Our Picks For the 10 Most Underrated TV Shows of the Past Decade
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Amanda Prahl
We picked the 10 most underrated TV shows from the past decade, including UnREAL, The Magicians, and Selfie.
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Buried among the dozens of buzzier and more prestigious literary adaptations this decade is this Canadian gem, which begins streaming its final season on Netflix in January 2020. Anne With an E tackles the classic Anne of Green Gables novels, but its version of irrepressible orphan Anne Shirley and her life in Avonlea is decidedly different from the usual, lighthearted approach you might remember from your childhood. Instead, Moira Walley-Beckett uses the beloved novels as a framework that touches on all the iconic scenes (Anne cracking the slate over Gilbert's head! The hair dye incident!) while using the show to explore deeper nuances and themes.

Without being too heavy-handed, it explores issues of gender equality, small-town prejudices, LGBTQ+ struggles, and the devastating treatment of Indigenous peoples. It's the rare adaptation that adds something new while still feeling like a perfect fit with the soul of the original.

The 2010s were, undoubtedly, the decade of superheroes. If you're at the point of superhero fatigue but still enjoy some aspects of the genre, Legends of Tomorrow is exactly what you're looking for. After its first season, based on a time-traveling/reincarnation romance storyline, faltered, the show underwent a total overhaul and became a wild, wacky ride that pokes fun at superhero tropes and gets more delightfully weird every year.

The show has also mastered something few series manage to do: a rotating cast that still gets viewers invested. Over the years, the time-traveling crew of misfits, led by butt-kicking bisexual superheroine Sara Lance, has added and lost several members, but instead of making the story feel transient, it keeps things fresh and funny. Whether they're running away from a demonic unicorn at Woodstock or accidentally getting themselves included in the legends of Camelot, the Legends are always saving the world, one irreverent adventure at a time.

Have you ever wondered what it would look like if Disney musicals and Monty Python medieval comedies merged? Galavant is your answer: a hilarious, sly, and little-watched musical comedy about an out-of-shape knight who gets back in the saddle to help a princess save her kingdom from the king who stole his girlfriend. Packed with anachronistic humor and witty, catchy songs by Disney maestro Alan Menken, it's the funniest show you never watched. Galavant also has a wildly meta sense of humor, with songs frequently breaking the fourth wall (even to call out its own low ratings) and parodies of every fairy-tale trope in the book.

This one comes with a huge caveat: the sci-fi drama's devastating season four finale shook things up and polarized viewers and critics alike, thrilling some while turning others into ex-fans. But before that, this gleefully weird deconstruction of sci-fi and fantasy earned a place as one of the most creative shows of the decade — even if not many people even heard about it until controversy struck.

With sharp, witty, darkly humorous dialogue, a diverse collection of characters, and a penchant for the unexpected, The Magicians soared far beyond its initial premise as "Harry Potter grad school meets dark and twisty Narnia." And it's not just the humor or the weird factor — there's a big heart there, too. The emotional season three episode "A Life In the Day," in which two characters live out an entire alternate lifetime in a single montage, is one of the best episodes of TV this decade, period.

When Selfie arrived in 2014, we just weren't ready for its self-aware title and its self-absorbed protagonist Eliza. But in hindsight, missing this short-lived, under-the-radar comedy should be one of the decade's biggest pop culture regrets. Very loosely based on Pygmalion (aka My Fair Lady), it follows a wannabe influencer and a marketing guru as they spar over communication in the digital age — and maybe discover a spark between them. Looking back, the show is a smart, satirical, and prescient look at work and love in the social media age, and although it only lasted one season, it's definitely worth a second look.

In the category of "underrated but headline-grabbing," we have this NBC time-travel drama. Packed with complicated characters and compelling storylines, the show figured out exactly how to balance an old-fashioned time-travel caper with bold character beats for its diverse, detailed cast. The beloved but low-rated show became one of the biggest "save our show" stories of the decade when it defeated cancellation not once, but twice: NBC cancelled the show after its first season due to high costs and low ratings, only to reverse the decision days later, and after cancelling the show again following a cliffhanger-y season two, fans rallied to get a satisfying two-hour wrap-up movie.

At the very start of the 2010s, the still-fledgling CW network launched Life Unexpected, about a teenager in the foster system whose attempts to get legally emancipated instead result in her reconnecting with the parents she never knew who gave her up as teens. Despite some moments of soapy melodrama, the dramedy's two seasons are mostly smart, heartfelt, and surprisingly unflinching depictions of family drama, the complexities of foster care, and the love and joy of found family. While it never quite made an impact in the ratings or on critical best-of lists, it's a sweet gem that shouldn't be overlooked.

If you ask a group of TV fans what the most upsetting cancellation of the decade was, I guarantee you'll have at least one person say Pitch. The highly-promoted but low-rated sports drama followed a fictional female pitcher becoming the first woman in Major League Baseball (the league actually participated in the making of the show, allowing for real teams and logos to feature instead of fictional ones) and all the politics, personal drama, and inner obstacles she faces along the way. What should have been a star-making role for lead actress Kylie Bunbury instead became one of the decade's most notorious cancellations and one of its biggest missed opportunities.

The ongoing obsession with The Bachelor never quite translated over to this sharp-edged drama series about the drama behind the scenes of a fictionalized version of the dating show. Each season goes "behind the scenes" of a new series of the in-universe reality show, while focusing on the personal drama with contestants, crew, and producers and peeling back the layers of reality and un-reality that hide behind the perfectly-filmed "dates" and glossy on-screen romances. It's a smart, sometimes uncomfortable (and, yes, sometimes melodramatic) meditation on one of the decade's biggest obsessions and the blurred lines of reality that inevitably accompany any "reality" TV show.

The sharpest, weirdest political satire of the decade came along in a short-lived, barely-watched miniseries in the Summer of 2016. The premise is wild, and the show just gets weirder from there: brain-munching space bugs from a meteor escape and infect politicians in Washington DC, causing leaders on both sides of the aisle to become political extremists. Meanwhile, a Democratic congressman's sister tries to figure out what's going on, with the help of her Republican rival/love interest, a scientist, and a conspiracy theorist. It's smart satire alongside hilariously deadpan horror on a fast-paced, wild ride that's unlike anything before or since. Oh, and instead of a normal "previously on," every episode starts with a jaunty, snarky little recap song that will definitely burrow its way into your brain.