Personally, I always used to carry a paperback with me and would read in the odd moments that this writer seems to recall as being so dull and soul destroying. I still do carry e-books on my phone of course and use them in exactly the same way - but also with the option of doomscrolling, of course.
As for TV, I was never one for TV - or radio - as background noise. With fiends, I had a bit of reputation of going round and turning such things off when I entered the room, so that we could talk without distraction. I would ask them first, of course.
Bbc Radio 4 have any number of dramas in their back catalogue. One that I particularly enjoyed is Alan Plater’s Only a Matter of Time - available on the Internet archive, I find.
Then Orson Welles original War of the Worlds by the Mercury Theatre on the Air in 1938 is well worth a listen. That is available in several places around the Web.
Then, of course, there is Big Finish, who started off doing Doctor Who audios and have produced hundreds over the years - far more hours than there are of T V Doctor Who, classic and new - but they also produce a lot of other dramas, based on other properties and some completely original.
Overall their earlier ones are where the standout tales are, but they are fairly reliably entertaining throughout.