7 series to watch during the Easter holidays

With more streaming services and more shows than ever, it’s starting to get harder and harder to pick a show worth watching. So if you don’t want to stay to scroll-you endlessly watch Netflix, HBO Max or others, looking for the best option and so that you don’t get caught in the paralysis of choice, we consulted among ourselves, in the Panorama editorial office, and we come to your aid.

There are seven series that we have particularly liked lately. The list is diverse: comedies, dramas, action or even documentaries, you can choose what suits you best.

Derry Girls (2018-2022)

A great twist on the classic teen comedy series, ‘Derry Girls’ is just the thing if you want it something light, but of quality. It’s a trip back in time to the 90s in Northern Ireland, where you’ll find high school dramas, seasoned with political tensions of that period, between Irish nationalists and unionists.

The characters are carefully constructed, each has a well-developed personality, and you inevitably grow attached to them. Derry Girls explores everything that comes of being a teenager, from discovering one’s own identity, to dealing with complicated internal family dynamics and, in the case of the girls in the show, how you relate to a tumultuous but important period in your country’s history. (Vlad Dumitrescu)

The new series produced by FX and ready to be seen on Disney+ is not simply a screen adaptation of the famous novel by James Clavell, but, we could say, a reimagining of it, in which the Japanese characters open up more to the viewers.

a twist beautiful thing we have in the new series is, for example, that although women are placed in a historical context, with information about their place in the social hierarchy, they are not just pawns moved around, but sometimes change the way they spin the wheels in the central action mechanism.

Thus, “Shogun” is an incredible saga where we don’t just see feudal Japan through the eyes of western John Blackthorne, we are witness a powerful clash between two culturesthanks to the access we have to Lord Toranaga and the translator Mariko, marvel in turn at the “barbarism” of the Westerners.

Beyond the script, the grandeur of the Japanese countryside blends with the beauty of the period costumes, but also with the austere minimalist interiors. And above all the violence of war and Japanese honor protocols constantly flows.

Many have compared “Shogun” to “Game of Thrones”, most likely due to the violence and surprising machinations present in all episodes. However, the FX series is more about the political game and the strategist and visionary mind of Lord Toranaga who the other Lord Regents want dead. So, perhaps a more appropriate comparison – and the director of the series, Jonathan van Tulleken, also said it – would be House of Cards or Succession. (Dana Mischie)

A series full of twists and turns, a screenplay based on the bestselling author Harlan Coben’s book, which keeps you glued to the screen. The main actor is Michael C. Hallknown from the series Dexter, here a pediatric surgeon who tries to have a closer relationship with his daughters after the death of his wife.

The action starts after Jenny, one of the teenagers, disappears from home. The pediatric surgeon is forced to dig into the past to find his girl and does everything he can to find out what happened to her. Each episode of the mini-series ends up surprising you, and the ending is an unexpected one. (Claudia Spridon)

Baby Reindeer (2024)

“Baby Reindeer” it’s about abuse from (and on) all sides. Donny (Richard Gadd) is a scrawny guy who works as a bartender and tries to build a career in stand-up comedy.

He gets the attention he wants, but not on stage, but off it.

His life changes completely when he offers a cup of tea to a woman named Martha (Jessica Gunning), who appears in the bar where he works and who arouses his pity.

It becomes immediately obsessed with him and harassing him at every turn. Martha is one stalker in all the power of the word. She sends Donny voicemails, emails, follows him down the street, harasses his parents, even though she doesn’t even have his phone number at first.

show it is written and directed by Richard Gadd, who plays Donny Dunn, the main character of this miniseries. Gadd tells how everything it’s based on his life story.

The empathy that Donny initially displays towards Martha is, in fact, also born of abuse. Along the way, you come to sometimes hate her, sometimes to empathize with Martha. So does Donny, by the way, who, confronted at one point with silence (he no longer receives any messages from her), hasjunge to want her back in his life.

