5d ago

What’s your favourite forgotten/niche or otherwise obscure TV series that you wish more people knew about?

161 comments

Better off ted deserved more than what it got.
- I knew if I scrolled long enough I'd find this show mentioned. As someone who works in the biological sciences, I recommend this show to my coworkers all the time.

I feel like Black Books was very underrated. A drunken Irish misanthrope runs a bookshop with an idiot for a sidekick
- Tbf idk that Mannie was ever an idiot
  Naive and well-meaning but not stupid
  
  It's not his fault, he's got Dave's syndrome

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace: '80s BBC horror drama satire from the early '00s, and I think it used to be more popular but has fallen out of the zeitgeist just based on its age, space ghost: coast to coast.
- I think it was a satire less of BBC horror drama and more of author-branded spooky anthology series like The Ray Bradbury Theater and Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected. But done by someone who's part terrible horror author like Shaun Hutson, part terrible 80s action movie hero. (Full disclosure, I would read Hutson schlock like Slugs etc as a kid in the 80s.)
  But that's just my tuppence.
  Started rewatching it last month, saving the last episode.
  I think it's going to get more attention now because it's finally been released on streaming (Peacock in the US IIRC).
  I've still never seen the spin-off, Man to Man with Dean Learner
  
  I think you're right, it reminded me of watching Dark Shadows and other similarly written and shot old soap opera reruns with my grandma. But it's really closer to the horror anthology single creator style like the influences you mentioned. There's an in-character commentary track too that's pretty good
  
  I think the choice of a hospital in particular may have been influenced by the 1994 show Riget, directed by Lars von Trier, which was brought to English-speaking countries under the name The Kingdom (not to be confused with the 2014 show about MMA fighters someone else mentioned in a thread here). It's a horror show set in a hospital, and also kind of a soap opera, and also it's kind of supposed to be funny sometimes? That show...I guess I felt like it tried very hard, but also that conspicuous effort isn't a good look for something that's supposed to be unsettling. Which is kinda the feeling that Garth Marenghi's Dark Place takes the piss out of so effectively. I dunno, maybe it's my imagination, but I can't help but see them as connected.
- I just discovered this one for the first time myself. It is the apotheosis of stupid TV, pitch perfect in so many ways.
- Loved Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law
  https://youtu.be/1AoPpfmJK3Q
- That show was a hoot. I couldn’t get into Garth’s recent novels though. ☹️

Misfits. I went back and watched the entire thing again a couple of years ago and it was still so funny. I'm not sure it could get made in today's world, it was so delightfully mean and rude.
- Asbo X-Men was a lot of fun, Robert Sheehan was really good in it
  
  I really liked his replacement, Joe Gilgun, as well. Those two carried the show, their characters were massive dickheads but you couldn't help but laugh at their constant bullying and manipulative behaviour.
- I was gonna mention Misfits. I enjoyed they show, but the quality dropped after they finish the time travel loop storyline.
  
  The drop off wasn't as bad as I remembered when I went back and watched it (I actually thought some of the later seasons were the funniest) but the departures of key cast members definitely derailed the superhero storyline they were building up.

Farscape
- I was thinking about this but seems to popular to fit. I mean I feel its like mentioning tos although I but many star trek fans likely have never seen it so maybe they fit.
  
  TOS being from the 60s is harder to rewatch, let alone watch for the first time 60 years later.
- And for many people, they can watch it free now on streaming services like Plex, so they have no excuse not to!
  I'm about to finish my rewatch of season 3, "the season of death".
- they got slightly recognition after moving to SG1. i would say sg1/sga/sgu and farscape still are pretty niche as not as popular after 2010, since it disappeared before then.

Dead Like Me
- On that note, Pushing Daisies.
  
  Came here for Pushing Daisies. Whenever I see Lee Pace on Foundation I call him Emperor Pie Maker.
- Banger of a show

Scavengers Reign
- Fantastic show. Too bad we won't get a 2nd season.

The Shield is an amazing, gritty series about The Strike Team, a special unit in an LA police department. The writing is tight, the story threads are engaging, and the end of every episode makes you want to immediately start another one just to see how it all plays out. It was seven seasons long, and they all connect from the first episode to the last one.
It’s on Hulu in the US, and well worth the watch.
- We recently watched, overlapping, The Shield and The Commish. The contrast between Chiklis's two roles was astounding!
- It was seven seasons long, and they all connect from the first episode to the last one.
  That finale, so well done, so unjust 🤌🧑‍🍳😘
  
  One of the most gripping episodes of television ever.
- Oh man I watched that show a very long time ago, idk probably close to 15 years at this point. But holy cow some scenes have stuck with me. It is fantastic and I need to give it a go again
  
  It’s amazing how much you can pick up on a rewatch that you missed the first time.

