Shows to Watch With Your Teen
A series gives a parent and a 12- to 15-year-old something a movie can't: a standing date. One episode after dinner, a running joke you both get, an argument about what happens next. These are shows that genuinely work for both of you, not ones you sit through for your teen's sake or they sit through for yours.
Every pick comes from our parents' guide, and the rule is a series with a guide age of 11 to 15. Most land at 13 or 14. The distinction worth knowing is that shows change as they go. Stranger Things and Wednesday get darker season by season, while The Good Place and Schitt's Creek stay level. Our age covers the whole run, so a younger teen may be fine with early seasons well before the later ones.
Mix the genres: a comedy for school nights, a fantasy or drama for weekends, and a reality show like The Traitors (US) or Alone for when nobody wants to commit. The notes flag the heavier material, such as suicide in Frieren: Beyond Journey's End and sexual content in Never Have I Ever, so you can decide what to preview. For films to share, see Movies for 13-Year-Olds and Movies for 15-Year-Olds. For more TV, try the best comedy series and sci-fi and fantasy series.
The Good Place
Series · 2016The easiest place to start: a selfish woman lands in the afterlife by mistake and tries to earn her spot with help from an ethics professor. Four seasons, finished, and it sneaks real moral philosophy into the jokes. Swearing is replaced by 'fork' and 'shirt,' but sex jokes are frequent and drugs come up in conversation.
Stranger Things
Series · 2016The show your teen's friends have already seen, and worth sharing, but it darkens a lot. Season 1 is spooky kids-on-bikes adventure; the last two seasons bring gory killings of teens and a massacre of children. Expect frequent s-words, teen drinking and pot, implied teen sex, and a flashback to a suicide attempt. 14 for the full run.
The Traitors (US)
Series · 2023A murder-mystery party game in a Scottish castle, presided over by Alan Cumming in a parade of extravagant outfits, and very easy to watch as a family. Nobody is harmed: being 'murdered' just means leaving the game. F-words are bleeped, wine flows at dinner, and the whole thing rewards lying, which makes for a good talk afterward.
Spy x Family
Series · 2022A spy, an assassin and a mind-reading little girl fake being a family, and only the kid knows the whole truth. Anime that's funny and genuinely sweet. Action means stylized gunfights and knife kills with a little blood. The mother gets drunk in a couple of episodes, and the father's wartime childhood brings real loss later on.
Schitt's Creek
Series · 2015A rich family loses everything and has to live in the motel of a town they once bought as a joke. It starts prickly and grows into one of the kindest comedies on TV, including a loving same-sex romance. Know that the f-words are few but uncensored, sex talk is frequent, and the parents get high in season 1.
Wednesday
Series · 2022Jenna Ortega's deadpan Wednesday Addams solves monster murders at a boarding school for outcasts. Teens love her, and parents get the Addams Family jokes. Romance stays at kissing, and the language at s-words. The gore runs heavier than the name suggests: a student killed in episode one, mangled bodies, a piranha prank and, in season 2, a brain-eating zombie and a character losing both parents.
Alone
Series · 2015Survivalists dropped into the wilderness, filming themselves until they can't take any more. Teens who like the outdoors or challenge videos get hooked fast. There's no sex or drinking, and stronger swearing is bleeped. What to know: hunting is constant, with animals killed and butchered on camera, and the hunger and loneliness bring some contestants to tears.
Cobra Kai
Series · 2018The Karate Kid rivalry picked up decades later, and a rare show that a parent who grew up on the 1984 film and a 13-year-old enjoy equally. Fights happen almost every episode, with injuries but little gore, and the final season turns deadly. Expect regular s-words, some f-words in later seasons, teen drinking, implied sex and plenty of bullying to talk about.
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End
Series · 2023A fantasy that starts where most end: the quest is won, and the elf mage who will outlive her companions sets out to understand what she missed. Slow and lovely. Language is mild. Demon fights can turn bloody, one demon is forced to behead herself, and a flashback shows a girl about to jump into a ravine.
