The 15 Most Calming Shows To Fall Asleep to, Ranked

Image via NBC Updated Aug 25, 2026, 6:27 AM EDT Jennie Richardson is a TV Features and Lists Writer for Collider, and a graduate student pursuing an MFA in Fiction Writing. In other words, she really loves stories. Sign in to your Collider account It is a truth universally acknowledged by television fans that certain shows are best watched at certain times of day. Phenomenal yet scary series like Midnight Mass and The Leftovers are often better watched during the day, while nighttime can be the perfect time to unwind with more lighthearted and low-key shows that will make fans laugh and help them relax before it is time to go to bed. Some television fans will watch or rewatch a few episodes of a more relaxing show before going to sleep, while others prefer to fall asleep with one of these shows on in the background. There are a number of shows that work really well for viewers looking for something like this, from sitcoms to reality competition shows. These are the most calming television shows to fall asleep to, ranked. 15 'Love Is Blind' (2020–Present) Image via Netflix There is something so calming and comforting about a reality dating show, and Love Is Blind takes this up a notch with its unique structure. The series brings in a bunch of singles each season, then has them meet each other while sitting in separate pods. Without seeing what the other person looks like, they are given time to talk, get to know each other, and possibly even fall in love. The catch is that they can't meet each other in person until they get engaged. Especially in the period of the season when the contestants are in the pods, Love Is Blind is a great show to throw on in the background while falling asleep. The contestants cannot even see each other, so there is not much to miss on the actual screen while listening to their voices. Additionally, it's an easy show to fall back into and keep up with after falling asleep or missing a few moments. 14 'Unsolved Mysteries' (1987–2009) Image via Netflix Sometimes, when looking for a show to throw on in the background or to watch while falling asleep for the night, a fictional series with a serialized format may not be the best choice. Instead, it can be ideal to watch something like Unsolved Mysteries, a documentary series that explores a number of unsolved crimes, ongoing mysteries, and unexplained events throughout each episode. Unsolved Mysteries makes for a great watch for viewers who are looking for something that will keep them engaged, but that won't make them feel lost if they sleep through an episode or two. Additionally, the series is straightforward in its storytelling due to its documentary structure, so it's easy to follow along for those who aren't feeling like paying a great deal of attention. 13 'Emily in Paris' (2020–2026) Image via Netflix Emily in Paris makes for an excellent watch—or rewatch. The series follows Emily Cooper (Lily Collins), an optimistic American woman who moves to Paris to work for a marketing firm. The series is the perfect mental vacation, full of beautiful views of Paris (and Rome in Season 4), as well as some seriously swoon-worthy romantic plotlines between Emily and her love interests. Emily in Paris is a very calming show to unwind to and even fall asleep to, as its light tone and easy pace make for a very comforting watch. Whether it be after watching a more intense show or simply on its own, Emily in Paris will make viewers feel instantly calm. Even when things get more dramatic between the characters, there is always this understanding that, somehow, everything is going to ultimately turn out okay for the characters in the end. 12 'Ted Lasso' (2020–2023) Image via Apple TV+ For those looking for a heartwarming feel-good show to watch before going to bed, Ted Lasso is a great choice, both to watch for the first time or to watch for the dozenth time. The series follows Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis), a college football coach from Kansas who moves to England to coach AFC Richmond's soccer team. The first season makes for an especially fantastic watch, as the owner of the team, Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham), secretly works against Ted and the team. Ted Lasso is the sort of comforting and calming show that makes for an excellent watch when looking to wind down and escape with something funny and engaging. It has some major plot points that viewers won't want to sleep through, both related to its character dynamics and its focus on soccer, but they can always rewind and watch it over again after waking up. 11 'Abbott Elementary' (2021–Present) Image via ABC Four seasons in, Abbott Elementary continues to be one of the funniest and most entertaining shows on television right now. The series follows the teachers working at Abbott Elementary School as they often have to fight an uphill battle to get the resources that their students need. They also deal with things like a ringworm outbreak, a number of not-so-friendly competitions between their classes, and rivalries with local schools. Abbott Elementary is definitely not a show that viewers will want to sleep through, as each episode is packed with jokes. That being said, it makes for a great show to unwind to, as viewers can get lost in the silly antics that take place among the staff and students of Abbott Elementary School. Whether it be to catch a new episode on a Wednesday night or to binge-watch one night, Abbott Elementary is a great show to watch before bed. 10 'Friends' (1994–2004) Image via NBC Whether it be during its late-night reruns or while rewatching the show in chronological order, Friends is the perfect show to watch for people who are having a hard time falling asleep. It is a true comfort show, with familiar and cozy settings like Monica (Courteney Cox) and Rachel's (Jennifer Aniston) apartment, Chandler (Matthew Perry) and Joey's (Matt LeBlanc) apartment, and, of course, Central Perk. Friends makes for an excellent series to fall asleep to, particularly for people who have already seen the show before. It will put viewers into a calm and happy mood with hilarious storylines like the friends competing to see who knows each other better, Chandler and Rachel stealing cheesecakes from their neighbor, Ross (David Schwimmer) having bad spray tan and teeth-whitening experiences, and Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) and Chandler playing chicken when the friends try to expose Chandler and Monica's relationship. 