The 10 Best Hipster TV Shows

Hipsters are ubiquitous these days. Once mocked for their opposition to mainstream culture, they have gradually become part of the norm they so detested. As a result, these trend followers are not exactly novel characters in movies or television anymore. Their ways of thinking and or fashion have become so normalized, it’s not particularly unusual to see on the big or small screens.

That being said, there have been a number of televisions shows that depict and glorify hipsters. These series helped affected pop culture in various ways, or they marched to the beat of their drum with very little notice.

Here are the ten most hipster TV shows around.

10 Casual

If there’s one show that feeds into hipster ways while also mocking the very same mindset, that would be Jason Reitman’s Hulu series Casual. For four seasons, a divorced therapist tries to raise her surly daughter while managing her codependent brother. In the same vein, the show was also distinctly mumblecore.

9 I Just Want My Pants Back

If there’s one network that adeptly captured the hipster spirit, it’s MTV. For all the complaints the channel gets about moving away from showing music videos, it did hipsters right with the cheeky sitcom I Just Want My Pants Back.

In this show based on David J. Rosen’s novel of the same name, an aimless twenty-something looks for love as we as the meaning to life in a post-college New York.

8 Workaholics

Bro humor and hipster isms collide in Workaholics. Three twenty-something-year-old best friends — Adam, Blake, and Ders, who are real-life buds — all work in the same, low-paying office job.

On the bright side, they live together and frequently embark on outlandish misadventures. In their downtime, Adam, Blake, and Ders party it up, fail in the romance department, and skirt by in life as their dirty thirties approach.

7 Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23

Unfortunately short-lived and shown a bit out of order, ABC’s sitcom Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 has developed a cult following long after its cancellation.

Small fish June enters a big pond when she moves to New York for a great job. Sadly, the company goes bust and she’s forced to find less-paying work elsewhere. She also has to move in with an eccentric young woman named Chloe. Together, they butt heads while developing the weirdest friendship.

6 Girls

HBO’s Girls is practically quintessential viewing for all hipsters. It’s a love/hate kind of show that has a number of instances of brilliant writing. Although the characters don’t particularly come off as likable, they do feel palpable.

5 Search Party

One of the best and most underseen shows to come out in the past five years is Search Party. Alia Shawkat of Arrested Development fame plays a post-grad student who becomes dangerously obsessed with a former classmate’s disappearance. Could she have been murdered?

Search Party is, at times, a parody of hipsters, but the series eventually becomes a deeper and more psychological character study. Two more seasons have been approved for HBO Max.

4 Underemployed

MTV delivered another showed aimed at those trying to find themselves after graduating college. This time around, five close friends are each hit with unusual personal problems while still confining in one another.

Lou wants to be a lawyer, Raviva dumps Lou to pursue music, Sophia struggles with her sexuality and finding a way to become a writer, Daphne is torn between what she has to do and what she wants to do, and Miles learns the harsh reality of modeling.

3 Broad City

Broad City is the epitome of friendship goals. In this Comedy Central original series, Ilana and Abbi are the bestest of friends who found each other while navigating their twenties in New York. They may not have much money to their name, but the pair still has each other’s backs when the going gets tough (which is, frequently).

In Broad City, the duo get in complicated, sometimes surreal, situations that prove how life just doesn’t always go one’s way.

2 Happy Endings

In a group of already colorful friends, David and Alex’s relationship was the glue that kept them all together. When the couple calls it quits — Alex dumps David at their wedding, no less — their friends struggle with picking a side. Rather, they remain close and decide to stay close with both Alex and David.

Happy Endings has been called the modern Friends. They have similar premises, but, the former is largely more strange with its peculiar sense of humor and eccentric characters.

1 Skins

One of the most bracing teen shows to come out in the last two decades is the British drama Skins. For six seasons, three sets of diverse teenagers shocked viewers with an unadulterated look at today’s youth.

Every two seasons, the cast was replaced with a brand-new one. A few years after the show ended, a three-part revival aired.

There was also an American-Canadian remake that aired on MTV in 2011. It was cancelled after one season, though.

About The Author