It has been a troubling summer, so I’m rounding up some escapist TV to force your eyes off CNN and into simpler times. These shows are all British, so you have those accents going for you. Plus, they’re each so CHARMING you’ll want to hug your TV. No strife, no drama here. Unless you count the mousse that failed to set.

1. The Great British Baking Show (on PBS)

Season 3 just kicked off here a few weeks ago, and it is already the salve my weekends needed. It’s a show built on sugar, flour, and yearning.
Hosts Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc have that quick, quiet, cheeky, playful (and sometimes (just sometimes) bawdy) British humor, that makes your ears perk up whenever they’re on-screen to catch any throwaway lines. Judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood (real name!) find even the nicest things to say to the biggest melted cake messes (“The icing flavor is quite nice actually. If only it held up, you would have had a beautiful cake.”). And then the contestants — a sweet teenager that just loves to bake, a goofy dad that lives in that quintessential English farmhouse — are so endearing you hate to see them go home.

2. Catastrophe (on Amazon Prime)
I just got into this last week and I’m already through season 1. It’s full of maybe-bad people behaving badly, but they’re also funny and relatable so you’ll end up laughing through covered eyes. On the show, an American man and British woman have a quick fun affair during an overseas trip and she ends up pregnant. He quits everything to join her in London, as she embarks on a pregnancy while cohabiting with a man she hardly knows. They constantly out-snark and out-offend each other, making them kind of an oddly perfect couple.

3. The Wine Show (on Hulu)
Only in our wildest dreams did we think we’d get a show that consisted solely of Matthew Rhys and Matthew Goode traveling around Europe drinking wine. Like, that’s the whole show, and it’s enough. This technically isn’t available in the US until August 13th, but clips available on YouTube are awesome. We all need a couple smiley, handsome men ribbing each other and pretending to know about wine in our lives. (Granted, I can’t understand anything Matthew Rhys says (how does he manage such a dead-on American accent on The Americans when that’s his natural way of speaking English? Maybe he is a KGB spy.))

Have you gotten hooked on any shows lately?