In reality though it's a good recommendation (for your friend, not you), it just seems odd if you have a particular mental model of what a recommendation should be like, which this violates.

As you say the demographic that watches SVU is likely to have kids that watch Barney and may not be aware that it's on Netflix, so this is a good recomendation for parents even if they won't watch it immediately after some late night SVU binge but rather the next day with their kids.