4 Underrated Shows You've Never Heard of That Are Actually Perfect

There are so many TV shows available today that it’s easy to assume anything considered genuinely good will inevitably get discovered and find an audience. And yes, that’s true, but ironically, it’s also not quite how things work. Every year, new series hit streaming platforms, but some of them go unnoticed by most viewers, only being watched and remembered by the handful of people who were lucky enough to find them. This happens for all kinds of reasons, from a lack of promotion to just having a premise that doesn’t seem to have that much potential. So, some truly great productions end up slipping through the cracks.

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You’ve possibly heard of a few series like this before, but on this list, you’re going to find out 4 picks that may have never crossed your radar, or that you simply overlooked giving them a shot. But you can trust that if you’re looking for a new show to get hooked on, binge-watch, and use as an excuse to step away from the usual choices, it might just be right here.

4) Halt and Catch Fire

AMC shows tend to be good, with The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and Interview with the Vampire being some of the biggest examples, but while some of them become popular, others are pretty much the exact opposite — and Halt and Catch Fire falls into that group. In theory, seeing that it’s apparently a show about computers in the ’80s and not getting excited about it is understandable, but that’s also part of why it remains so overlooked. The story begins by following Joe (Lee Pace), Gordon (Scoot McNairy), and Cameron (Mackenzie Davis) as they try to develop a personal computer capable of competing with IBM. However, that’s more of a starting point, because as the seasons go on, technology takes a backseat and the focus shifts to the people.

And it’s not a story where you have to be a nerd or know anything about technology, because you can still become attached to the characters since their conflicts are much more relatable than the premise makes them seem. Overall, Halt and Catch Fire is a show about ambition, competition, failure, and relationships. And everything naturally gets better as the series moves forward, as it begins to follow the evolution of the internet as well. It has four seasons and easily falls into the category of “best TV shows that almost nobody ever watched.”

3) Rectify

Being completely honest, Rectify might be the most underrated series on this list, because it basically sabotaged itself commercially with its premise. And why? Well, it’s deliberately slow, completely character-driven, and spends much more time exploring the psychological consequences of a traumatic experience than actually having major events. Here, we follow the story of Daniel Holden (Aden Young), who spent almost 20 years on death row after being convicted of murdering his girlfriend, but some new evidence leads to his release and he finally returns home. From there, the show digs into what can happen to a person after spending decades being treated as if they were no longer a person.

The protagonist has to relearn extremely basic things, while being strange, traumatized, and sometimes even frustrating and completely lost. However, the main issue is the pacing, which obviously turns away some viewers right from the start. On the other hand, anyone willing to give it a chance will find a hidden gem: it has four seasons, with the last two even earning a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Rectify is really good if you enjoy well-developed character arcs and like to take their time analyzing a story. But if your vibe is more along the lines of True Detective when it comes to pacing, you’re probably going to get frustrated.

2) Patriot

Patriot ended up being canceled after two seasons, but it’s on this list because its conclusion is reasonably satisfying and you won’t feel like you wasted your time. The story revolves around John Tavner (Michael Dorman), an intelligence officer who is sent on a mission to Iran and has to assume a fake identity as an employee at a piping company in Milwaukee. The thing is that John isn’t the type of spy we’re used to, because he’s exhausted, emotionally destroyed, and unable to keep his professional and personal life under control. It’s a mix of espionage, dark humor, drama, and even that office comedy vibe, which might sound totally absurd in theory, but actually works really well.

In fact, the best thing about this series is that the protagonist’s suffering isn’t an excuse to make jokes about an incompetent spy, for example; there’s actually a real melancholy behind a lot of the humor (and Dorman in the role manages to sell it without overdoing it). Here, you can be laughing at a completely ridiculous situation and then realize the same situation is showing just how much that job is destroying him. That’s why Patriot doesn’t really fit into just one genre, which may be part of the reason it never managed to find a wider audience too. Its viewers need to have a kind of different sense of humor — if you do and you’re willing to give it a shot, you’ll definitely come across a show that will make you wonder why you didn’t discover it sooner.

1) Mr Inbetween

If you’re a fan of gangster shows and have never heard of Mr Inbetween, stop whatever you’re doing right now and add this series to your list, because it’s probably one of the best things you’ll do today. Here, we follow Ray Shoesmith (Scott Ryan), a hitman who tries to balance his profession with much more ordinary things, like being a father, maintaining relationships, and spending time with his family. But that idea doesn’t turn him into the kind of antihero designed to make you sympathize with him, because Ray threatens, kills people, and does terrible things, but also takes his daughter out, talks to his friends, and tries to deal with mundane problems that keep you conflicted about him the whole time. And the best part? It’s only three seasons long, with episodes that run for around 20 minutes.

Mr Inbetween doesn’t create huge conspiracies when a simple situation is already enough to tell you something about the main character: an episode can start with him trying to deal with an everyday problem and end in an extremely violent way (and you’re rarely warned that it’s about to happen). Naturally, with this approach, the humor is also much drier than what you usually see in other shows from the genre, but it gives the production an identity of its own. So, to break it down, there’s no unnecessary filler, no pointless season, and when it ends, it feels very satisfying. It’s a high-quality series that’s just as impressive as the fact that it’s still pretty much unknown to the general audience.