An abundance of caution due to the spread of COVID-19 has caused a massive amount of Brooklyn events to be canceled — so we’ve compiled a master-list of Brooklyn-based television shows you can watch while cooped up inside for the immediate future.
High Maintenance
Since its premiere as a web series in 2012, “High Maintenance” has strived to represent the “new” Brooklyn through all its strange highs and lows, following a bicycle riding weed dealer known as “the guy” as he services an ensemble of stressed-out New Yorkers. Each episode serves as a standalone look into his clients lives, watching as they navigate romance, artistic struggles, and the weirdness of urban living.
High Maintenance: Available on Hulu, Amazon Prime, and HBO Go.
High Fidelity
Zoe Kravitz takes the reins from John Cusack in this 2020 remake of the 2000 cult classic, starring as a lovelorn record store owner and music obsessive in Crown Heights. Kravitz employs an effortless cool as she floats through the life of a seemingly successful record store owner, with a Brooklyn apartment overflowing with records and her two best friends in her employ, but is unable to get over the guy who dumped her a year ago, making for classic romantic-comedy material with a Brooklyn background.
High Fidelity: Available on Hulu.
All Hail Beth
For a truly local production, “All Hail Beth” from Downtown arts organization Bric follows a depressed Brooklynite who wakes up one day as the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, prompting those who had ignored her in the past to shower with gifts and adorations. Much of the show is filmed on the photogenic streets of Dumbo and the less commonly seen streets of Bay Ridge, offering two very different views of Brooklyn.
All Hail Beth: Available on Youtube.
She’s Gotta Have It
Spike Lee resurrected his 1986 film of the same name with a Netflix series that brings the same characters from Lee’s first feature and drops them into modern-day Brooklyn, where Fort Greene artist Nola Darling struggles to choose between her three lovers while maintaining a commitment to her art. Much of the show was shot in Lee’s hometown Fort Greene, and the director even fooled locals into thinking a long-shuttered park on Lafayette Avenue was reopening when he left the gates open after filming part of the show there.
She’s Gotta Have it: Available on Netflix.
Bored to Death
A quintessential Brooklyn series that met its fate far too early, “Bored to Death” follows Brooklyn author Jonathan Ames (Jason Schwartzman) as he sets out to become a private detective while between books. Along with his editor (Ted Danson) and friend (Zach Galifianakis), Ames tackles wacky cases and navigates the world of the literati from his apartment in the clock tower of the Williamsburg Savings Bank building — with a background of Fort Greene brownstones and stroller-filled coffee shops before they were a common sight on the airwaves. The show was so beloved by Brooklynites during its short time on air that its abrupt cancellation by HBO inspired a funeral procession of hundreds to descend upon Boerum Hill’s Brooklyn Inn to mourn alongside the shows creator in 2011.
Bored to Death: Available on Amazon Prime and HBO Go.
Wyatt Cenac’s ‘Brooklyn’
The former “Daily Show” correspondent and stand-up comedian has Brooklyn all over everything he does — including the stand-up special aptly named “Brooklyn” where the stand-up, who spent summers growing up living with his grandmother in Crown Heights, muses on the state of the borough in 2014, as Kings County was undergoing dramatic changes, touching on gentrification, mayonnaise shops, and the Barclays Center. Cenac also hosted a weekly comedy series at Littlefield in Gowanus dubbed “Night Train, which was turned into a six-episode mini-series.
Brooklyn: Available on Netflix. Night Train: Available on Starz.
