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It really feels like the TV medium just keeps getting better and better, finding it progressively easier to compete with the cinematic landscape thanks to a greater investment in big-budget stars, acclaimed writers and gorgeous cinematography. For every brilliant recent show that receives acclaim in line with its quality, such as Game of Thrones, House of Cards, Orange is the New Black and so many more, there are a bunch of shows which haven’t quite yet enjoyed the viewing figures, awards success or critical acclaim that they so thoroughly deserve.
Now, that’s not to say that all 15 of these shows are masterpieces worthy of universal praise, but each is decidedly more entertaining than its low viewing figures, lack of awards success or mixed reviews suggests. Whether enjoying a significant upswing in quality after some growing pains or simply failing to find an audience due to its niche nature, these shows are all worthy of much more press and attention than they get (or got, in the case of those which have already been cancelled).
Do yourself a favour and check these little gems out already if you haven’t, because each deserves a ton more credit for its contributions to the recent programming slate…
15. Hello Ladies
The Show: Stuart Pritchard (Stephen Merchant) is a weird, awkward Brit living in Los Angeles, desperate to find a gorgeous model to start a life with. As Stuart comes to learn however, attaining that idyllic Hollywood Hills life isn’t as easy as he’d hoped.
Why It’s Underrated: Hello Ladies’ first and only season released to mixed reviews, while the weak ratings promptly sealed its fate as a “one and done” show, which concluded with a TV movie finale late last year. Still, it proved to be a fantastic vehicle for the hilarious Merchant to mine that unique blend of embarrassing humour which made his The Office so successful in the first place. In fact, it’s possible that Hello Ladies was simply too cringe-worthy for some audiences, hence why they started tuning out pretty quickly. It’s a shame, though, because Merchant was superbly sleazy in the lead role, and it certainly deserved better.
14. Bob’s Burgers
The Show: An animated comedy following the Belcher family as they run a hamburger restaurant and have to deal with their fierce competitors, some truly bizarre customers and the weirdness that comes with being a member of the Belcher clan.
Why It’s Underrated: Bob’s Burgers absolutely got off to a slow start, with many dismissing it simply because it seemed to be aiming at a market that was already cornered by Family Guy, but this show is much more than that. What really differentiates this from any of Seth MacFarlane’s show is the focus on workplace humour, which often gives it a feel more akin to Dilbert or any of Mike Judge’s work-based comedies. After the mixed reviews of the first season, things did pick up during season two, eventually being nominated for numerous awards and even winning a Primetime Emmy.
Still, the show flies under the radar compared to the likes of Family Guy and The Simpsons, despite being infinitely funnier than either of those shows in their current states, being well past their prime by now. Reaching the adult highs of Family Guy without the same feeling of laziness and featuring the well-developed characters of earlier Simpsons seasons, Bob’s Burgers might be the funniest animation on TV today.
13. Episodes
The Show: Friends co-creator David Crane re-teams with Matt LeBlanc for this riotous send-up of the creative process itself. After British married couple Sean and Beverly Lincoln (Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig) move to Hollywood to help remake their acclaimed TV show for the U.S., they find themselves struggling with their lead actor, LeBlanc, both personally and professionally.
Why It’s Underrated: The real gem in this show’s crown is LeBlanc, who has never really proven himself as an actor on this scale before, playing a hilariously exaggerated version of himself which did, in fairness, net the actor a Best Actor Golden Globe in 2012. Even so, most audiences seem to just assume that he’s spinning another riff on his iconic Joey persona, when much more goes into his take on himself than that, and he’s certainly worthy of more awards honours than he’s had to date.
Though reviews for the third and fourth seasons have proven more mixed than its earlier acclaim, Episodes is still one of the most inventive, clever and subversive comedies on TV, and deserves a larger audience than its current low of around 300,000 viewers per episode. Fingers crossed it doesn’t get cancelled and be truly, unequivocally underrated.
