Which Cozy Show Is Right for You?
Andrew Mckinney Your guide to TV’s low-stress purveyors of cheesy earnestness and great outerwear.
We are in it, folks — we are surrounded by winter. The holiday season is long gone, and spring is weeks away, and we need something to get us through the doldrums. Thankfully, television has blessed us with something built for this very task, something to keep us feeling warm and fuzzy no matter the season: the Cozy Show.
Come on, you know the Cozy Show. Not to be confused with the Comfort Watch (which is whatever is specifically comforting to you — if you relax by mainlining grisly true-crime series, you do you), the Cozy Show brims with earnestness, at times almost too cheesy to bear, and all its characters are generally good people. If someone makes a bad choice, they always own up to it. Apologies and forgiveness are plentiful. There is romance involved for sure. In a Cozy Show, we are learning lessons and having heart-to-hearts. In a Cozy Show, the good guys always win. They are sweet and mostly stress-free and take place almost exclusively in quirky small towns. And if this Cozy Show takes place in a small town where the temperature drops below 70, you’d better believe we’re getting some great knitwear. See? Doesn’t all that already make you feel warm and, well, cozy?
The past few years have seen a real boom of Cozy Shows — what a time to be alive and wrapped in a blanket while clutching a mug of tea! — so if you don’t know where to begin on your cozy journey, we’re here to help. There’s no need to stress. We’re all very relaxed and kind-hearted here in the Cozy Show Headquarters. To help you figure out which of these current or recently ended series might be the right fit for you, we’ve assembled a guide based on your ideal level and type of coziness. Find your perfect match and then prepare to spend the rest of winter snuggled up on your sofa.
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I would like to be very cozy while basking in the warmth of strong female friendships
Your cozy rec is: Sweet Magnolias
There’s nary a knit to be found in this series set in a small South Carolina town — named Serenity, no less! — but Sweet Magnolias might be the coziest show on this list. Sure, 40-something best friends Maddie, Helen, and Dana Sue deal with some weighty and soapy story lines, including but not limited to teens in car accidents, infidelity, infertility, veterans with PTSD, and anger-management issues. And yet! These three women literally own and operate a day spa. What’s cozier than that? The stakes never feel all that high in Serenity. You know everything is going to work out in the end. Apologies will be made. The good guys will always win. Even the worst characters (I’m looking at you, man who has at one time or another abandoned all five of his children) get a redemption arc. And no one will ever, ever open a car wash within the Serenity city limits, so you can rest assured that all the swole men will continue to be forced to wash their trucks in broad daylight.
Cozy Show add-ons: southern hospitality; margaritas; townwide scavenger hunts; Chris Klein doing the wildest accent work you’ve ever seen on TV
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I would like to be quite cozy and it should be a period piece
Your cozy rec is: All Creatures Great and Small
One could argue that a lot of shows found on PBS Masterpiece are cozy shows — except Downton Abbey, that is a straight-up traumafest — but our sweet story about veterinarians in Yorkshire, England, in the 1930s and ’40s out-cozies them all. Sure, the World War II stuff is a downer, but who knew stories about doctors saving animals could warm our hearts so? Plus, the whole series kicks off with a medical professional leaving the big city to build a life in a small town, and if that isn’t one of the pillars of cozy shows, I don’t know what is.
Cozy Show add-ons: country weddings; strong and maternal housekeeper figures; so many cats
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I would like to be generally cozy and there should be spurs
Your cozy rec is: Ride
Hallmark’s canceled-too-soon series (save! This! Show!) about a dynastic bull-riding family trying to save their Colorado ranch does start out kind of bleak. But listen, if you’re going into a show about bull riders, you must expect that someone is going to die riding a bull. And someone does. In the very beginning. So, yes, there is a lot of grieving going on. But Ride gets real cozy, real fast. Nancy Travis is there, and she’s not going to let her ranch fail, okay? And yeah, the one guy falls in love with his brother’s widow, but they are very respectful about the whole thing, okay? And that girl has a secret identity to hide from her rich dad, but after one episode everyone is pretty cool with it, okay? Even that one time a character gets arrested and his mom, Nancy Travis, refuses to bail him out to teach him a lesson — rest assured it’s going to be fine. Stakes are generally low, and you know the good guys will eventually win. We’ve got snow-covered vistas. We’ve got warm outerwear with a southwestern vibe. And we’ve got cheesy heart-to-hearts taking place on horseback. Ride makes you feel both pretty darn cozy and like you could handle a lasso.
Cozy Show add-ons: ranchers opening a wedding venue; a healthy mix of live and mechanical bull-riding competitions
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I would like to be cozy while crying, and there should be wigs involved
Your cozy rec is: Firefly Lane
Firefly Lane is easily the saddest cozy show you’ll find on this list, but let us be real: Even with that big death at the end of the series (the series’ final episodes aired in April 2023), this show is rooted in cozy. The story of Tully and Kate’s four-decades-long friendship is about as earnest and cheesy as it gets: Friends are constantly holding one another for comfort, no one cares that everyone’s wigs look ridiculous, and Kate lives in a gorgeous house full of excellent blanket choices. The coziness cannot be ignored. Plus, the entire thing ends with one friend dancing to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” outside the other friend’s funeral. A feel-good funeral moment? You’re only getting that shit in the cozy universe.
