As you've probably realized, television isn't just limited to the boob tube anymore. Networks are popping up daily on cable and on the web, there are the goliaths (Netflix, AMC, Amazon, Yahoo...?) and independent channels fighting for your viewership. Every once a while, a show you have never heard of seems to be all anyone's talking about! Well, it's time to join the party... these are the 10 underrated shows everyone should be watching.
FIRST, Moone Boy on Hulu
The show has a great ensemble cast with a charming setting. Each season is short, airing just six episodes, which is common in the UK, and follows a year of Martin's awkward little life each season. Starting in 1989 when Martin is 12 years old, Moone Boy is as much a nostalgic time capsule of O'Dowd's own Ireland as it is a darling tale about growing up and holding on.
Over the past two seasons, the whole cast of the Moone family has had time to come into their own including the hilarious Mr. and Mrs. Moone, played by Peter McDonald and Deirdre O'Kane. Also great is Martin's best (real) friend, Padraic, played by Ian O'Reilly who, also despite his age, has his very own cynical imaginary friend.
Now in it's third season, Moone Boy airs weekly as a Hulu Original in the States and on Sky 1 in the UK. All episodes of the first and second season are free on Hulu with only the most recent season reserved for Hulu Plus.
The show got awarded Best Comedy at the International Emmy Awards in 2013 and has been getting better and better ever since.
Please Like Me on Pivot
Besides discussing topics like mental health, suicide, coming out, pregnancy and the nuances of dating, Please Like Me is much more lighthearted than Dunham's creation.
In the first season, Josh came out to his friends and family and it was the most delightfully, nonchalant coming out story I've ever seen. Thomas, who writes his own experiences into the show, brings his signature awkward calm to the issue that is not only, truly, refreshing but very human.
The second season is also where the show really blossomed using the unexpectant place of a mental hospital as the primary place of comedy and romance. His mother was admitted into the hospital early on in the series and the portrayal of her struggles and Josh's are amusing and heartfelt. The relationship with his father and the new baby with his young, and hilariously snarky, Thai wife is also a great source of comedy.
Though it airs in Australia on ABC, since it's second season, Please Like Me has been airing in the US on PIVOT with it's third season returning sometime at the end of summer.
Welcome To Sweden on NBC
Star Josephine Bornebusch, who plays Bruce's wife Emma, is a delight and acts as the bridge between her wacky parents and fish-out-of-water Bruce. Poehler plays a fictionalized version of himself with one large difference: Amy Poehler, his real-life sister who appears as an amusingly bitchy version of herself, is just a client of Bruce, an accountant to the stars. Friend and former Parks and Rec co-star Aubrey Plaza also appears in a number of episodes as her usual deadpan self.
After appearing in the first season, Bruce's parents, played by "Dallas" icon Patrick Duffy and film star Illeana Douglas, are apparently taking a larger role in the second season to further emphasize the cultural differences between the newlyweds. The show is a great success in Sweden and was a surprise hit for NBC last year.
You can binge watch all of season one on NBC.com and the second season premieres July 19 and airs Sundays at 8/7c on NBC.
The Spoils of Babylon on IFC
The wacky story follows the scandalous lives of the Morehouse oil dynasty. Adoptive siblings, and star-crossed lovers, Cynthia and Devon Morehouse (Kristen Wiig & Tobey Maguire respectively) feud over the family company through the ages while a Double Indemnity style mystery unravels as the whole story is doubly narrated by Devon bleeding to death trying to recant his last words.
The cast is truly incredible but it's just as amazing to see these stars plays such silly cheesy characters. Jessica Alba stars as Devon's sexy scientist love interest Dixie Melonworth who monitors their underwater research center. Val Kilmer stars as an army general on the hunt to destroy technology that could unravel the oil business and Haley Joel Osment plays Cynthia's son who will stop at nothing to keep his place in the family's fortune.