12. Orphan Black
The Show: Con artist Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany) witnesses the suicide of a girl who looks just like her, and is pulled into a world where she realises that there are numerous clones of her out there, while someone is plotting to kill all of them, as well as her, of course.
Why It’s Underrated: It’s easy to wonder why Orphan Black is in a list about underrated TV shows when it’s received consistent critical claim since its launch, yet it’s also the most egregiously awards-snubbed show of the last few years, with Maslany’s repeat denial of a Best Actress nomination at the Emmy Awards being harshly criticised by many fans and commentators. The show relies so heavily on Maslany’s superbly multi-faceted, immensely challenging performance that in another actress’s hands, it could easily have fallen apart at the seams.
Hopefully after the loud outcry, however, Emmy won’t be able to ignore her for a third time this summer, and it certainly wouldn’t go amiss for the show itself to receive a few more nods too. Sci-fi shows are a dime a dozen these days, but few are this ambitious and cleverly-conceived.
11. The Knick
The Show: The Knick follows Dr. John W. Thackery (Clive Owen) and the staff of New York’s Knickerbocker Hospital in the early 1900s, as Thackery tries to revolutionise medicine while dealing with a huge mortality rate and his own drug-based demons.
Why It’s Underrated: Though The Knick has enjoyed strong reviews since its premiere, it’s still flown under the radar for a lot of potential audiences, in large part because it airs primarily on the smaller Cinemax network despite thoroughly evoking the deft, high-budget feel of an HBO production (though it does air on HBO, just not as an HBO program bearing that seal of quality).
With a fantastic lead performance from Owen and some sublime direction from Steven Soderbergh (who has helmed all ten episodes to date), hopefully the show will pick up more steam as it moves ahead with its second season later in the year. Still, it’s relatively niche subject matter, so it’ll probably continue to maintain at around 300,000-400,000 viewers per episode for the foreseeable future.
10. Homeland
The Show: After United States Marine Corps soldier Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) is rescued from an al-Qaeda compound, bipolar CIA officer Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) begins to suspect that Brody has been “turned” by the terrorists, and sets out to prove it despite enormous pressure from her colleagues to leave the apparent American hero alone.
Why It’s Underrated: Homeland is another show which has enjoyed solid critical acclaim throughout its four seasons to date, not to mention numerous Golden Globe and Emmy wins, and consistently strong ratings, with most episodes ranging from 1.7-2.4 million viewers per episode. So, what’s the problem? How is Homeland underrated in any way? Well, given the show’s high concept, there weren’t many expectations for it lasting very long: surely Brody is either a bad guy or not, right?
The show has sustained extremely well against the odds by practically reinventing itself every season, serving up hugely unexpected, game-changing twists and one major bombshell at the end of its third season which keep the show endlessly compelling even as logic suggests it should be well past its peak by now. So few shows can survive some of the creative hurdles Homeland has come up with, and for that reason, it really doesn’t get as much credit as it deserves.
9. Penny Dreadful
The Show: Taking place in the late 19th century, Penny Dreadful follows explorer Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton) who employs the help of medium Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) to recover his daughter, who has been taken by a vampire. Throw in Victor Frankenstein, Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray and various other characters from period literature, and it sets the stage for a delightfully trashy fantasy yarn.
Why It’s Underrated: What Penny Dreadful lacks in originality it more than compensates for with its barmy, off-the-wall tone, which led to measured positive reviews for its first season, even if the show sadly hasn’t earned much in the way of awards buzz. Eva Green above all others certainly deserves some recognition for her terrifically entertaining (not to mention weirdly sexy) work here, most memorably having sex with an invisible demon in possibly the show’s most outrageous scene (but possibly not).
Hopefully the show continues to grow in its upcoming second season, because its deliciously lurid treatment of its subject matter deserves more than to be dismissed as merely out-and-out trash: if nothing else it’s trash at its most artful and considered (as penned by Skyfall scribe John Logan).
8. Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.
The Show: A spin-off set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. follows the titular crime-fighting organisation, led by a revived Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg), as they take on new threats to global security.
Why It’s Underrated: No show in recent memory has improved itself as much as this, because S.H.I.E.L.D. started as a thoroughly mediocre freak-of-the-week-type adventure serial which invited divided reviews despite an insane 12 million viewers tuning in for the pilot episode. Viewership sharply fell over the course of the first season, with the season finale drawing only half the viewers of the pilot.
By season two, however, the show improved massively and managed to hold its viewing figures much more consistently as a result, featuring slight but entertaining tie-ins to the “proper” MCU (by way of some fun cameos), better villains, and simply a more pronounced feeling that what’s happening actually has some import and isn’t just disposable.
It’s understandable that a lot of viewers were turned off by the rather generic and forgettable first half of season one, but things have come a long way since then, so it might be worth giving it another go if you abandoned it early on.
7. Banshee
The Show: Set in the fictional town of Banshee, Pennsylvania, an ex-con (Antony Starr) released from prison takes up the identity of the murdered local sheriff in order to hide from crime boss Rabbit (Ben Cross), all while enforcing law in the town and conducting his own criminal activities.
Why It’s Underrated: Critical reception to Banshee has been mixed ever since the first season, with some praising its off-the-wall insanity and self-aware trashiness, while others knocked its vulgarity and perceived lack of sophistication. Unsurprisingly, the show hasn’t had much significant awards attention to date either (except an Emmy win for its Visual Effects), and goes largely unnoticed by a lot of potential viewers again because it’s on the lower-key Cinemax network.
Even so, if you’ve got the stomach for its plentiful sex scenes and brutal, gory violence, there’s a lot here to like. The action itself is superbly shot for a show clearly not rolling in dough (this slug fest is particularly well-done), and though it’s not the smartest or densest-plotted story out there, there’s an appealing rough-around-the-edges feel to it which puts insane entertainment at a premium above all else.
6. Shameless
The Show: A remake of the British TV classic of the same name, the U.S. Shameless again follows alcoholic, deadbeat father of six Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy) as he and his family try to make it through life, which sure ain’t easy.
Why It’s Underrated: Expectations are always pretty low when an acclaimed British show gets remade: you can either get the U.S. Red Dwarf (which was terrible and didn’t even make it past the pilot stage), or the brilliance that is the state-side version of The Office. This might go a way to explain the initially cautious reviews for Shameless, which nevertheless experienced an upsurge in critical popularity in its following seasons, while the ratings have also improved since the unsure first season.
Even so, those who’ve seen the original series have largely dismissed this new take, even if it’s absolutely worth a watch on its own terms: the casting is superb (Macy and Emmy Rossum both deserve significantly more awards attention than they’ve enjoyed), and it’s got the same mixture of heart and outrageous humour which made the UK show such a hit. A different beast in subtle ways, sure, but certainly not inferior.
5. The Mindy Project
The Show: OB/GYN Mindy Lahiri (Mindy Kaling) tries to keep afloat professionally and personally in her medical practice, dealing with workplace politics and, of course, the inevitably awkward on-off romances.
Why It’s Underrated: The Mindy Project has received mixed-to-positive reviews throughout its run so far, and though the ratings have dropped somewhat since its launch, it still consistently pulls in around 2 million viewers per episode. Awards have meanwhile been pretty short in supply (despite a Writers Guild of America nomination in 2013), no doubt unaided by the rather divisive nature of Kayling’s squeaky-voiced, quirky personality, not to mention the various racial and feminist controversies surrounding the show.
That said, on its own terms, Kayling carves out a fine niche for herself here in an entertainingly frothy rom-com series which still isn’t afraid to deal with some serious issues from time to time. More than anything, though, it’s refreshingly warm and fuzzy, and it’s simply great to see the former The Office star enjoying so much long-deserved success.
