Bingeing in Comfort This Summer (Published 2023) (2024)

The finale of “Succession” might have left die-hard fans wondering what Kendall was going to do with the rest of his life, but everyone else can now turn their attention to the summer television season.

”And Just Like That” (Max) and “The Bear” (FX on Hulu) had their season premieres last week. “Carpool Karaoke: The Series” and “Swagger” (both on Apple TV+) also returned. And “Claim to Fame” and “The Bachelorette” (ABC) return on June 26.

That is just the beginning.

So it’s time to take a plate and a beverage into the living room to catch up on last year’s obsessions and to cultivate new ones.

“The concept of watching television while you eat, first of all, of course has been happening since the invention of television,” said Laura Shapiro, author of “Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America.”

Eating in front of the TV got a huge boost from a company called Swanson in the 1950s. Although Swanson wasn’t the first company to create compartmentalized aluminum tray dinners, in a “stroke of marketing genius,” they coined the phrase “TV dinner,” Ms. Shapiro said.

The old-school TV trays that went hand in hand with those TV dinners can feel too stuffy for some these days. Take a look at how these New Yorkers make sure they are as comfortable as they can be.