Edutainment means shows that blend an entertaining story with educational material. For example, The Magic School Bus tells stories while also teaching about science.
There are educational shows for adults, they’re usually called documentaries. But any that blend educational material with fiction? I guess an argument can be made that biographical films fall into this category but they usually take creative liberties and aren’t fully historically accurate. An argument can also be made for medical dramas and legal dramas, but I’m not sure how accurate the medical and legal information in them is. Of course, The Magic School Bus also takes creative liberties and has inaccurate science, but there’s always a segment at the end explaining where they took creative liberties.
How I Met Your Mother kind of had the vibe of a kids show that teaches moral lessons, but for adults. Edit for clarity: the reason I bring this up is I consider “moral of the week” a genre closely related to edutainment but not quite the same thing
Edit: now that I’m thinking about it, I guess Jeopardy and other trivia based game shows could qualify as edutainment. They’re not fictional, but they do blend entertainment and education
Someone mentioned in a lower level reply, but Startrek and the Orville are great for political / social commentary.
I think a fair amount of sitcoms have some element of educating on social norms. Seinfeld and Its Always Sunny maybe require more prior knowledge about subject matters, but covering things like abortion, immigration, racism, etc.
Mythbusters and similar are pretty good about being “adult” science shows.
Maybe documentaries don’t really count as “entertainment” the way you’re looking for, but Planet Earth is a great series.
All good points. I think most fictional shows try to have social commentary on some level but I’m not sure I’d quite consider them edutainment. I dunno, it is hard to define