Gilmore Girls
Series · 2000A fast-talking single mom and her bookish daughter, which makes it a natural show for a parent and teen to share. The swearing is mild. As Rory grows up, expect underage drinking, implied sex, including with a married ex, and a season 3 scene, played down by the show, where a boyfriend keeps pushing for sex after a no.
Taskmaster
Series · 2015British comedians compete at absurd tasks set by a stern host and scored with cheerful unfairness. Teens and parents laugh at exactly the same things. The catch is that uncut episodes are full of f-words and crude sex jokes, with the odd bit of comic near-nudity. Bleeped versions catch most, but not all, of it.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Series · 2022Old-fashioned, optimistic Star Trek with a new planet or puzzle most weeks, so you can dip in anywhere. Language is mild, and sex is implied, with only a bare back shown. Know that the Gorn episodes are full horror films, with creatures hatching out of people and half-eaten bodies; preview those if your teen scares easily. One episode also turns on a child kept in suffering to power a city.
Love on the Spectrum (US)
Series · 2022Autistic adults dating, filmed with warmth, humor and no condescension at all. It opens easy conversations about asking someone out, rejection and kindness. Content is light: kissing and flirting, drinks on dates, and the occasional audible f-word. Nothing frightening, though some awkward first dates are hard to watch without wincing.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Series · 2013A goofy police comedy that goes down easily in half-hour bites. The jokes are silly enough for younger teens, and the serious episodes on racial profiling and police brutality are worth watching together. Stronger swearing is bleeped, but innuendo is constant, drugs turn up briefly for laughs, and one storyline deals with a reported sexual assault.
His Dark Materials
Series · 2019Philip Pullman's fantasy trilogy, adapted over three seasons: a girl and her animal-shaped soul cross worlds to rescue stolen children. Almost no swearing or sex. It is frightening and sad, though, with children cut from their daemons in experiments, more than one child's death, parent figures killed, a man who poisons himself to escape soul-draining specters, and a church villainous enough to prompt questions in religious homes.
Haikyu!!
Series · 2014A short kid with a huge jump joins his high school volleyball team. Built on teamwork and effort, and an easy sell to any teen who plays a team sport. Nothing scary, and nothing sexual beyond locker-room shirtlessness and two boys swooning over the team manager. Swearing is frequent but mostly mild, with one f-word noted. The coach smokes.
Never Have I Ever
Series · 2020Mindy Kaling's comedy about a brainy, impulsive teen grieving her father, and honest about Indian American family life. Good for watching with a 14-year-old and talking after. Sex is the main subject, though: constant frank talk, a long plot about losing her virginity and, in the final season, two partners shown in bed before and after. Teen drinking, pot, panic attacks and a classmate's eating disorder too.
The Beatles: Get Back
Series · 2021Nearly eight hours in the room with the Beatles in January 1969, as songs take shape out of noodling and arguments, ending with the rooftop concert. For music-loving teens and the parents who raised them on it. Expect more than 25 f-words, crude jokes and nonstop cigarettes; there's no violence or nudity.
Andor
Series · 2022Star Wars made for grown-ups, and the one to share with a 14- or 15-year-old who thinks the franchise is for kids. Two complete seasons about how a thief becomes a rebel. Swearing is sparse, but it is dark: torture, a massacre of civilians, suicides, a brothel setting early on and an attempted rape in season 2.
Ghosts (2021)
Series · 2021A couple inherit a country house full of ghosts from different centuries, and only the wife can see them. Broad, easy sitcom fun for a family evening. The TV-PG rating undersells it: innuendo is constant, a pantless ghost is blurred, one ghost turns out to have died by suicide, and later seasons add drug humor, from pot smoking to cocaine.
Arcane
Series · 2021For the older end of this range: a gorgeous animated drama, based on League of Legends, about two sisters on opposite sides of a divided city. It isn't a cartoon for kids, though: bloody fights, a child shot dead, a drug that brings addiction and monstrous changes, a stopped suicide attempt, scattered f-words, and a brief sex scene in each season, one with partial nudity.
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Picks are editorial recommendations. Streaming availability changes by region and over time — the “where to stream” links check current availability on JustWatch.