There are so many great shows out there that it can be difficult to decide which ones to spend your time on. That goes double for lower-rated shows that you might have never heard of! You can take our word for, though, that these 15 underrated shows are worth your attention.
Banshee
While many people know Anthony Starr from The Boys, he’s also excellent in Banshee, an action series in which he plays a criminal who infiltrates Banshee, Pennsylvania and impersonates a murdered lawman named Lucas Hood. As he attempts to settle into a new life without crime, he finds his past catching up to him.
Vigil
This slow-burning series from the BBC focuses on Inspectors Kirsten Longacre and Amy Silva as they investigate a death on a ballistic missile submarine. The case intersects with the disappearance of a Scottish fishing vessel and sees the knotty interplay between the British and Scottish governments come to the fore.
Acapulco
This feel-good show about a resort worker sees Maximo trying his best to build his career after finally landing his dream job. The show jumps between two timelines, the present day and 1984, as it lays out Maximo’s complicated history and relationships.
Paper Girls
This 2022 series was based on the 2015 comic book of the same name and tragically only got a single season. When four paper delivery girls are out on the morning after Halloween in 1988, they’re mysteriously transported forward in time to 2019 and find themselves caught up in a time-hopping adventure that will decide the fate of the world.
The Chestnut Man
Fans of crime dramas will love The Chestnut Man, a detective show that follows Naia and Mark as they try to untangle a web of murders. A crime scene with a chestnut figurine connects a recent case to that of a missing girl from a year before. The plot thickens from there.
Pachinko
This one is unlike any show you’ve ever watched. Pachinko tells the story of four generations of Korean immigrants in Japan. The family tries to make a new start, only to find the bitter pushback from people that view them as foreigners. Themes of discrimination and racism underpin this broody drama.
The OA
Prairie Johnson, a blind woman, vanishes mysteriously. She reappears seven years later, complete with restored sight and no memory of the time between her disappearance and now. What a miracle, right? Of course, something’s not right here. What’s really going on?
Class of ‘07
High school reunions sit at the intersection of nostalgia and awkwardness in a way that no other social event quite manages. That makes the setting of Class of ’07, an Australian Catholic school reunion, such a unique starting point for a comedy. And then everyone else in the world is submerged underwater by a tidal wave and the former classmates are stranded back at high school.
Legion
This FX series follows a young mutant named David Haller with burgeoning psychic abilities who is tormented by his own fragmented psyche. Interestingly, Haller is the son of X-Men founder Charles Xavier and has some very unique connections to the wider Marvel Comics universe.
Agents of SHIELD
Speaking of underrated shows in the Marvel oeuvre, Agents of SHIELD was the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first foray into television. While it’s been discarded as “non-canon,” it’s an excellent show that got to play with a surprising number of Marvel characters and concepts before ending its run after 7 great seasons.
Kim’s Convenience
Kim’s Convenience is about as comforting as a show can be, showing the daily lives of the Korean Canadian Kim family as they run a convenience store in Toronto. The show is heartwarming, cute, and very Canadian. If you’re looking for something quiet and sweet, this is the show for you.
Superman and Lois
A lot of non-comics media gets Superman wrong. Superman and Lois doesn’t. Here, the big blue Boy Scout isn’t some dour stand-in for unchecked power—he’s a goofy kid from Kansas who was raised by Ma and Pa Kent. Only now, he’s also a dad and is learning how to parent super-powered kids along with his wife, Lois Lane. This isn’t a superhero show with family drama, interestingly. It’s a family drama with occasional bursts of action.
Altered Carbon
Netflix’s high-concept sci-fi series Altered Carbon adapts the Richard K. Morgan novel of the same name and presents some fascinating concepts. In the show’s universe, people’s memories are stored on slates called “stacks” that can be installed in different bodies. This premise alone opens up so many fascinating avenues for storytelling that it’s dizzying, and the show runs with some of the tastiest concepts by showing us a case in the life of private investigator Takeshi Kovacs.
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Travelers
Travelers is a high-concept sci-fi show with a shoestring budget. A far future humanity uses time travel technology to send the consciousness of special agents, called Travelers, back to the 21st Century to avert various disasters that will eventually ruin the human race. There’s just one catch: the Travelers can only have their minds sent back, not their bodies. As such, they have to “travel” into the minds of people who are about to die in unpreventable ways and then live out the “stolen” days of these doomed hosts.
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The Venture Bros.
Few shows are as well-written and under-appreciated as The Venture Bros., an animated show created by Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer. What started as a parody of Johnny Quest quickly became a genuinely enthralling science fiction send-up of superhero tropes. It got a proper send-off in 2023 with the excellent outro film, The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart.
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