The best Netflix shows to binge when you're just looking for background noise

• While some shows require your full attention to understand what's going on, there are certain series that are just made to be background noise. 
• Netflix has plenty of shows that can be left on while you go about doing whatever you need to do with your day, whether it be cleaning or staring off into space. 
• From "The Crown" to "The Great British Bake Off," these are the Netflix shows made for being background noise. 

As the rate of TV production continues to boom, we’ve moved past the era of great TV into the era of a lot of pretty okay TV. For every show that requires your full attention (like Atlanta or The Americans), or captures the Zeitgeist (like Game of Thrones or Big Little Lies), the world of television is full of shows that are just … fine. You don’t devour these sorts of shows as much as you nibble on them absentmindedly. The passive experience of catching a cable marathon of, say, House Hunters, has a cousin in the streaming era: the passive experience of letting a Netflix show wash over you for a few hours.

If you haven’t tried the background binge, I recommend it – especially while cleaning your room, cooking dinner, doing a few exercises, or splaying yourself across a coach and imagining you are a starfish. (What, I find it calming.) As with most binge-related experiences, Netflix is the best place to go for this, so if you’re interested in trying the background binge, try out these shows.

While you’re cleaning the house: "Queer Eye"

Watching Queer Eye provides you with a hit of calming, friendly, invigorating queer energy, the kind you might get from watching YouTube videos of Liza Minnelli or sniffing a candle that smells like a Sufjan Stevens song. Still, you don’t need to keep your eyes on the TV the whole time. Put on Queer Eye, start cleaning your room, and then your own life will look better right around the time the Fab Five presents the “heroes” with their own makeovers. Bonus: Whenever things start to get emotional, you can take a little break to cry.

While you’re napping: Any Marvel show

Every one of Netflix’s Marvel shows are very dimly lit and stuffed with too many characters, but the plot moves so slowly that, even if you doze through an episode or two, you still won’t miss much.

While you’re cooking: "The Crown"

Netflix’s marquee costume drama is dense with palace intrigue and well-acted performances, which is makes it a great pair with a nice red wine and some sort of thick stew. If you haven’t enjoyed this rich costume drama while preparing dinner, you haven’t embraced the decadent lifestyle that Princess Margaret enjoys.