A piping hot plate of nostalgia is always the best dish for satisfying your craving for quality TV. I don’t make the rules! Or maybe I just did? Either way, picking up that handy-dandy TV remote to watch some classic ’00s TV shows sounds like the perfect way to ride out whatever storm, whether that be boredom or a pandemic. Maybe it’s because things just seemed easier back then? Boybands and Britney Spears reigned supreme on the airwaves. Being fashionable meant you owned some kind of low-rise pant, and don’t even get me started on how thin the eyebrows were. And T-Mobile’s Sidekick was so iconic, it’s going for some serious dough over on eBay right now. But enough about that. Let’s get back to why we’re all here: the beauty that was ’00s TV.
The decade gave us classic comedies like The Office to Arrested Development, the beauty of MTV’s Laguna Beach, sitcoms that made listening to a fake laugh track actually enjoyable, and a whole bunch of other goodies. With this much greatness, it can be hard to pick what to binge first. Have no fear; I wrangled up some of the greatest shows of the period. Ahead, here are some of the very best 2000s TV shows that you should rewatch, like, immediately.
‘The Simple Life’
Starring: Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie
Why it makes the list: A show about Hollywood socialites ditching their designer handbags and extravagant ways of life to live like “the middle class” is ’00s reality TV at its best.
‘One Tree Hill’
Starring: Chad Michael Murray, James Lafferty, Hilarie Burton, Bethany Joy Lenz, Sophia Bush, and Lee Norris
Why it makes the list: The high school drama of the teens of Tree Hill, North Carolina, can get a little bit cheesy at times, but it’s a classic angsty staple that paved the way for the Riverdale-y genre of television we see today.