Not to mention that Devon's wife, Lady Anne York, is only portrayed by a mannequin, a jab at both the pitiful production value and the wooden love interests of the source inspiration, whom Carey Mulligan wonderfully voices. To top it all off, many of the landscape shots are done on a poorly made diorama while exterior shots of cars are actually of toy cars. It's amusing and pathetic all at the same time.
The show returns for a second anthology this summer and follows another long lost masterpiece: Eric Jonrosh's The Spoils Before Dying. Wiig and Ferrell are set to return with new stars Maya Rudolph and Chris Parnell joining.
The whole first season is available on Netflix.
Watch the trailer here. It's ridiculous and silly and wonderful.
View this video on YouTube
Manhattan on WGN America
The cast of characters is diverse but the series is primarily led by Frank Winter (John Benjamin Hickey), above, the lead of an underdog team of scientists trying to create the bomb, or "gadget", before anyone else and Charlie Isaacs (Ashley Zukerman), a prodigy who quickly rises in the ranks after joining the project. The story also follows the families of the scientists and military personnel including Isaacs' wife Abby (Rachel Brosnahan, "House of Cards") trying to assimilate in a place where secrets are key; the fiercely independent, and notable botanist, Mrs. Liza Winters (Olivia Williams) and the Winters' daughter Callie (Alexia Fast). Some of my favorite performances and stories in the series, however, are of the women including Brosnahan's Abby, Williams' Liza and Katja Herbers' Helen, below, the rare female member of Winters' team.
In the hiatus since the end of the first season, Manhattan has been gaining a lot of traction. Although it was the underrated critical success of last year, and also the first original program for WGN America, it has quickly rose to become of the most anticipated premieres of the fall. The cast, which was already a well rounded group of players, has also been gaining a lot of notoriety thanks to it's season two additions. "CSI" alum William Peterson is joining the cast as a series regular after the iconic crime show's end and will be joining actress, and Meryl Streep's daughter, Mamie Gummer (The Good Wife) in the second season.
The first season is not available for streaming. Though, with the series gaining popularity and the network gaining notoriety as a strong place for historical dramas ever since it's sophomore show Salem went viral this past year, I expect that to change very soon.
Trailer for Season 1
View this video on YouTube
Teen Wolf on MTV
To show it was serious about moving past the teen trope of boy-meets-girl love is forever on-again-off-again relationships that keep teen dramas in a chokehold, Teen Wolf not only broke up the relationship of it's main romantic leads Scott (Tyler Posey) & Allison (Crystal Reed) early into it's third season but, did something much more momentous. A huge spoiler but YOU'LL know when you see it.
Sad fact, a bunch of people die in this show. BUT, fun fact, unlike a lot of teen series (I'm looking at you Pretty Little Liars...), the parents and adults in this show don't just sit awkwardly on the sidelines while their children are being tormented and MURDERED. Instead, they rise as major characters and seriously kick ass.
Additionally, the series' mythology has moved WAAAYY past werewolves, which I really admire. It doesn't take an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to the supernatural like Supernatural or True Blood does but instead sticks to legends and lore that deal with the natural world.
They have featured werewolves, of course; banshees; Wendigos, of which stories root back to Nova Scotia; the Kanima, a Mesoamerican myth, a Nagual, a Latin American version of a werewolf i.e. a were-jaguar; Kitsune; a Japanese legend; the evil Berserkers, which are based in Norse mythology, and many more.
It is a great binge watch with many of the first few seasons on Amazon Instant Video or MTV.COM. The show returns in just under 2 WEEKS on June 29 for it's fifth season and find our protagonists fighting the evils of a creepy mental hospital.... which MAY also be a prison for the supernatural criminally insane... yikes!
Hannibal on NBC
The show is a creation of cult favorite Bryan Fuller, who makes the most wonderfully beautiful shows about dying you've ever seen (including Showtime's Dead Like Me and the sadly departed Pushing Daisies). Surprisingly on NBC, Hannibal was a push by the network to get more dark horror shows on the air. A trend also followed when FOX premiered The Following the same year.
