20 best shows like Permanent Vacation (1980)

Nadia keeps dying and reliving her 36th birthday party. She's trapped in a surreal time loop -- and staring down the barrel of her own mortality.

After a traumatic year, all an Indian-American teen wants is to go from pariah to popular -- but friends, family and feeling won't make it easy on her.

This scripted anthology series mashes up wildly different genres to tell suspenseful stories with funny, imaginative twists. Each episode turns familiar tropes inside out to create a curated and eclectic collection of stories filled with equal parts nostalgia and modern satire.

Elizabeth Thatcher, a young school teacher from a wealthy Eastern family, migrates from the big city to teach school in a small coal mining town in the west.

The Doom Patrol’s members each suffered horrible accidents that gave them superhuman abilities — but also left them scarred and disfigured. Traumatized and downtrodden, the team found purpose through The Chief, who brought them together to investigate the weirdest phenomena in existence — and to protect Earth from what they find.

Louis C.K. stars as a fictionalized version of himself; a comedian and newly divorced father raising his two daughters in New York City.

Glee is an American teen musical comedy-drama television series that airs on the Fox network in the United States. It focuses on the reconstituted William McKinley High School glee club, New Directions, which competes on the show choir competition circuit while its disparate members deal with relationships, sexuality, social issues, and learning to become an effective team.

With better luck, better choices, better posture...Josh Corman could’ve been a rock star. Now he teaches fifth grade, and though he loves his students, he still struggles to find happiness and meaning in a world that sometimes feels short on both.

The Adventures of Pete & Pete is an American children's television series produced by Wellsville Pictures and broadcast by Nickelodeon. The show featured humorous and surreal elements in its narrative, and many recurring themes centered on two brothers both named Pete Wrigley, and their various interactions with family, friends, and enemies.The show was created by Will McRobb and Chris Viscardi and began as minute-long shorts in 1989 that aired in between regular programs. Owing to the popularity of the shorts, five half-hour specials were made, followed by a regular half-hour series that ran for three seasons and continued in reruns until around 1999. The N aired reruns of the show between 2002–2003. The first two seasons were released on DVD in 2005; the third was planned for 2006 but was indefinitely postponed.Jason Ankeny of Allmusic called the series "the greatest children's show ever," while IGN called it "One of the most well-written kids shows ever."

It's 1996 in a town called Boring, Oregon, where high school misfits in the AV and drama clubs brave the ups and downs of teenage emotions in the VHS era.

Having gone their separate ways since the original series ended 19 years ago, the cast of Beverly Hills, 90210 reunites when one of them suggests it’s time to get a reboot up and running. But getting it going might make for an even more delicious soap than the reboot itself.

When ambitious Chicago marketing exec Emily unexpectedly lands her dream job in Paris, she embraces a new life as she juggles work, friends and romance.

A provocative and darkly comic meditation on the disparate forces polarizing present-day American culture, as experienced by the members of a progressive multi-ethnic family — a philosophy professor and his wife, their adopted children from Vietnam, Liberia and Colombia and their sole biological child — and a contemporary Muslim family, headed by a psychiatrist who is treating one of their children.

Thom Payne is a 44 year-old man whose world is thrown into disarray when his 25 year-old "wunderkind" boss arrives, saying things like "digital," "social" and "viral." Is he in need of a "rebranding," or does he just have a "low joy ceiling?" Maybe pursuing happiness is a fool's errand? Happiness after all is pretty high bar. In a world as absurd as ours, maybe the best anyone can hope for is happyish.

Following an emotional breakup, tough but tender FBI super-agent Will Chase (codename: “Whiskey Cavalier”) is assigned to work with badass CIA operative Frankie Trowbridge (codename: “Fiery Tribune”). Together, they lead an inter-agency team of flawed, funny and heroic spies who periodically save the world (and each other) while navigating the rocky roads of friendship, romance and office politics.

A coming of age comedy following a diverse group of teenage friends as they confront the challenges of growing up in gritty inner-city Los Angeles.

Frankie Gaines looks like a typical teenager, but she's actually a cutting edge, experimental android who must hide her true identity to avoid being tracked down by the evil tech company EGG Labs.

After moving to The Coterie in Downtown Los Angeles, Callie and Mariana Foster realize that living on their own is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

In this mismatched buddy cop dramedy, an amazingly handsome, happy-go-lucky FBI agent is paired with a local, hard scrabble Michigan homicide detective. As they solve crimes together, their polar opposite methods only slightly outweigh their disdain for each other.