Utopia (Brittish version), interesting cinematography vis-a-vis colour usage, quirky soundtrack and amazing dialogue. Not sure if this counts as obscure though.
- I definitely think it counts. I watched it back in the day and even I routinely forget of its existence (only just remembered again thanks to your comment).
- Tried to watch this and the school shooting scene turned me off of it.

I liked "the colony", but apparently I was the only person to do so.
- Mabye you'd like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silo_(TV_series)
  
  Thanks. I like the synopsis already!
- I loved the first season but the 2nd was rough.
  
  I feel similarly; It seems like it was used almost exclusively to set up plot points for Season 3, so my overall opinion of S2 will largely depend on how it all plays out.
- Great show!

Wilfred 😍 both US and og Australian

The Magicians (2016): It often gets pitched as "Hogwarts for adults" because it features a magic college/university, but honestly that is just the initial backdrop and a massive undersell.
It is the rare show where the creators were seemingly handed a blank cheque to be as creative as they want to be, and they make full use of that in more ways than I can list here (but which definitely includes both the magic system itself, and the hilarious nonchalance towards the consequences of magic being a reality); yet all the while, they stay true and fiercely loyal to their characters, who are all deeply flawed, but which you can't help but want to see succeed; plus they managed to write genuinely great humor.
The best summary of the show comes from one of the characters themselves: "Magic doesn't come from talent. It comes from pain."
Be warned: the first few episodes, and possibly the first season, are the weakest and roughest of the bunch, which probably really hampered viewership. They do still manage to find their own tone, but it's nothing compared to seasons 3-5.
- I think it's based on a book, so the series creators might've been less creative than you think, but an interesting watch nonetheless
  
  At least one of the book writers once mentioned how the show was more creative than they were. They were really impressed with how the keys were used.
  
  It is, and I read them. The series creators were very faithful to the general feeling and atmosphere of the books, but most of the plotlines and character beats are show-only. Makes for two very different (but both good!) stories.

Due South. A Royal Canadian Mountie ends up working as a liaison with the Chicago Police Department while on the trail of his father's killer. It's a comedy-drama with a great cast.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_South
- Thank you kindly.
- Thank you for confirming this wasn’t a fever dream.
- I'd also like to point out how good the use of music was on Due South. Bloody amazing soundtracks and it's OST CD is still on my playlists.
  https://open.spotify.com/album/4uXAntan98PFUvOUhcKuVq

Common side effects was good. Its on adult swim so maybe not that obscure but I don't see it talked a whole lot about. Older things would be police story and hill street blues which because they don't rely on special effects have aged well. Its interesting to watch things like cop shows from the 70's and 80's as while they might not show exact reality of cops form the time its just amazing to see how we expected cops to behave compared to now.

Firefly
OK, OK, I know it's not obscure or forgotten, but why has nobody done something similar since?
- You talk about it as if it was revolutionary. The concept is a defined genre. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan, but the concepts are not revolutionary at all. What makes the series great is the plots, writing, casting and acting. Oh, and you have the mix of frontier/tech in many current series, like Andor or Foundation, for example.
  
  I didn't mean to suggest it was original or revolutionary. But despite that, there hasn't really been another series with that vibe since.
- Literally my first thought when I opened this thread.
- I liked Dark Matter a lot, and I think there were some similarities.
  But they were very different.
  
  I'm watching through it now and it is very similar but definitely not up to the same level.
  
  Yes, I enjoyed that, true. But it wasn't at the same level as Firefly.
- unpopular opinion: firefly failed because it was mediocre and uninteresting, and if its handful of viewers weren't the loudest most entitled people on the planet zero people would be talking about it today.

Utopia (2020)
Technically a remake of the 2013 UK show of the same name, but I had never seen or heard of it - so I went into the US version blind and I absolutely loved it.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (2016)
Similar to the above, a UK TV show preceded this one; both based on a Douglas Adam’s (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) novel series.
- I loved Utopia so much, We just came across it and couldn't stop until it was over.
  The soundtrack by Cristobal Tapai de Veer is pretty great too and was a big part of what made it so memorable to me.

It's a skit comedy show but The Upright Citizens Brigade was hilarious! In the vein of The State or Kids in the Hall.

Obscure because it comes from my country but
Kim’s convenience is an amazing show. Like fucking incredible! Netflix had a the diffusion right for a time but I don’t know if they have it anymore, exactly like the next suggestion (this one is in French)
Série Noire where two writers tried to write a crime story and get embroiled with the … gay mafia. Personally I prefer Les invincibles
Not obsucure (still consider one of the pioneers in New Waves documentaries) but I cannot help myself, Pierre Perrault’s Shimmering Beast and Pour la Suite du Monde (for the next world, the link have English subtitles) where he investigates what it is to be Québécois, to be human in the modernity

Banished - I wanted a second season so badly
Peep Show - Peak cringe humor. One of the best shows ever.
- Peep Show was absolutely epic and is utterly unique. For the uninitiated, every single camera shot is from the perspective of one of the characters which is where it gets its name. One of my favourite shows ever.
  If you haven't seen it drop everything right now and start. This is where Olivia Coleman started out and she's brilliant but there are so many great characters.

