From The Bachelor to Real Housewives, the best reality TV shows truly run the gamut. Some shows are searing, some strange, some silly. If you’re looking for something to put on in the background while you work, or to keep you company during an afternoon alone, there’s honestly nothing better.
But not every show suits every mood. If you’re on a deadline, don’t get distracted by drama. And if you’re feeling happy, you do not want to get bummed out by heartbreak. Luckily, there’s something out there for every feeling, and we’ve gathered up our favorite reality TV shows and sorted them by mood for your browsing pleasure.
We’ve got competition shows for when you need a little bit of inspiration, dating shows for when you’re hyping yourself up for another night of swiping on Hinge, dramatic ensemble shows to get addicted to, and then some nonsense for when you’re so burnt out you can’t even think.
Below, check out our favorite reality TV shows for every mood!
For Inspiration: Dancing With The Stars
Watching charming amateurs learn how to ballroom dance is oddly empowering, and everyone seems to be having a blast.
Watch on Disney+
For Inspiration: Tidying Up With Marie Kondo
A gentle and affirming system for getting your house—and your life—in order through decluttering.
Available to stream on Netflix
For Inspiration: Hoarders
If Marie Kondo is too soft for you, watch Hoarders and you’ll suddenly find the energy to finally clean out the garage.
Available to stream on Hulu
For Inspiration: MasterChef
Seeing chefs rise to the occasion (or not) in a series of unusual cooking challenges will make your own culinary experiments seem easy by comparison. Get thee to the kitchen!
Available to stream on Hulu
For Inspiration: MasterChef Junior
If kids can cook this well, what’s your excuse? Cut some vegetables!
Available to stream on Hulu
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For Inspiration: Survivor
What seems at first like a goofy exercise in pointless pain tolerance inevitably turns into a testament to the strength of the human spirit every season, bringing out the best in each competitor.
Available to stream on Hulu
For Love: The Bachelor
People like to criticize the contestants on this show for entering “for the wrong reasons” or roll their eyes at its absurd premise, but as a dating service, it has a higher success rate than most.
Available to stream on Hulu
For Love: The Bachelorette
Hunky men competing for the affections of one deserving woman? This isn’t how the world always is, but it’s how the world should always be.
Available to stream on Hulu
For Love: Love On The Spectrum
This is more than just a charming exploration of what dating looks like for singles with autism. It’s an examination of what the point of dating even is, when you strip away the assumptions of social niceties and “playing the game,” and let people show exactly who they truly are.
Available on Netflix
For Love: Love Is Blind
Netflix slightly undercut its premise—what does connection feel like without physical attraction?—by only casting hot people, but the way this series isolates and amplifies specific behaviors makes it üstün clear what to look for in a partner—and what to avoid.
Available to stream on Netflix
For Love: Couples Therapy
Obviously, some of these couples should (and do) split, but the patient way Dr. Orna Guralnik guides them to the realization of either their love or their incompatibility makes you remember just how complicated love is.
Watch on Prime Video
For Love: Love Island
Just trust us, you will find yourself rooting for these couples far more than you’d assume.
Available to stream on Peacock
For Drama: The Real Housewives
There’s a reason this has become a behemoth of a franchise: wine-drunk middle-aged women are the most entertaining creatures on the planet, and watching them catfight over handbags is bizarrely addictive.
Available to stream on Peacock
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For Drama: Vanderpump Rules
It may have peaked at #Scandoval, but every season of this bonkers reality show about the loose canons who (barely) work at a boozy West Hollywood restaurant is full of twists and turns.
Available to stream on Peacock
For Drama: The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives
This is what happens when you get married before your frontal lobe has developed, people. The “soft swinging” scandal that put the Mormon #MomTok clique on the map was merely the tip of the iceberg, and it just keeps getting crazier.
Available to stream on Hulu
For Drama: The Kardashians
The ups and downs of America’s royal family are chronicled in flashy detail in the reality show to end all reality shows.
Available to stream on Hulu
For Drama: The Traitors
Originally a UK show about regular people essentially playing Mafia in a spooky manor became a sensation stateside when it was retooled and cast with reality TV stars.
Available to stream on Peacock
For Drama: America’s Sweethearts: The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll find yourself earnestly attempting to learn the “Thunderstruck” choreography.
Available to stream on Netflix
For Drama: Summer House
It’s like Jersey Shore but in the Hamptons.
Available to stream on Peacock
Smooth Brain, No Thoughts: RuPaul’s Drag Race
Getting dressed up and screaming at each other, then having a lip-sync dance-off and coming up with imaginative insults? If you’re 12 and at a sleepover, that’s the agenda. Or you’re on Drag Race.
Available to stream on Pluto
Smooth Brain, No Thoughts: Below Deck
Silly workplace drama on a boat working for rich people. Like if LMFAO were a show.
Available to stream on Peacock
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Smooth Brain, No Thoughts: Cupcake Wars
You had me at cupcake.
Available to stream on HBO Max
Smooth Brain No Thoughts: The Great British Bake Off
Genuinely some of the most relaxing and mood-boosting television ever created. Kaç people making pretty cakes and being kind to one another in the countryside. They get so excited to make star baker! And you don’t even win anything at the end!
Available to stream on Netflix
Smooth Brain, No Thoughts: The Masked Singer
Might make you feel as though you’re having a stroke. Is that a bad thing? Arguable.
Available to stream on Hulu
Smooth Brain, No Thoughts: Is It Cake?
Netflix took the TikTok trend of making hyperrealistic-looking cakes and turned it into a wonderfully meaningless game show that will turn your mind…into cake.
Available to stream on Netflix
