The Easiest TV Shows To ‘Watch’ While Scrolling Through Your Phone

How many notifications have you had on your phone in the last 30 minutes? It may not have buzzed but you've probably (definitely) absentmindedly picked up your phone to scroll through a couple of apps for no reason whatsoever. It's the involuntary habit that we're all very conscious of these days. But isn't it annoying when it gets in the way? Isn't it annoying when the compulsion to reach for your phone – notification or not – in the middle of a TV show overrides your will to follow whatever you were watching in the first place?

The answer is yes. Yes, it is annoying. Because good TV was made for watching and you don't want to be rewinding every time you look up from your phone to see that someone's died/the mystery has been solved/the plot has done a complete 360.

It'd be useless to suggest turning off our phones whenever we settle down in front of the telly; what's life without immediate access to obscure Twitter threads, inappropriate memes and Facebook updates from the girl you used to sit next to in year 9 maths? No, the solution is knowing which TV shows aren't going to be ruined by our compulsive phone habits. You want something that's easy to follow, doesn't require huge commitment and makes for good background noise against the autoplay of Instagram videos. You want something that works both as background noise and to throw fleeting interest at as you try to pass those awkward hours between having something better to do. You want one of these gems that we here at Refinery29 turn to. These are some of our favourite TV shows to 'watch' as we scroll through our phones at the same time.