Ed's Dwarf
- That’s not niche, is it ?
  
  Where I'm at (US), it is.
  
  Pretty sure outside of scifi circles it's niche. I can think of maybe two people I know that may possibly have heard of it.
  At least in the US. It must have been more popular across the ocean
- So literally the most well known UK sitcom of the late 1980s?
  
  Maybe he’s talking about the US remake?
  
  Where I'm at (US), it's not well known.

Lie to Me, and Battle Creek.
Both shows had their strengths and weaknesses but I found both entertaining for different reasons. Lie to Me had a slow burn romance subplot that never quite came to fruition.
Battle Creek was funny and silly and I always got the feeling the actors were having fun making it.

chef!
the secret life of machines
clerks the animated series
miranda
- Chef! 👍

Mission Hill. It was 90s era animated sitcom that was taken off the air before the first season finished, resulting in the last few episodes never getting animated.
Today it stands as a really engaging period piece, and if you ever wanted to see Spongebob (Tom Kenny) as a flamboyant gay man or a violent teenage ne'er-do-well it's well worth the seven or so episodes.
- Great show. Too bad the revival didn't happen

Mr Robot. It did well but I don't know anyone that's seen it.
- I always think of google as Evil Corp because of that show.
- I’ve seen the first and the first half of the second, the second kill it for me however
  
  Seasons 3 and 4 are amazing, and the last episode has an amazing twist.
  I’d just skip past season 2 if you don’t like it.

Sports Night was a late 90s comedy-drama about a nightly sports show like Sportscenter.
Great characters, good storylines and created by Aaron Sorkin post-West Wing, so really good writing
- studio 60 was also fantastic; both get overshadowed by the west wing and newsroom :(

a likely story; it was a reading show on wcvb (like reading rainbow) about a woman - alison martin - who was a librarian who drove a bookmobile around and read to kids. i watched it every day.
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/56859
https://oldfilm.org/more-than-the-news-programming-from-wcvb/
- I can still hear the kids yelling "That's a likely story!"

Terra Nova (2011)
- That show had such a strong premise, the first episode was amazing. Then it's like they forgot what the show was actually about and made it a soap opera. I just don't understand how writers can look at a setting with things like dinosaurs, time travel, and colony survival and go "You know what the audience would really like as a main plot point? Generic family conflict between two parents, their angsty teenage son and daughter, and the 5-year old they keep leaving unsupervised. THATS what the people want! Definitely not dinosaurs, or a sci-fi survival in a prehistoric wilderness."
  They turned it around by the end of the season, but the damage was already done. Too many people got turned off by the cheesy dialog and the almost complete lack of dinosaurs post episode 1.
  
  Agreed, it had sooo much more potentially. It's almost the same as what happened to Ark (2023).
  I just need a show like SG-1 (1997) again! Thankfully Foundation (2021) & Invasion (2021) are filling that gap.
  
  I think loads of studio & network execs back then were like "how can we make everything into a Lost-style shaggy dog story?"
  Watched a few episodes of La Brea recently and I'm getting similar vibes.

Farscape is a classic
- It was truly special. The characters had real, believable motives and flaws and they grew with every season, while trying to survive in a gloriously chaotic universe.

Galavant, at least the first season, the second season wasn’t as good. It’s fun. It’s hilarious. It’s a musical.
- UGH I STILL MISS THAT SHOW
- The finale where they knew they had no money left was also really cool. One of my favorites.

Mr Inbetween. Brilliant from the start to the very last scene. Everyone who watches it thinks its superb. Getting them to actually start watching it is hard work.
Love/Hate. Irish gangster show. I felt it got better each season. Loved the unhinged & dangerously unpredictable Fran (Peter Coonan).
First few seasons of Italian mob show Gomorrah were amazing but I think some were put off by it being in Italian language (fine with me as I'm an English speaker but watch everything including English language shows with subtitles on)

Penny dreadful - https://youtu.be/YFXHfEqMcis
Amazing story

Damn this thread about to make my "Watch Later" list twice as long

Chowder - old Cartoon Network show about a purple bear raccoon thing who tries to be a chief making wacky dishes and breaking the 4th wall. ‘Tis was a good show.
- I loved the static the texture thing they had with their animation.

The angry beavers / die Biber Brüder
- Ich bin der leise Wind des Schicksals wusch
- If we're talking the Nickelodeon cartoon, then all I gotta say is I absolutely LOVE that show. Partial staple of my childhood, watching reruns whenever they were on. Definitely a high recommendation from me.

