For detective fiction my favorite is the Nero Wolfe series, the original novels done by Rex Stout in which Archie Goodwin tells you about the cases he works as the field operative and right-hand man for eccentric genius Nero Wolfe. As far as TV versions go, the A&E series (back when "A&E" meant something) with Timothy Hutton is pretty good as well. (I've been told the 1981 Lee Horsley series was decent but I've never seen it and can't even find a torrent. My buddy who did remember it warned I'd probably have whiplash because it was modernized to happen in the 80's, whereas the A&E series locks everything into somewhere just before, during, or after WW2.) It's not a progressive series at all, with modern writers regularly calling Wolfe a misogynist (rather reductive, I think). The most "progressive" the books get would probably be "Too Many Cooks" and "A Right to Die" which both deal with race relations at least partly. (That said, the murderer literally wears blackface in "Too Many Cooks" so I don't know how progressive that'd be considered.) Then again, before his most hardboiled edges got filed off a few books in, Archie was more than willing to use a slur if you got him annoyed.

For pure mindless fluff my favorite SF go-to has always been Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series. They are formulaic (To summarize: Jim diGriz gets in trouble in such a way that the plot is the only way out. He then proceeds to get out of trouble repeatedly by getting into deeper trouble until the climax when he finally gets out of trouble with no strings attached.) but great fun. My grandfather was apparently a renowned teller of tall tales but died before I was born. I like to think I get a similar experience by having Slippery Jim tell me about his weird adventures. The most progressiveness it shows that I recall is that everyone speaks Esperanto and Jim has to remind himself not to be sexist (well, he uses the word "chauvinist") because his wife is as good a crook as he is. That said, there is one story where he meets a society split by sex and it's stereotypes all the way through: The guys are all testosterone muscle morons and the women talk a good enlightenment game but it turns out are corrupt and manipulative.