4. The Following
The Show: Former FBI agent Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) is in pursuit of escaped serial killer Joe Carroll (James Purefoy), but he also has to deal with the man’s cult of like-minded maniacs who make his increasingly difficult job that much more dangerous.
Why It’s Underrated: Critical reception to the show has been relatively mixed to date, with the grisly violence and ludicrous twists dividing reviewers, while many felt that the second season couldn’t sustain the same thrills as the first. Awards prospects are sadly virtually nil, while the ratings of the third season to date have been largely half that of what the show scored in the first season.
It’s a shame, because The Following is a tremendously enjoyable crime series for those prepared to buckle up for the nauseating gore and some admittedly pretty insane plot developments. It doesn’t pretend to be totally grounded, but with Kevin Bacon’s steely lead performance and a sublimely creepy turn by James Purefoy, there are plenty of sleazy pleasures to be had with this terrifically unpleasant series.
3. Fresh Meat
The Show: Peep Show creators Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain take their eccentric brand of humour to follow the lives of six university students as they navigate living together in a house share in Manchester.
Why It’s Underrated: The series opened to mixed reviews though critical perception of the show improved as it went on, and it has seen small awards success on the British comedy circuit, even if the show is still very much niche viewing for the mid-twenties crowd and few else. Even so, for any Brit who has been to University, the series will no doubt seem stingingly familiar in one form or another, if not because you’ll recognise at least a few of these characters from your own time at Uni, then because you’ll empathise with the brutal (and brutally funny) situations throughout.
It might be too acerbic for some tastes, but there’s also an underlying heart to the show which makes it one of the sure gems of British comedy right now. It’ll be everyone’s loss once the show concludes with its final, fourth series later this year.
2. Constantine
The Show: Based off the popular Hellblazer comic book series, Constantine follows demon hunter John Constantine (Matt Ryan) as he attempts to bring down supernatural entities and ensure that these beasts are sent back from whence they came.
Why It’s Underrated: Above all else, this really just feels like a show that few actually gave a chance. Reviews were mixed-to-broadly-positive, praising the faithfulness to the comic book vision of the character (certainly more so than in the terrible Keanu Reeves movie), while some criticised the somewhat generic feel of all the supernatural mechanics, which failed to distinguish themselves in a crowded field of paranormal action TV shows.
Despite bringing in over 3 million viewers for the majority of its first season, Constantine has yet to have a second season confirmed, causing some fans to believe that it’s already been cancelled after just 13 episodes. Though a second season will be pitched to NBC in May, the network’s clear disappointment with the ratings makes it pretty unlikely, and so it seems that the show’s destined to become another cult hit axed long before its due date.
With Ryan’s steely lead performance and some surprisingly impressive visual effects for a TV show, Constantine deserved longer to find its place with viewers, yet in the unlikely event it does get a stay of execution, perhaps it will find time to do so.
1. Louie
The Show: Writer-director-editor-producer-star Louis C.K. plays a fictionalised version of himself as he traverses life, love and laughs while raising his two daughters in New York City, cutting between dramatic scenes and stand-up comedy routines.
Why It’s Underrated: Louie is a show beloved by pretty much everyone who’s seen it, and it’s been an awards darling ever since its initial release, but it just doesn’t have much of an audience. Ratings rarely creep over 1 million viewers per episode, in part because the show is so averse to gag-based comedy, instead taking a more sophisticated and artful, Woody Allen-esque approach to its downtrodden central character.
It’s a slight cheat because Louie actually started in 2010, but it’s so fantastic that it had to make the cut anyway. No other comedy on TV is as daring or intelligent as this, a sure testament to Louis C.K.’s mastery in every aspect of its production. Season 5 starts in a few short weeks, and it’s going to be glorious.
Which TV shows do you think are the decade’s most deserving of more awards, acclaim and attention? Shout it out in the comments!
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