We’re Giving Thanks For These 7 Underrated TV Shows (PHOTOS)
Marcella
If you were hooked on The Fall, The Killing, The Bridge, or any other Nordic noir-style mystery, meet your next Netflix obsession. The titular character — played to pained perfection by Pushing Daisies’ Anna Friel — returns to work as a London Metropolitan Police Service detective when it appears her serial killer foe has returned. If her job was hard before, it’s nigh on impossible now. Her marriage is imploding, and she’s been experiencing blackout episodes.
The Good Fight
Spin-offs of popular TV series struggle to get out of their predecessors’ shadows, but this CBS All Access legal drama might just transcend The (very good) Good Wife. Sure, Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) is out of the picture, but Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) has gone from Good Wife scene-stealer to leading lady, and she’s joined by fellow holdover Lucca Quinn (Cush Jumbo) and new lawyer Maia Rindell (Game of Thrones’ Rose Leslie a.k.a Ygritte!). The Good Fight is just as topical as The Good Wife was, especially as the trio find work at a Black-owned law firm.
Fresh Off the Boat
Long before Constance Wu starred in Crazy Rich Asians, the first major Hollywood film with a majority Asian cast in 25 years, she was cast in this ABC family comedy, the first sitcom about an Asian-American family to air in American primetime in 20 years. Wu plays the family’s no-nonsense matriarch opposite Randall Park as the happy-go-lucky father, and we defy you to find young TV stars as capable as Hudson Yang, Forrest Wheeler, and Ian Chen.
Better Things
OK, the trio of young actresses in this FX comedic drama — Mikey Madison, Hannah Alligood, and Olivia Edward — might just steal more scenes than those Fresh Off the Boat boys. The three gals portray the daughters of Sam Fox, an actress played by Pamela Adlon, who also co-created the show with her Louie costar Louis C.K. She took over the show the wake of C.K.’s sexual misconduct scandal which is as it should be, since the show — a touching treatise on modern-day mother-daughter relations — is largely autobiographical for her.
Good Behavior
Lady Mary like you’ve never seen her before! Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery leads this USA drama, portraying Letty Raines, a parolee whose efforts at getting her life back together are derailed by a sexy contract killer (Juan Diego Botto). We’re writing this after the show’s cancellation made headlines — this is why we can’t have nice things! — but you should still check out the series’ two extant seasons.
Catastrophe
Before Sharon Horgan created HBO’s Divorce, she co-created this British sitcom currently streaming on Amazon Prime, in which she plays a Londoner who becomes pregnant after a fling with an American businessman, played by co-creator Rob Delaney. It’s a total catastrophe, of course, but the two misfits share the same twisted sense of humor, which makes this comedy awful-ly hilarious and actually a bit romantic. (Plus, the show marks the final TV role of Carrie Fisher.)
Seven Seconds
National treasure Regina King hits it out of the park again in this Netflix drama — which was also recently canceled, tragically. She plays a Jersey City woman desperate to learn the circumstances behind the bike accident that killed her son. We viewers know the truth, of course: In the series’ first scene, the black teen is accidentally mowed down by a white police officer, whose cop friends (also white, for the most part) help him cover up his involvement. So instead, the mystery is whether justice will ever be served.
‘Tis the season for expressing gratitude!
This year, we’re giving thanks for seven shows that don’t get nearly enough press. If you happen to have time this holiday season — and if you conk out in a tryptophan-induced, post-Thanksgiving snooze the moment you hit the sofa — give these series a try.
Click through the gallery above for our picks, from Good Behavior to Fresh Off the Boat!