9 'The Good Place' (2016–2020) Image via NBC The Good Place follows Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell), a selfish, recently dead woman who has been mistakenly sent to The Good Place. In order to keep her cover from being blown and to keep herself from being sent to The Bad Place, Eleanor convinces her mistakenly assigned soulmate, former ethics and moral philosophy professor Chidi Anagonye (William Jackson Harper), to teach her how to become a good person. The Good Place has arguably the most serialized storyline and fast-paced plot of any sitcom, complete with a number of plot twists, often at the end of each episode. It's not a show to fall asleep during, as viewers will miss key plotlines. That being said, the tone and setting are so comforting that it is a great show to watch when looking to relax. Neighborhood 12358W, complete with all of its strange antics, makes for a delightful sitcom setting. Collider Exclusive · TV Medicine Quiz Which Fictional Hospital Would You Work Best In? The Pitt · ER · Grey's Anatomy · House · Scrubs Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television — brutal, chaotic, romantic, brilliant, and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out exactly where you belong. 🚨The Pitt 🏥ER 💉Grey's 🔬House 🩺Scrubs FIND YOUR HOSPITAL → 01 A critical patient comes through the door. What's your first instinct? Medicine under pressure reveals who you actually are. AStay completely present — block everything else out and work through it step by step, right now. BTriage fast and delegate — get the right people on the right problems immediately. CTrust my gut and move — I work best when I stop overthinking and just act. DAsk the question everyone else is ignoring — what's the thing that doesn't fit? ETake a breath, make a joke to cut the tension, and then get to work — panic helps no one. NEXT QUESTION → 02 Why did you go into medicine in the first place? The honest answer says more about you than the one you'd give in an interview. ABecause I wanted to be where it matters most — right at the edge, when someone's life is actually on the line. BBecause I wanted to help people — genuinely, one patient at a time, in a system that makes it hard. CBecause I was drawn to the intensity of it — the stakes, the drama, the feeling of being fully alive. DBecause medicine is the most interesting puzzle there is — and I needed a problem worth solving. EBecause I wanted to make a difference — and also, honestly, I didn't know what else to do with my life. NEXT QUESTION → 03 What do you actually want from the people you work with? Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are. ACompetence and calm — I need people who don't fall apart when things get bad. BTrust and reliability — I want to know that when I pass something off, it's handled. CConnection — I want colleagues who become family, even if that gets complicated. DIntelligence and the willingness to be challenged — I have no interest in people who just agree with me. EFriendship — people I actually like spending twelve hours a day with, because those hours are going to happen either way. NEXT QUESTION → 04 You lose a patient you fought hard to save. How do you carry it? Every doctor who's worked a long shift has had to answer this question. AI carry it. All of it. I don't look for ways to put it down — that weight is part of doing this work honestly. BI process it and move — you have to, or the next patient suffers for the one you just lost. CI feel it deeply and lean on the people around me — I don't think you're supposed to handle that alone. DI go back over every decision — not to punish myself, but because I need to understand what I missed. EI grieve it genuinely, find some way to laugh about something unrelated, and try to be kind to myself — imperfectly. NEXT QUESTION → 05 How would your colleagues describe the way you work? Your reputation on the floor is usually more accurate than your self-image. AIntense and completely present — no small talk during a shift, but exactly who you want there. BSteady and dependable — not the flashiest in the room but never the one who drops something. CPassionate and occasionally chaotic — brilliant on the hard cases, prone to drama everywhere else. DBrilliant and difficult — right more often than anyone else, and everyone knows it, including me. EWarm and self-deprecating — not the most intimidating presence, but genuinely good at this and easy to like. NEXT QUESTION → 06 How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure? Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice. AProtocol is the floor, not the ceiling — I follow it until the patient needs something it can't provide. BI respect it — the system is broken in places, but the structure is there for a reason and I work within it. CI follow it until my instincts tell me not to — and my instincts are usually right, even when they cause problems. DRules are for people who haven't thought hard enough about when to break them. EI try to follow it and mostly do — with a few memorable exceptions that still come up in meetings. NEXT QUESTION → 07 What does this job cost you personally? Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What's yours? AEverything outside these walls — I've given this job my full attention and the rest of my life has gone around it. BMy idealism, mostly — I came in believing the system could be fixed and I've made a complicated peace with that. CStability — my personal life has been as chaotic as the OR, and that's not entirely a coincidence. DMy relationships — I am not easy to know, and the people who've tried to would probably agree. EMy sense of gravity — I use humour as a coping mechanism, which not everyone appreciates in a hospital. NEXT QUESTION → 08 At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back? The answer to this question is the most honest thing about you. AThe fact that it's real — that nothing else I could be doing would matter this much, right now, today. BThe patients — individual human beings who needed something and got it because I was there. CThe people I work with — I have walked through impossible things with these people and I'd do it again. DThe next unsolved case — there's always another puzzle, and I'm not done yet. EBecause despite everything — the exhaustion, the loss, the absurdity — I actually love this job. REVEAL MY HOSPITAL → Your Assignment Has Been Made You Belong In…Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for. The PittYou are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown — one that puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn't let you look away. You need your work to be real, not romanticised — meaning over drama, honesty over aesthetics. You find purpose inside the work itself, not in the chaos surrounding it. You've made peace with the fact that this job takes from you constantly, and gives back in ways that are harder to name. Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center demands exactly that kind of person — and you would not want to be anywhere else. ERYou are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most essential. You show up, do the work, absorb the losses, and come back the next day without needing the job to be anything other than what it is. You care about patients as individual human beings, not as cases to solve or dramas to live through. You believe in the system even when it fails you — and you understand that emergency medicine is about holding the line just long enough. ER is television about endurance. You have it. Grey's AnatomyYou came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door. You feel things fully and form deep attachments to the people you work with. Your personal and professional lives are permanently, chaotically entangled — and that entanglement drives both your greatest disasters and your most remarkable saves. You understand that extraordinary medicine often happens at the intersection of clinical skill and profound human connection. It's messy at Grey Sloan. You would not have it any other way. HouseYou are drawn to the problem above everything else — the symptom that doesn't fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one. You're not primarily motivated by the patient as a person — though you are capable of caring, even if you'd deny it. You work best when the stakes are highest and the standard answer is wrong. Princeton-Plainsboro exists to house one extraordinary, impossible mind — and everyone around that mind is there because they're smart enough to keep up. The only way forward here is to think harder than everyone else in the room. That is exactly what you do. ScrubsYou understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure — and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time. You are warm, self-aware, and funnier than most people in your field. You use humour to get through terrible moments — and at Sacred Heart, that's not a flaw, it's a survival strategy. You lean on the people around you and let them lean back. The laughter and the grief are genuinely inseparable here. Scrubs is a show about learning to become someone worthy of the job. You are still very much in the middle of that process — which is exactly right. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 8 'Is It Cake?' (2022–Present) Image via Netflix For those who tend to become very focused on serialized plotlines and fictional characters, a reality competition show can be the perfect thing to watch when trying to relax. One such show that is very fun but not too stressful is Is It Cake? The series is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: skilled cake artists compete to bake and decorate cakes to look like objects, and then the judges have to guess which is the object and which is cake. Due to its silly premise, ability to not take itself too seriously, and abundance of delicious-looking cakes, Is It Cake? is a very fun watch to either throw on in the background or to focus on. Viewers can have fun trying to guess which of the two options is the cake, as well as trying to learn how the artists make these cakes seem so realistic when compared to the objects that they are supposed to imitate. Image via NBC Community follows Jeff Winger (Joel McHale), a once-successful lawyer who has to attend community college after it's revealed that he faked his Bachelor's degree. While trying to get a classmate, Britta (Gillian Jacobs) to go out with him, Jeff accidentally forms a really special, weird, and codependent study group. The series balances between classic college scenarios, homages to film and television, and more inventive science fiction storylines for a captivating watch. For dreams of paintball and hot lava competitions that take place at a weird and wondrous community college, Community is the perfect show to put on while falling asleep. This has to be for a rewatch, of course, because the plot, characters, and pacing of the jokes require viewers' full attention on the first watch. There is ultimately just something so comforting about Greendale Community College, and it makes the show one that continues to be a silly and calming watch each time. 6 'New Girl' (2011–2018) Image via FOX New Girl starts out with a simple but funny premise: after getting cheated on by her boyfriend of six years, the quirky and optimistic Jess Day (Zooey Deschanel) moves into an apartment with three guys she met on Craigslist. The series becomes something truly special due to its weird and specific humor, its unique and nuanced characters, and its truly phenomenal character dynamics—both romantic and platonic. Because New Girl follows a traditional sitcom structure, it is a show that viewers can fall asleep to, then jump right into the next episode without being confused. It's a funny, sweet, and comforting watch with found family dynamics, a lovely setting in Loft 4D, and a number of really fantastic episodes. New Girl will calm down stressed viewers and give them a laugh if they are looking to unwind.