James Gunn Shares 10 Underrated TV Shows To Binge During Quarantine

Fans seem intent on picking Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn‘s brain clean during the lockdown. Over the last week, he’s been quizzed on (among other things) his favorite Batman, his favorite Joker and his opinion of the terrible Howard the Duck movie.

Now, he’s served up a list on Instagram that showcases his “10 Most Underrated, Binge-Worthy Shows of the 2000’s,” and here’s what he’s recommended:

1. Kingdom – A DirecTV drama about a mixed martial arts gym.
2. Wonder Showzen – An MTV sketch comedy show aired between 2005-2006 that parodies Sesame Street.
3. Happy Valley – A BBC crime drama set in the Yorkshire countryside.
4. Patriot – An Amazon Prime comedy-drama about an intelligence officer working in a Milwaukee industrial piping form.
5. Party Down – A Starz sitcom about a group of caterers in L.A. trying to make it in Hollywood.
6. First Person – An experimental show by Errol Morris in which people are interviewed via a machine known as the Interrotron.
7. The Joe Schmo Show – A reality TV hoax show that tricks people into weird situations.
8. Karachi Kops – A fly on the wall TV series based in a police department in Karachi, Pakistan.
9. The Vice Guide to Everything – An MTV show that follows Vice Magazine journalists as they as cover unique stories about the modern world.
10. Justified – An FX drama about a Deputy US Marshall based on an Elmore Leonard story.

First up, though Gunn says these are his pick of the ‘2000s’, I assume he means since 2000 rather than from 2000-2009, as many of these premiered in the 2010s. But I’ve got to hand it to Gunn, these are some pretty obscure and cool TV shows.

Some of them, like Kingdom and Justified, are quite well-known (though far from top-tier TV dramas), and the rest are things I’ve pretty much forgotten about but enjoyed at the time like Wonder Showzen and First Person. Then you’ve got stuf like Karachi Kops, which I’ve literally never heard of before. It doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, though the full show appears to have been uploaded to YouTube.

But you’d like to hope James Gunn would be busy despite the lockdown. The Suicide Squad‘s shoot concluded before Coronavirus hit, so he should at minimum be able to work on editing the movie from his home. Beyond that, though he won’t fully begin work on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 before TSS is complete, you have to assume some preliminary work is still being carried out.

In the meantime, I’m settling in to check out Karachi Kops.