If you catch on and make it to the end, you’ll learn from the last episode and why the miniseries is called Baby Reindeer. It has 7 episodes and can be found on Netflix. After seeing them, it is possible to relate differently to emails that end with the message “sent from my iPhone“. (Ciprian Ioana)

Street Food: Asia (2019)

How many times do we not go outside the borders, just with the thought of trying a dish whose memory we keep for years? If we add to that the story behind that dish, often related to human survival, the food already takes on a different perspective.

In the documentary that can be seen on Netflix, we are carried for half an hour in nine cities in Asia, where we discover impressive stories. In the Bangkok (Thailand), Jay Fai supported his family by sewing until one night the workshop caught fire. So he went out into the street with a frying pan and started cooking. Equipped with goggles similar to those used by welders, from her modest “kitchen” she managed to reinterpret the famous Tom Yum soup, and her highly sought-after crab omelette earned her a Michelin star.

In the Cebu (Philippines), Florencio Escabas, although he should have retired years ago, is still making chowder soup. He barely managed to keep the business going after his wife died, but it’s the only thing that brings him joy. It also teaches kids how and when to catch the best patterns, and rewards them for it. His crayfish soup brought him fame among the islanders and led the authorities to even pave the road leading to his restaurant.

In the Dehli (India), among the most popular dishes are “chaat”, an explosion of tastes, or “chole bhature”, a kind of spicy chickpea curry, in a kind of fluffy, toasted bread. And at Dalchand’s stall you find the best such dishes, because he can compromise on profit, but not on ingredients.

The documentary also takes us to South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan and Singapore, and clearly after this series you’ll want to try those dishes right from the source. (Cristina Dobreanu)

The Good Doctor (2017)

Since the debate about our health system has been rekindled in Romania, I came up with a thematic recommendation. “The Good Doctor” is a series about Shaun, a young autistic surgeon who starts working at a hospital in California. Although he is very talented, Shaun runs into both the skepticism of his new colleagues and the prejudices of his patients.

It’s a series from which we also learn about each other autistic spectrum disorders or about atypical people, in general. If you liked House, The Good Doctor is less cynical, but just as good catchy.

There are six seasons, enough for you even if you bridge between holidays. You can find it on several platforms, including Netflix. (Alina Mărculescu-Matis)

Fallout (2024)

If you are like me, who have spent hundreds of hours in the the post-apocalyptic universe of the Fallout video game series, the series released by Amazon Prime is like a good cookie that brings back memories. You will surely see it with more benevolent and nostalgic eyes than a viewer who has not rummaged for parts and weapons through the thickets of the toxic desert and filled with the blood of enemies the catacombs and cities ruined by nuclear bombs, in the Fallout games.

The action takes place in a world that survived the nuclear conflict between Americans and “communists”, where law and order is optional and imposed at will by various communities and factions. It’s a Wild West combined with mutants, laser technology, futuristic weaponry and irradiated monsters, in a setting you can call “retro-futuristic”, all-American.

The story spread over 8 episodes revolves around one completely innocent young woman, who steps out for the first time into this criminal and dangerous universe, from the fallout shelter in which she was born (mankind survived thanks to Vault-Tec technologies, in super-technological shelters underground), to search for his kidnapped father. Obviously, her “journey” develops various narrative threads, solidly arranged by the authors of the series.

The series is a very rare and well-successful translation of an iconic video game on the small screen (something that The Witcher, for example, failed to do). It didn’t have the unrealistic ambition to incorporate the full craziness of the video game’s human factions, monsters, weaponry, brutal fight scenes, and murderous possibilities, which have a finesse of detail and narrative sprawl taken to the extreme. It would have been impossible.

However, through the atmosphere and the small details, from the characters to the costumes and sets, manages to be Fallout. And let’s not forget the music, very important in both the game and the series. “War. War never changes”. If this line spoken by a baritone voice with a thick American accent, accompanied by American ’40s-’50s music, brings back fond memories, you will also devour the series. You can find it on Amazon Prime. (Andrei Luca Popescu)

Article edited by Andrei Luca Popescu