What The Offer cast is watching: from the Showtime Lakers to a classic comedy

The Offer, a show about the making of The Godfather, is the latest Paramount Plus original series that's aiming to grab viewers’ attention. The cast of The Offer are TV fans along with the rest of us and they've managed to find time to watch some great new offerings and old favorites.

When What to Watch got the chance to speak with The Offer’s Giovanni Ribisi, Patrick Gallo and Burn Gorman, we made sure to ask them what they’ve been watching recently. This is what's at the top of their watchlists...

What Giovanni Ribisi is watching

"Winning Time. John C. Reilly is so great in that. The whole cast is incredible," Ribisi says about the HBO series that is currently airing its first season.

Depicting the birth of the Los Angeles Lakers "Showtime" dynasty, Winning Time has been getting a lot of attention recently, not all of it great. A few of the Lakers legends depicted in the show — including Jerry West and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — have criticized the show for their portrayals, suggesting that it has created events that didn't happen in real life (it's the perfect opportunity to check WTW’s fact vs fiction articles on the show).

Despite (or perhaps, because of) the controversy Winning Time is drawing in viewers, with audiences building as the series continues. Ribisi seems to be firmly in the fan corner.

What Patrick Gallo is watching

While The Offer tries to stick more closely to the facts of how The Godfather was made, The Great openly admits that it is taking liberties in portraying the reign of Russia’s Catherine the Great — with the "an occasionally true story" note on its title card and playing the historical era for comedy. 

The series stars Elle Fanning as Catherine and Nicholas Hoult as Peter. The show debuted in 2020 with its second season airing in 2021. You can check out our fact vs fiction recaps for it right here.

That’s not all that Gallo has been watching. He’s recently dived into Ozark, Julia, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and, in a throwback, Taxi — the 1978 sitcom that starred Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Judd Hirsch, Tony Danza, Marliu Henner and Andy Kaufman.

What Burn Gorman is watching

"I’ve been rewatching Arrested Development because there really is always money in the banana stand," Gorman told us.

Arrested Development is the classic cult sitcom that originally had a three-season run on Fox from 2003 to 2005. The series centered on the dysfunctional Bluth family and starred Jason Bateman, Michael Cera, Portia de Rossi, Will Arnett, Alia Shawkat, Tony Hale, David Cross, Jeffrey Tambor and the late, great Jessica Walter — not to mention a slew of guest stars.

The original three seasons were critically acclaimed and earned a number of Emmys — including one for Outstanding Comedy Series, for the second season. But despite all of this, the show struggled with ratings. It eventually found new life on streaming. This is why Netflix revived the series, in 2013, giving Arrested Development a fourth season, then again for a fifth in 2018.

For Gorman, Arrested Development is pure comfort viewing.

"We’ve all struggled over the last couple of years and we’ve all rediscovered series that perhaps we watched years ago," he says. "For me, being with the Bluths is a great way to spend a couple of hours."

All episodes of The Offer are now available to stream on Paramount Plus in the US and UK.