Cozy Show add-ons: a teenager wearing the largest pair of glasses in television history and kind of making it work; a woman named Cloud
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I would like to be pretty cozy and will tolerate bodies being buried in the woods, but there better also be great knitwear
Your cozy rec is: Virgin River
Sweet, sweet Virgin River. It tries so hard to be, well, hard, but deep down it is one of the coziest shows to ever cozy. You can fill your Northern California small town with a vibrant drug-dealer scene; you can have a man help his lady bury the body of her abusive husband and lie about it to the cops; you can even have legitimately terrifying wildfires. Still, no one will ever forget that you are a show built on the premise of “medical professional runs from her past in the big city and falls in love in a small town”; your two main characters — who are in a swoony romance, by the way — live in the sweetest cabin on television; your town’s sewing circle is the in-crowd; and you have an annual lumberjack festival (see also: Christmas-tree decorating contest). Nurse Mel may go through some tough shit during her time in Virgin River, but come on: If your town’s morning hot spot is a bakery truck in an idyllic park, that’s cozy through and through.
Cozy Show add-ons: grouchy doctors who secretly have a heart of gold, conversations about glamping
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I would like to be cozy 50 percent of the time, and I find complicated father-daughter relationships soothing
Your cozy rec is: Sullivan’s Crossing
Ah yes, another entry in the “romances that kick off with a medical professional leaving the big city to start over in a small town” genre: Canada’s Sullivan’s Crossing. This series, about Maggie Sullivan, a neurosurgeon who is being sued for malpractice and so hides out on the campgrounds where she grew up with her estranged father, really straddles the line of cozy. It’s perfect for someone who’s not ready to fully commit to all that cozy shows entail but wants to figure out if cozy is right for them. There are head traumas and frat boys shooting a kind old man, but everyone always winds up okay. Maggie is definitely pricklier than most cozy protagonists, but all the small-town people forgive her, even when she’s a real dick. Chad Michael Murray and his perfect head of hair is there, and you should know he does spend time chopping wood. So really, it all evens out in the end.
Cozy Show add-ons: unrealistic medical-malpractice trials; sad hot widowers; campfires
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I would like to be only somewhat cozy and also there should be time travel
You’d think there wouldn’t be a match here, but nope, your cozy rec is: The Way Home
Time travel is inherently not cozy (please see: the traumafest that is Outlander) but holy hell, if Hallmark’s The Way Home didn’t figure out the cutest little way to have its characters pass through some mysterious rip in the space-time continuum: diving into a picturesque pond! Sure, sometimes it does look like they could drown in there, but mostly it’s fine. No one asks why mother-daughter time-travelers Kat and Alice keep showing up wet to places, but also, we don’t care. While Kat and Alice travel back and forth in time in order to heal their family’s broken relationships and solve a few Landry family mysteries, there are other not-so-cozy elements at play here, too, including pervasive, lingering grief; a woman forced to relive her father’s death; an audience forced to relive Y2K; a missing-child plot; the 1800s (as a whole); and watching a Gen-Zer take credit for an acoustic version of Britney Spears’s “Hit Me Baby One More Time.” And yet, there are some major cozy elements throughout this series: It kicks off with Kat and Alice leaving the big city for Kat’s childhood Canadian small town, most of it takes place on a lovely farm, there are copious hearts-to-hearts, there’s a sweet little romance, and Andie MacDowell’s hair is there. It might not be the coziest show on this list, but that’s still pretty damn cozy.
Cozy Show add-ons: idealized version of the 1990s; woman who raises bees; healing; a major plot point involving Sister Hazel’s 1996 hit “All For You”
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I would like to be so, so cozy, but I don’t want anyone to know I am into Cozy Shows so this Cozy Show needs to be dressed up in prestige-show clothing
Your cozy rec is: Ted Lasso
Surprise! Ted Lasso is built on the bones of a Cozy Show. The protagonist is a fish out of water in a new town? Cozy Show! Richmond is so cute and full of quirky supporting characters? Cozy Show! People learn lessons and things generally work out the way they’re supposed to? Cozy! Show! Watching Ted Lasso slowly morph from a heartwarming comedy into a soft drama in season three really solidified my theory that we’ve been watching a Cozy Show this entire time. Oh, they’re going to love and support each other on and off the pitch? Oh, they’re just going to clean up Sam Obisanya’s restaurant without asking him because they are kind and good and true friends? Oh, they’re gonna teach each other how to ride bikes?! That’s a damn Cozy Show right there.
Cozy Show add-ons: multiple Emmys; mustaches
Which Cozy Show Is Right for You?
