10 TV Shows That Worked Despite Their Absurd Premise

The world of television is incredibly saturated in the modern day. There are literally countless platforms through which TV shows come, and in all shapes and sizes, from the usual terrestrial channels through to the unending potential of streaming thanks to the likes of Netflix, Amazon, and Disney.

With so much going on, it has become tougher and tougher for a TV show to stand out from the rest of the pack. One of the most reliable ways to differentiate is with, for lack of a better term, a batsh*t crazy premise that is so absurd no one else in the world could have thought of it first.

This guarantees a uniqueness to a TV show, and at the very least gives it a talking point. It gets noticed. Now, these kinds of shows have failed in the past, whether the premise was just a little too weird or for any other reason, but every now and then the balance is struck just perfectly between absurd yet still accessible and marketable.

On paper, none of the following TV shows should have worked, or at least grown to be as big as they have done. Yet, somehow they appealed to the masses in a way that no one but the minds that created the shows could have ever imagined. From comedies, to animated shows, detective shows and beyond, these were just crazy enough to work.

Ever since Phase Three concluded with Spider-Man: Far From Home, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has played around with a wider variety of genre and style. Shang-Chi was something of a martial arts movie, Doctor Strange in the Mutliverse of Madness dabbled in horror, and Loki was something completely and utterly unique.

The weirdest MCU project by far however, has been WandaVision. As something of a superhero/action movie crossed with a TV sitcom, the series cycled through each different decades with each episode, while devastatingly exploring loss and grief. As a result, there is nothing like the MCU’s first foray into Disney+ anywhere else on television.

This may not have been such a tough spot for the series had Phase Four eased in with a far more familiar feel, as it was originally planned to with Black Widow and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. However, a worldwide pandemic and several reshuffles later, the weirdness that was WandaVision was what welcomed audiences back to the world of MCU content after 18 long months.

This was risky, as the first two episodes being in full black and white, and the sheer bizarre nature of the show in general, could have easily lost audiences. However, it seems that everyone bought into the unique premise from the off, and to this day it is still arguably the strongest series the franchise has put out on the streaming platform.