14 Shows Like Today with Jenna & Sheinelle for Your Next Feel-Good Binge

The best shows like Today with Jenna & Sheinelle include This Is Us, Ted Lasso, Grace and Frankie, Maid, and Virgin River: stories where ordinary people get handed something difficult and the whole point is watching them find their way through it with other people beside them.

Ten in the morning is a strange, generous hour of television. Jenna Bush Hager and Sheinelle Jones spend it doing something most of the schedule has given up on, which is sitting with a story until it means something. A guest cries. A stranger's life turns around. Someone's mother gets thanked properly. Jones took over the hour in January 2026 after returning to television following the death of her husband, Uche Ojeh, and that history sits quietly underneath the warmth rather than on top of it. The result is an hour that feels less like a broadcast and more like the good part of a long phone call.

That is a specific feeling, and it is harder to find on demand than it should be. So this list is sorted by which part of the hour you actually watch it for: the real-life story, the two women at the desk, the book club, or simply the softness. Stick around for the last section, because there is now a format built for the mornings when you do not get a free hour at all.

Editorial note: Third-party shows below are independent editorial recommendations. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or available on DashReels. Availability varies by region and service.

Quick Picks

If You Watch for the Real-Life Stories

1. This Is Us. Dan Fogelman's six-season NBC drama follows the Pearson family across five decades, jumping between timelines until the shape of a whole life comes into view. Milo Ventimiglia, Mandy Moore, Sterling K. Brown, Chrissy Metz and Justin Hartley made it the show people watched with a box of tissues on the coffee table as standard equipment. It is the closest thing television has to the hour's story segments, stretched to full length.

2. Maid. A ten-episode Netflix limited series about a young mother who leaves an abusive relationship with a toddler, a car, and eighteen dollars. Margaret Qualley plays Alex, and Andie MacDowell, her real-life mother, plays Alex's mother on screen. Adapted from Stephanie Land's memoir, it refuses every easy shortcut and is still, somehow, hopeful. Watch it for the same reason you stay for a guest who tells the truth.

3. Somebody Somewhere. Bridget Everett plays Sam, a woman in her forties back in her Kansas hometown after her sister's death, who finds her people in a church choir loft. Three seasons on HBO, very little plot, enormous heart. It understands that friendship in middle age is a rescue operation and treats it that way.

4. A Man on the Inside. Ted Danson plays a retired professor recruited to go undercover in a San Francisco retirement community, in a Netflix comedy from Michael Schur, inspired by the documentary The Mole Agent. It is funny for twenty minutes and then it is about loneliness, and you do not see the turn coming. Schur has been making this exact trade for years and he is still the best at it.

If You Watch for Two Women Who Actually Like Each Other

5. Grace and Frankie. Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as two women whose husbands leave them for each other, forcing an alliance neither wanted. Seven seasons on Netflix, the platform's longest-running original series. The whole engine is watching two people who started as rivals become the most important person in each other's life, which is the exact thing that makes a hosting pair work.

6. Firefly Lane. Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke as Tully and Kate, best friends across thirty years of ambition, betrayal and forgiveness, adapted from Kristin Hannah's novel across two Netflix seasons. Tully is a television host, which makes this the most on-the-nose pick here and also the most fun.

7. Hacks. Jean Smart as a Las Vegas comedy legend and Hannah Einbinder as the young writer forced on her, created by Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky for HBO Max. Sharper and meaner than the rest of this list, but the relationship underneath is the same one: two women a generation apart who cannot do the job without each other. Einbinder was in Studio 1A this month, which is a good excuse to start it tonight.

8. Gilmore Girls. Amy Sherman-Palladino's Stars Hollow, Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel, seven seasons plus the Netflix revival A Year in the Life. The fastest-talking mother and daughter in television history, in a town where nothing truly terrible ever happens. The definitive comfort rewatch, and the one most likely to still be running when you fall asleep.

If You Watch for Read With Jenna

Jenna Bush Hager has been choosing a book a month since 2019, and her taste runs wider than most celebrity clubs: literary fiction, memoir, the occasional thriller, debuts nobody had heard of yet. These three are what her sensibility looks like on screen.

9. Lessons in Chemistry. Brie Larson as Elizabeth Zott, a 1950s chemist pushed out of the lab and into a television cooking show, where she teaches chemistry to housewives anyway. Adapted from Bonnie Garmus's novel for Apple TV. A woman being systematically underestimated and refusing to shrink, which is the single most reliable emotional payload in this entire genre.

10. Little Fires Everywhere. Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington as two mothers in a perfect Ohio suburb whose secrets collide, from Celeste Ng's novel, on Hulu. Motherhood, class and the lie that a tidy life is the same as a good one. Watch it when you want the book club conversation as much as the show.

11. Daisy Jones & the Six. Riley Keough and Sam Claflin as a 1970s band pulling itself apart at the height of its fame, adapted from Taylor Jenkins Reid's novel for Prime Video and told as a documentary looking back. The music is real, the oral-history structure is a genuine trick, and the ending lands harder than it has any right to.

If You Watch Because It Is the Softest Hour of Your Day

12. Virgin River. Alexandra Breckenridge as a nurse practitioner who moves to a Northern California town to outrun a grief she has not named, opposite Martin Henderson, adapted from Robyn Carr's long-running novels. Netflix has renewed it almost annually, which means there is an enormous amount of it. Nothing here will upset you. That is the entire product.