David Lynch's "On the Air".
- I wish we had gotten Mullholand Drive as a TV series.

Corner Gas is a pretty good Canadian sitcom. It's got a number of seasons and then a animated continuation that was made during covid.
Its not the best sitcom, but has good dry humor and a somewhat unique setting for a sitcom.

Brimstone, a series with the premise that some demons escaped from hell, the devil makes a deal with a literally damned cop to track them all down and send them back to hell. John Glover played the devil and he does an amazing job in that role.
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=dLHvxVcDXpo

Kingdom (2014)
It’s a drama that follows this family of mma fighters. It aired on a small network and never really promoted. It’s actually really well written and entertaining. You really care for some of the characters. One of the characters is gay, the series finale has an interaction related to that had me crying.

Ghosts. The British version, not the American remake. It is a heartwarming comedy about some ghosts that haunt a mansion.
- Soo good. It's amazing to see the cast being silly with intent, dedication and love.
  The caveman immediately climbed my "best written and portrayed character" list of all time. Perfect depiction of an enlightened being. Childish and wise in beautiful harmony.
  Btw, the US version has grown on me. It starts as really really "American" with the extra-ness but over time it mellows out with some really heartfelt moments, interesting questions and wacky antics. I usually hate this cliche but.. "it gets better after the first season". Would recommend if you have time to kill and want to watch something light.
  
  I haven't caught the UK version yet, just some of the US one, definitely interested now.
  The US one's British character, Nigel (of course, "Nigel"; US writers seem to be pathologically incapable of not naming a male British character "Nigel"), has an accent so bad I'm genuinely starting to feel it qualifies as racist. :D
- love the uk one; the us remake is super good too (as far as us remakes go) the casting was spot on. it was just different enough to work on its own too

nobody has probably heard of it but capitol critters was awesome :(

Monkey Dust (2003). It was a very dark animated comedy series on BBC3.
It isn't easy to find as it was very dark (joking about terrorism etc.) and isn't in streaming services. But it was great satire and had many memorable characters.
The producer died in a car crash which did for the show.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_Dust

Man Seeking Woman, Sureal Romantic Comedy with eric andre and jay baruchel, hitlers still alive, cupid is real, and other weird sht is just super casually accepted
Review, Andy Daly Comedy Central show, starts with a man reviewing normal things, goes off the rails and breaks the 4th wall with the reviewers life going to sht because he keeps reviewing fked up things, its one of the funniest shows I've seen, hard to explain, it just spirals
Animals, Animated Show about animals with humans issues, gets really dark, has some funny ass moments, has an asap ferg and rocky cameo as a bodega cat music video, it like makes me uncomfortable in a good way
- Trippin through the rift has some funny jokes and cool concepts but is mostly mid so its kinda forgotten and niche
- Room 104, wild show, some very mid episodes, its always the same room, the room is kinda supernatural, different ppl with different stories, in one two dudes eat each others dick (based off a real story)

Snuff Box. Only 6 episodes but infinitely quotable. The theme song also fucking slaps. It’s the only show's theme song I actually occasionally listen to.

Danger 5
South Australian tv show that is a “what if Charlie’s angels tried to kill hitler” presented as a bad Spanish soap opera from the 70’s in the first season and a shitty action drama from the 80’s in the second.
Deliciously bizarre, infinitely quotable, phenomenal soundtrack, very hard to explain. Think power rangers levels of drama with tastefully absurd offensive elements (blackface, misogyny, nazis) played for perfect comedic effect. Seriously one of a kind show.
Both seasons are posted as one 6hr video on YouTube. - https://youtu.be/vFzCQcHglFA

The Middleman. Without a doubt one of the funnest comic book series adaptations. Natalie Morales and Matt Keeslar on a ridonkulas romp of silly yet intelligent adventures. Poor show only got 13 episodes but each ones a gem.

Profit
I passed on a lot of NBC shows after the canceled this and didn't even show us the episodes they'd already made.
- Yeah, that was dark. Loved the few eps I did catch on the NBC Super Channel (free satellite/cable channel in Europe) back in the day.

Lexx is one of the best science fiction shows. Season 2 is peak.
- I’ll have to try it… but after 3 episodes I don’t know anymore 😅

Primo. A show about a teenager, his mom, and six uncles. Nothing groundbreaking but well done. Really wish it'd got a second season.

Maybe not super obscure and more my wife’s suggestion than mine (though I also enjoyed it), but Merlin (2008) was a great show that unfortunately had a low budget for the first couple seasons and got cut short with very little warning to the directors at the end, but it’s still a great family friendly fantasy show. It’s my wife’s all-time favourite TV show, and while it’s not mine (I’d probably say Doctor Who for me), I totally get it. It’s very entertaining.

Whites

The Goncharov TV mini-series was 5 episodes of pure perfection. Best thing NBC ever did.
- Oh you :)

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