It follows the, now classic, horror villain of serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Danish Star Mads Mikkelsen) and is based on the novel "Red Dragon" by Thomas Harris. The show's twist is Dr. Lecter works as a consultant at the FBI, who are investigating his very crimes. Hannibal is partnered with FBI agent Jack Crawford (the amazing Laurence Fishburne) & criminal profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), whose unique empathy disorder gives him insight into the gruesome crimes. Graham's mind, however, begins to unravel under the pressure and his suspicion of Dr. Lecter and plays into a fantastic cat-and-mouse chase. The murders depicted are as artistically brilliant as they are macabre and the show's particular fascination with Dr. Lecter's more refined tastes of the culinary arts and classical musical makes the chase all the more unsettling and, uncomfortably, delicious.
Though the show is gruesome, violent, and a little disturbing, it is also one of the most visually stunning shows on TV.
You can catch up on Amazon Instant or watch the current third season on NBC.
The 100 on The CW
Basically it's "Lord of The Flies" in Space. It follows a group of survivors who return to Earth many years after a nuclear war destroyed most the planet. The 100 are teenage convicts and the 3rd generation of humans to live aboard an international space station known as the Ark. When the war broke, the remaining nation's space stations came together to survive. However, generations later overpopulation and a lack of resources threatened everyone's survival and, because of this, the Ark runs as a police state where every crime is faced with capital punishment. The 100 were sent to Earth to see if the planet was livable and, as it turns out, they weren't alone on the ground.
In it's second season, the show found it's footing as we learn more about the other parties on the ground and the, initially divided, storylines following the adults on the space station and the kids on the ground, both trying to fend for themselves, becomes increasingly more blurred. It's an interesting twist on the classic tale's format about survival and teamwork that plays nicely in an eco-conscious era. The show has a great cast including LOST's Henry Ian Cusack and Grey's Anatomy alum Isaiah Washington but the young actors really shine lead by Aussie actress Eliza Taylor.
The show got increasingly dark and action heavy in it's second season and is great binge-watching before it returns for it's third season in July.
You're The Worst on FXX
It is a post-modern love story of quick hookups and powerplaying relationships.
The truly great thing about creator Stephan Falk's writing, though, is you root for these two because they seem so relatable, human and modern.
Each of their besties follow in the adventure. Edgar (Desmin Borges), Jimmy's old friend, is a homeless Army veteran with PTSD who may have just brought as much baggage to the war as he took away from it. Lindsay (Kether Donohue) is a snob, dreading her marriage to the dullest man alive and scared to lose her youth.
The humor is dark and funny and all too relatable. LA isn't just a beautiful backdrop but a character of the quirky, hipster, Peter Pan adults of the new millennium. Season 2 doesn't return until Fall so you have plenty of time to catch up.
Man Seeking Woman on FXX
Accompanied by his best friend Mike (Eric André), sister Liz (Britt Lower) and often reminded of his failures by his delightfully supportive ex Maggie (Maya Erskine). Josh attempts to navigate a surrealist version of our dating world where Cupid is real and kind of a dick, your girlfriend's international friend staying over for a few days is Tanaka, an extra-dimensional Japanese 'penis monster', and the destination wedding your ex invites you to is, really, in Hell.
The cast really makes the highly creative series shine through their improv work, which the creator highly supports. The first season is short but it packs a lot in. One of the episodes, entitled "Woman Seeking Man", actually makes Josh's sister Liz the protagonist and shows everything through her perspective after she gets back into dating after a divorce. It is clever and probably the funniest episode of the series so far that gives me a lot of hope for the unrestricted creative direction of the upcoming season.
Trailer for Season 1
View this video on YouTube
Unfortunately, it is not available for streaming online but FXX airs episodes all the time and there's plenty of time to catch up before the Winter 2016 season two premiere.
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