The ratings for most current TV shows are almost exactly inverse to how good they truly are. It’s a crazy upside down world where NCIS is the top-rated show on TV after God knows how many seasons (seriously, how long has that show been on? 7 years? 17 years? I would believe either answer), and Community gets cancelled after a creative resurgence in its fifth season.
Well now it’s time to promote some underrated shows (a mix of broadcast and cable) you may have not even heard of but are almost certainly not watching, and diss some higher rated rivals that weren’t even in danger of cancellation this time out.
The 5 Best Shows You’re Not Watching…
Honorable Mention: “Parenthood” has struggled to capture viewer eyeballs for 5 seasons, and NBC recently announced it was renewed for a sixth and final season of only 13 episodes. What a “don’t let the door hit you on the way out” exit, but at least it’s better than the shoddy treatment given to Community.
Runners-Up: “Fargo” and “Turn.” These are the new cable mavericks on FX and AMC (respectively) but ratings haven’t been exactly stellar for either one. I can’t say they’re perfect shows, but both deserve better. “Fargo” is being unfairly dismissed by critics overly enamored with the film of the same name (the show and movie actually have no overlapping characters and it’s not even set in Fargo, the title is a stretch and hurting it more than helping) and perfectly nails the passive aggressive tension beneath Minnesota life with an aces turn by Billy Bob Thronton, a smoothly sinister force of a hitman. “TURN” is a slow-building but thoroughly intriguing Revolutionary War set drama that details the building of America’s first spy ring. Both shows excel at transcending preconceived notions (“TURN” shows that not all colonists were against England and it’s as much a battle between the “loyalists” and the “traitors” as Americans vs. British) and sneaking up on you with suspenseful moments.
5. “Jim Henson’s Creature Shop Challenge”…Already mentioned it in an article earlier today but it’s definitely the Best Reality Show You’re Not Watching.
4. [Tie] “The Mindy Project” and “Inside Amy Schumer”…Two very different, underrated shows starring female comedians who deserve all the praise that’s been heaped on Kristen Wiig and Lena Dunham over the years. “Mindy” works best as a slyly revolutionary romantic comedy only with the girl who would usually be the “Indian Best Friend” existing solely to help the messy-but-skinny white girl protagonist in a rom-com taking center stage and all the better for it. “Amy” is probably the best sketch show on TV, and contains at least one sketch every week that has me rolling.
3. “Hannibal”…The Best Drama You’re Not Watching just barely escaped cancellation and is one of the lowest rated shows to get a renewal. Yet it’s head and shoulders above any other “serial killer” show on TV, transcending the genre at every turn by getting as close as it can to putting you inside the way a crazy person thinks. A hero we can’t fully trust (who can’t fully trust himself) that’s desperate to lure a monster (Hannibal) only he knows about out in the open and has to flirt with becoming just like him to do it? It’s TV’s best duel since Walter White took on Gus Fring.
2. “Silicon Valley”…Some call it a nerd version of “Entourage” but that disguises how much funnier, more interesting, more realistic, and all around better this show is. It’s no surprise this series is good since it’s created by Mike Judge (king of underrated projects like Idiocracy, Office Space, and King of the Hill) but I’m hoping this will be something he does that people appreciate while it’s actually on the air instead of years later.
1. [Tie] “Years of Living Dangerously” and “Vice”…”Years” is on Showtime and uses famous celebrities in an attempt to get people to care about climate crisis. It’s the best use of celebrity I’ve seen in years, and also a quietly scathing indictment of our celebrity obsessed culture that the only way we’ll care about climate crisis (if people ever will) is if there’s a huge production budget and Harrison Ford’s walking us through it. Still, it covers different and interesting topics in each installment that make it more than worth checking out. Not unlike HBO’s excellent news magazine “Vice” which covers stories you will never see anywhere else in the media. I can’t imagine even 60 Minutes (whose best days have been disrupted by corporatism, hence Leslie Stahl’s ultra-safe, seemingly monthly story about people who remember things well) going to the Boston bomber’s terrorism camp or nuclear mutations in former Soviet Republics or the fallout when Exxon/Mobile wants to exploit Papa New Guinea’s natural gas.
The Five Worst Shows You Are Watching…
Note: This excludes reality shows that are, of course, a given to be awful and also inexplicably popular shows that critics gave up on a long time ago.
5. Grimm…I hate listing this show here since I was a fan at one point, but it’s really been running in place for too long now. The weekly cop cases involving Nick aren’t nearly as interesting as what Monroe and Rosalee are up to. When a fantasy-horror-cop show is most intriguing while following a dorky wolf man watchmaker-sidekick and his cozy domestic life, you know something’s gone wrong.
4. The Walking Dead…It’s become blasphemy to point out that this show has no creative direction and little plot momentum, but the last eight episodes (Part B of season 4) were literally a trek through the woods, slowing the pace to a crawl. Almost every major character was off on their own, with two or three episodes going by where we didn’t see some of them, only highlighting just how little most people on this show mean to us. I’m still pulling for a Rick and Michonne romance, but that’s the only interest I have in whether somebody lives or dies.
3. Brooklyn Nine Nine…This show was an early renewal for Fox, and won this year’s Golden Globe for Best Comedy Series. It’s a series that I really thought I liked until I realized that I didn’t laugh one time watching 22 episodes, and am actively annoyed by Andy Samberg’s lead character.
2. Pretty much anything on CBS that’s not The Good Wife: That’s right, the whole network is extremely popular but I can’t hardly sit through an episode of Criminal Minds, NCIS, NCIS LA, The Mentalist (how in the hell did that escape cancellation this time?), Blue Bloods, etc. And then their lousy comedy slate like Mom, Mike and Molly, Two and Half Men. Yep, even the precious The Big Bang Theory isn’t worth the monstrous ratings it commands.
At one point and time I even liked Person of Interest, but they quietly eroded its quality by killing off Taraji P. Henson and adding on more cartoonish characters like Root and Shaw. It went from a show that’s more about detectives in NY to a silly spy show that gets more outlandish each episode, and it’s become increasingly pro-surveillance now that the “bad guys” are an implausibly well organized and funded privacy group.
1. The Following…What happened to this show? Poor Kevin Bacon, starring in something that is not only the “Worst Show I’ve Seen Every Episode Of” but arguably the worst scripted drama on television. It’s like the anti-Hannibal: a silly and cheap serial killer series where nobody dies and you don’t believe in any character’s actions for a single second, nor do you care.