13. Sweet Magnolias. Three women in Serenity, South Carolina, holding each other's lives together over margarita nights, from Sherryl Woods's novels, with JoAnna Garcia Swisher, Brooke Elliott and Heather Headley. It is Virgin River with better friendship writing and worse weather metaphors, and the friendship is the reason to pick it.

14. Ted Lasso. Jason Sudeikis's relentlessly decent American coach returned on 5 August 2026 for a fourth season on Apple TV, ten episodes running weekly to a 7 October finale, this time coaching a second-division women's team alongside Hannah Waddingham's Rebecca. The show has 13 Emmy wins from 61 nominations and remains the clearest argument on television that kindness can carry a plot. If you only start one thing from this list, the season is airing right now.

Not Everyone Gets a Free Hour at 10 a.m.

Here is the problem with everything above. Most people who love that hour are not watching it live. They are at a desk, on a school run, or catching four minutes of a clip between two other things. A 45-minute episode is not a smaller version of an hour. It is the same ask.

So it is worth knowing about a format that solved this on purpose. Short dramas, also called micro dramas or vertical dramas, are complete serialized stories told in one-to-two minute episodes filmed for phone screens, with a cliffhanger at the end of nearly every one. A full series runs roughly the length of one or two films, watched at whatever pace the day allows.

The genre overlap is not a stretch. The engines that power the stories in this list, a woman rebuilding after everything falls apart, a family secret surfacing thirty years late, a second chance nobody expected, are the format's most-used material, because each of those turns produces a reveal on demand.

On DashReels, the English-language catalog runs directly on them:

• Unforgotten Hearts, where Megan is forced to leave Patrick after an accident while secretly carrying his child, and fate puts them in the same room years later
• Trial by Blood, two best friends who give birth the same night and one secret swap that detonates both families
• In the Shadow of Ivy Wright, a mathematician who hides who she is so her son can shine, until she decides she has given enough
• The Amazing Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, where Hannah signs a contract marriage to save her dying mother and meets the man again three years later
• Miss Me When I'm Gone, a wife who walks away from a marriage that swallowed her, and a husband who works out far too late what he had
• A Tennessee Love Story, a mother rebuilding after her husband empties her daughter's savings, with help from an unlikely stranger

Selected episodes of every series are free to watch on the DashReels website, no download needed, with full stories continuing in the app. For the mornings when the hour you wanted belongs to someone else, this is the version that fits.

[Explore feel-good short dramas on DashReels →]

Frequently Asked Questions

What happened to Today with Hoda & Jenna?

Hoda Kotb left Today in January 2025 after sixteen years with the program. The fourth hour became Today with Jenna & Friends, running a rotating guest co-host format through 2025 while NBC worked through roughly sixty possible pairings. Sheinelle Jones, previously a Weekend Today and third-hour anchor, was named permanent co-host in December 2025, and the hour was renamed on 12 January 2026.

How does Read With Jenna choose a book each month?

Jenna Bush Hager has picked one title a month since 2019, announced on the show and on Instagram, usually in the first week. Her range is wider than most celebrity clubs, taking in literary fiction, memoir, historical novels and the occasional thriller, and she has championed a number of debut authors before anyone else did. She also runs an imprint, Thousand Voices, which publishes a handful of debut and literary titles a year.

What actually makes a show "feel-good"?

Not the absence of pain. Almost every show on this list opens with a death, a divorce, or a life coming apart. What makes a feel-good show is that the difficulty is resolved by people rather than by luck, and that the story trusts you to sit with the hard part before it earns the warm one. Shows that skip the hard part read as thin, which is why comfort viewing and shallow viewing are not the same thing.

Why do comfort shows help when you are stressed?

Because a familiar story removes uncertainty, and uncertainty is most of what stress is made of. When you already know the outcome, your attention can rest without switching off entirely, which is why people rewatch the same six seasons for years rather than starting something new. Predictability is the feature, not the flaw.

What is a second-chance story?

It is a story where a character who has already lost the thing that mattered gets an unexpected route back to it, usually after a jump in time. The engine is not the reunion itself but the gap: what the character learned in between, and whether the person who wronged them understands yet. It is one of the most common structures in short dramas, where a series can move ten years forward in ninety seconds.

What is the best app for feel-good short dramas?

It depends on what kind of good feeling you want. If you are after English-language originals built on second chances, family secrets and women who get their moment, DashReels focuses specifically on English short dramas, with titles like Unforgotten Hearts and The Amazing Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, and lets you start watching on the web before installing anything.

Where can I watch feel-good short dramas for free?

Most short drama platforms offer some free viewing. On DashReels, selected episodes of every series can be watched free on the website, with the full story continuing in the app, which makes it a low-commitment way to see whether the format works for you before you download anything.

Final Thoughts

The 10 a.m. hour works because it believes a story about one ordinary person is worth an audience of millions, which is a fairly radical position for daytime television in 2026. Everything on this list shares that belief in some form.

Match your next watch to the part you miss most. This Is Us or Maid for the real story told properly. Grace and Frankie or Hacks for two women who cannot do it alone. Lessons in Chemistry for the book club brain. Virgin River, Sweet Magnolias or Ted Lasso for the soft landing.

And on the mornings when the hour is not yours to give, the same feeling now comes in pieces small enough to fit between everything else.