friends and The Big Bang Theory; Peacock has The Office and New Girl; Hulu has Bob’s Burgers and Modern Family and King of the Hill and How I Met Your Mother and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia…Executives never need to worry about these kinds of low-stakes shows going out of style.

Sitcoms vs reality TV

Which does nothing better?

You’ll also notice that a lot of the shows we just talked about are older. Despite high demand, it’s hard to launch sitcoms on streaming services, perhaps because they often get canceled before they get a chance to build up a large back catalog of episodes people can leave on in the background.

But when new sitcoms do break through, the old rules hold. For instance, the long-running CBS series The Neighborhood just wrapped up its eight-season run on CBS. Earlier this year, The Neighborhood was among the top-rated shows on Paramount+ for 474 straight days. If streaming services can plan far enough ahead to make a new long-running sitcom, they’ll be rewarded for it.

Of course, sitcoms aren’t the only kinds of shows where nothing happens. From home makeover series to singing competitions to dating shows, reality TV has been serving up helping heaps of nothing for decades now, and we eat it up. Big Brother and Survivor have been running consistently since the early 2000s, and still draw tons of viewers on Paramount+ and Hulu. Newer series like Love is Blind (Netflix) and Love Island USA (Peacock) have quickly grown into phenomenons, and can produce a lot of episodes in a short period of time. For instance, Love is Blind has produced 10 seasons since its debut in 2020.

Reality TV is famously cheap to make, so these shows have an easier time racking up lots of seasons compared to sitcoms, which is crucial. It’s one thing to be a show about nothing. But to be a popular show about nothing, there has to be a lot of it.

The rare drama about nothing

Watch it before it’s gone

Another show often brought up as a great example of a series about nothing is Gilmore Girls, which ran for seven seasons on The WB and the CW in the 2000s. The show follows Lorelei and Rory Gilmore, a mother and daughter living in the quiet New England town of Stars Hollow. We watch Lorelei try to start a business and Rory try to get into a good college. They get in and out of relationships. They talk about pop culture. Describing the show like this almost makes it sound dull, but that’s also the point. Gilmore Girls is a pleasant comfort watch where the stakes are low by design. It’s about nothing and that’s what’s made it a hit, especially after it landed on Netflix and got discovered by a whole new group of fans.

Incidentally, Gilmore Girls is leaving Netflix after a 12-year run on June 30, 2026, so if you want to see what all the fuss isn’t about, you don’t have much time. The Year in the Life limited sequel series will remain.

Three cheers for nothing

If I were the head of a streaming service, I would invest in well-written, easy-to-watch, short-form TV shows for at least a few seasons at a time, to give them time to find an audience. Streaming services don’t appreciate nothing like they should.