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Last week, I recommended "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," and JarJarJedi replied "Second this, and despite them addressing a lot of topics that would be classified as "social justice" and "woke", it does not give off the impression of being a woke product. I have very low tolerance for "agenda" productions, and I quite enjoyed it..." What other shows "thread the needle" well?
The legal procedural/political dramedy "The Good Wife" was interesting: It was set in Chicago and the (almost exclusively liberal) characters were always openly cynical about local "Machine Politics," and neither side was portrayed as having the moral high ground. Early episodes included "cross-racial identification" problems by witnesses in a criminal trial, a judge being suspected of racial bias and statistical challenges to the evidence (the big reveal was that it was a "kids for cash" scheme), and multiple instances of lawyers saying they stereotype jurors because it works. Later episodes had the liberal main characters battling progressive ideological excess, like a college that interpreted "diversity of expression" as "privileging expression by 'diverse' students," and the odd principled alliance with a red-tribe cause, like a defense of a Project Veritas stand-in against prior restraint. In examples of the main characters being openly ideological, the show was scrupulous about giving the opposition "their day in court." (Not every episode, but if it was a recurring topic.)
(I've never seen it, but I've read the sequel series does all the wrong things.)
Arcane is very clearly about class struggle and has a lot of woke casting and other type things, but it is also simply good, and is able to do the class struggle through enough of a historical lens that it doesn't run into modern woke issues.
The Pitt recently finished its first season and is an excellent medical drama. Some of the doctors get mega preachy and at times their is some serious "very special episode" energy but it's overall very good and anyone who has worked in those settings know that's how a lot of people talk.
The Pitt felt like it had obvious woke energy but it was nearly subsumed by trying to just give glimpses of the doctors' personal lives and focus more on the cases. It basically speedran itself to being like half about the doctors' personal lives by the end where where characters personal relations happen to show up at the hospital for different reasons and it felt really forced. Though you're right the preachiness is very bad and eyerolling, but unlike something like New Amsterdam, it moves on fairly quickly in most regards from being entirely about preaching. I'd recommend it to anyone that can tolerate the idea that it's a good doctor show, probably the best currently airing, but it's also going to woke preaching that often seems nonsensical (admittedly the briefest preaching they make but the most hilarious was saying that being fat doesn't impact someone's health). Though maybe that is reflective of reality at this point, dunno.
It's basically like ER if it was done as a single shift with episodes being in real time, which lends itself very well to the reality of it. I don't know if it's real but the way it presents itself and shows treatment rather than explaining it to the audience feels as real as I'd expect.
With the exception of Scrubs it's probably the best medical TV show period (in terms of vibe capturing and medical accuracy).
And yes it captures the reality. So much fighting about if kidney labs are racist.
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