Evil twins, amnesia and 24 episodes a season: that's the pitch Mamamia is making in a new list of nine shows for anyone ready to "embrace your mum's soap opera culture." The outlet's argument is that viewers are craving the reliable, dramatic, low-stakes pleasure of old-school soaps, and its picks are shows with long runs, messy plots and plenty of camp.
The nine, per Mamamia: Desperate Housewives, Pretty Little Liars, Once Upon a Time, Jane the Virgin, Riverdale, Nashville, Hart of Dixie, Sex and the City and Glee.
The full list is below, but first, the real question: why now?
The Case for Shows With No Homework
The timing argument, as framed in the coverage, is that prestige TV has been getting shorter, darker and more demanding, and audiences are pushing back with comfort watches that are easy to dip into and emotionally familiar. The renewed appetite for daytime-TV energy, per the same reasoning, taps into nostalgia, anti-binge fatigue and a desire for shows that don't require homework.
That last phrase is the one that sticks. It's hard not to wonder how many of us have a half-finished, grimly acclaimed limited series sitting in our watchlist like an unpaid bill. A show where a character can come back from amnesia and nobody needs a recap podcast to explain it? That's a different kind of relief.
The 24-episode season is also a quiet hero here. Long seasons mean room for filler, and filler, as the list implicitly argues, is part of the comfort. You can miss a week and the show will wait for you.
The Nine, Sorted by Soap Flavour
Mamamia's list doesn't come with a plot synopsis for each entry in the material we have, so rather than invent details, here's how the nine group together by the kind of comfort they promise. The groupings are my read, not the outlet's.
The Suburban Scandal Set
Desperate Housewives leads the list, and honestly, it's the most natural fit for the "mum's soap opera" brief. A neighbourhood-set drama with a big ensemble is soap architecture in its purest form, even when it's dressed in prime-time clothes.
Sex and the City is the oddball in a list this chaotic, but its inclusion makes sense as comfort viewing: a familiar ensemble, relationship drama, and a format built for dipping in and out.
The Small-Town and Southern Set
Hart of Dixie and Nashville both sit in the list too. Pairing them makes sense as a mood: regional settings, ongoing romantic entanglements and the kind of long-run storytelling that rewards loyalty rather than punishing a missed episode.
The Teen-Drama Chaos Engines
Pretty Little Liars, Riverdale and Glee form the high-camp end of the list. These are the shows where the plot is allowed to get gloriously out of hand, and where, in the words of Mamamia's framing, absurd twists are part of the appeal. If your tolerance for melodrama is high, this is the section to start with.
The Genre-Flavoured Soaps
Once Upon a Time and Jane the Virgin round things out. Both wear their heightened storytelling openly, which is arguably what makes them such good soap-adjacent picks: they know exactly how big they're playing it.
How to Pick Your Starting Point
Mamamia's angle is to frame these as comfort viewing for people who've had enough of homework TV, so here's a quick, unscientific way to choose:
- Want neighbourhood gossip? Desperate Housewives.
- Want maximum teen chaos? Pretty Little Liars or Riverdale.
- Want music with your melodrama? Nashville or Glee.
- Want a familiar friend group? Sex and the City.
- Want something fairy-tale or tongue-in-cheek? Once Upon a Time or Jane the Virgin.
- Want small-town charm? Hart of Dixie.
The Real Appeal: Reliability
The soap tradition has always been about reliability: the same faces, the same stakes, a plot that will cheerfully swerve into a love triangle if things get quiet. What Mamamia is really selling isn't nostalgia for any single show. It's nostalgia for a viewing habit, the one where television was something you let wash over you rather than something you had to prepare for.
And there's a certain defiance in that. In an era of prestige TV that demands your full attention, choosing the show where somebody might return from the dead (or from amnesia, which is cheaper) is practically a political act.
So pick a long-running favourite, ignore the guilt, and let the twins be evil. Your mum, it turns out, was onto something.
