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Spending most of your time at home will motivate you to finally turn your attention to the activities you have been putting off. These days everyone has run out of excuses for not being able to do whatever it is you have been meaning to do. I’ve been guilty of having a long mental check list of shows, movies, video games, and books I always tell myself I would make time for but never do. When going out and being socially close to other people is temporarily out of the question, your next best option is to focus on home activities. Lately, I’ve been catching up on a number of Netflix shows that have been sitting in my queue for months. Here are some of the shows I’ve been watching when I need a break from the dreary news on TV.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Part 3 of this darker take on the Archie Comics series released on Netflix back in January, and just last month I was finally able to go through the new installment in a few weeks. Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) has a lot on her plate between rescuing her boyfriend Nick (Gavin Leatherwood) from Hell and warding off attempts to be overthrown as the rightful heir of the Queen of Hell, all the while maintaining her high school life with her mortal friends Harvey (Ross Lynch), Roz (Jazz Sinclair), and Theo (Lachlan Watson). If these details sound confusing, you would have to watch the show from the beginning to get up to speed. And this doesn’t even begin to cover the other crazy and shocking developments that happen throughout Part 3.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a big departure from the Sabrina the Teenage Witch TV show I grew up with, starring Melissa Joan Hart, but it’s exactly why I keep coming back to this new Sabrina over and over again. The show is different and more mature despite being a story that follows teen witches practicing dark magic and praising Satan. It’s also aptly a Sabrina for our modern times. Kiernan Shipka’s Sabrina is a girl with spunk and is more likely to take matters into her own hands to save herself or her friends from a sticky situation. Looking back on Melissa Joan Hart’s Sabrina, she’s a product of a time period when everything was maybe a bit more innocent and simple. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I did grow up in the ’90s and lived for the cheesy rosiness of that era. Now I much prefer my fictional TV to be a little more grounded and reflective of the times we’re living in.

Castlevania

Up until about a year ago Castlevania was a show on Netflix that also took me some time to get around to watching. Based on the video game series, Castlevania follows the adventures of the last surviving member of a famous vampire hunter family Trevor Belmont (voiced by Richard Armitage), who joins forces with a Speaker named Sypha Belnades (voiced by Alejandra Reynoso), and Adrian Alucard Tepes (voiced by James Callis), a half human and half vampire, to stop Dracula’s (voiced by Graham McTavish) plans to wipe out the whole human race after those same humans kill his beloved wife Lisa (voiced Emily Swallow). After bingeing the first two seasons of the show last year, I was really excited to see how a third season would play out.

With *SPOILER ALERT* Dracula dead and gone back in Season 2, and typically being the main villain of the Castlevania games, there had to be a new threat and formidable villain Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard needed to go up against, right? Luckily, last month’s release of Season 3 answered all those questions and raised a number of new ones. Old favorites returned with some new characters added into the mix, such as Saint Germain (voiced by Bill Nighy), The Judge (voiced by Jason Isaacs), and many more. Just because one strong and powerful vampire had been eliminated, doesn’t mean there aren’t others who are looking to fill the spot that has been left behind. There’s a reason why Castlevania has been praised as one of the best adaptations of a video game series. The political intrigues, philosophical musings, and quotable dialogue from certain characters makes this particular anime an engrossing series to watch. Season 4 can’t come soon enough!

The Witcher

I’m beginning to see a pattern here, as I glance over my choice of shows in the last month. I must be in a dark fantasy type of mood. The Witcher, starring Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia, is the current show I’ve been watching in the last week after I finished Season 3 of Castlevania. Geralt is, well, a Witcher who travels from town to town to slay monsters for coin and sometimes saves cursed wretches. Based on the book series by Andrzej Sapkowski, which also got adapted into a popular video game series by CD Projekt Red, The Witcher has a very fascinating and layered character in Geralt of Rivia. I couldn’t help but notice that the show feels as if it’s channeling Game of Thrones with the gratuitous violence and nudity, but I think that’s where the similarities end. For one thing, I feel like the women in the world of The Witcher feature more prominently and are in seats of power far more than what I’ve seen in Game of Thrones. The women in The Witcher seem to have agency over themselves and their circumstances. I could be wrong, as I’m only four episodes into the show, but that has been my overall impression so far. With each episode I watch The Witcher is fast becoming another Netflix favorite, and it has my increased my desire to finally play the games once I’m done with the show.

Self-isolating at home isn’t so bad when you have got some great TV to keep you company. What shows have you been watching or catching up on?