Crash-landed alien Harry takes on the identity of a small-town Colorado doctor. Arriving with a secret mission, he starts off living a simple life…but things get a bit rocky when he’s roped into solving a local murder and realizes he needs to assimilate into his new world. As he does, he begins to wrestle with the moral dilemma of his mission and asking the big life questions like: “Are human beings worth saving?” and “Why do they fold their pizza before eating it?”

Four Republican senators share the same D.C. house rental, and face re-election battles, looming indictments, and parties -- all with a sense of humor.

Enlightened follows the story of Amy, a self-destructive executive, who, after a very public breakdown and a subsequent philosophical awakening in rehabilitation, tries to get her life back together.

When family outcast Lucky Flynn learns that his mother is dying, he decides to drive to the other side of Australia to see her, packing nothing but an upright piano for the journey. But his plans are soon turned upside down when he meets the runaway teenager Meg, who’s dealing with some family demons of her own.

June and Oscar live a comfortable but very predictable wedded life when suddenly they find themselves in a completely unexpected situation, raising questions about love and marriage.

Harriet, Matthew and Malcolm couldn't be any more different, but when they cross paths, they realize they're all looking for a fresh start. The most unlikely of people are starting a law practice in the most unlikely of places -- a rundown shoe store.

Faced with finding a kidney donor, newly divorced dad Drew is at the end of his rope when he runs into Gina, a rough-around-the edges woman from his past who volunteers her own. Together they form an unlikely bond and begin a journey that will change both of their lives.

Baby Daddy follows Ben, a young man in his early 20s living the life of a bachelor in New York City with his buddy, Tucker, and his brother, Danny. Their lives are turned upside down when they come home one day to find a baby girl left on the doorstep by an ex-girlfriend of Ben's. After much deliberation, Ben decides to raise the baby with the help of his friends and his protective and sometimes over-bearing mother, Bonnie, and his close female friend, Riley.

Two strangers are drawn to a mysterious pharmaceutical trial that will, they're assured, with no complications or side-effects whatsoever, solve all of their problems, permanently. Things do not go as planned.

Twenty years after graduation, a tight-knit group of college friends reconnects and discovers that love hasn't gotten easier with age.

A raw and honest comedic look at a single, 20-something from Southie whose desires for relationships, sex, and a career collide with the realities of young, single motherhood.

Annie is a fat young woman who wants to change her life — but not her body. Annie is trying to start her career while juggling bad boyfriends, a sick parent, and a perfectionist boss.

An irreverent look at the conflict, chaos and humor that defines teenage life through the eyes of 15-year-old Jenna Hamilton whose life begins to change when a simple accident becomes an epic misunderstanding and is blown way out of proportion. Narration in the first-person voice of Jenna's blog posts captures the humor within the struggles and experiences everyone can relate to from their formative years.

The assorted humiliations, disasters and rare triumphs of four very different twenty-something girls: Hannah, an aspiring writer; Marnie, an art gallery assistant and cousins Jessa and Shoshanna.

The owners of a dive bar in Brooklyn, Horace and Pete, along with bar regulars share their experiences and lives with each other while drinking or working at the bar.

A group of East High students countdown to the opening night of their school’s first-ever production of “High School Musical.” Showmances blossom; friendships are tested while new ones are made; rivalries flare and lives are changed forever as these young people discover the transformative power that only a high school drama club can provide.

To prevent Iran from going nuclear, intelligence officer John Tavner must forgo all safety nets and assume a perilous "non-official cover" -- that of a mid-level employee at a Midwestern industrial piping firm.

A close-knit anthology series dealing with stories involving malice, violence and murder based in and around Minnesota.

A ghost-hunting duo team up to uncover and film paranormal sightings across the U.K. and share their adventures on an online channel. Their supernatural experiences grow more frequent, terrifying, and even deadly as the pair begin to uncover a conspiracy that could threaten the entire human race.

A New York City grad student moonlighting as a dominatrix enlists her gay BFF from high school to be her assistant.

When Stella finds out her terminal cancer is cured, she's going to have to learn to live with all the choices she's made when she decided to "live like she was dying".

Explore the secret life of a woman we all grew up watching: the sitcom wife. The series looks to break television convention and ask what the world looks like through her eyes. Alternating between single-camera realism and multi-camera zaniness, the formats will inform one another as we imagine what happens when the sitcom wife escapes her confines, and takes the lead in her own life.

Amanda Vaughn, once the ultimate high school "mean girl," is forced to return home in disgrace after her marriage ends in scandal. As Amanda and her teenage kids try to adjust to their new lives, the ladies from her past alternate between sympathy and scheming.