From “Breaking Bad” to “BoJack Horseman,” the 2010s produced landmark dramas and comedies that reshaped television. But not every exceptional show from the decade found the audience it deserved, and many are still waiting for a second life on streaming.
Some genuinely brilliant 2010s series fell victim to the medium’s growing pains. Mainstream networks struggled to walk the line between the reliable programming that kept the lights on and the exciting, ambitious content emerging all around them; niche networks and premium platforms were attempting to pivot from importing foreign work or airing blockbuster films to producing original scripted content. In doing so, they made a lot of remarkable programs for audiences that simply hadn’t arrived yet or, worse, buried them beneath outdated marketing that had no idea how to sell tomorrow’s must-watch TV.
15. Black Sails
It’s hard to know what circumstances would have allowed a show like “Black Sails” to succeed. The “Treasure Island” prequel was not the first literary TV spin-off, nor was it the first attempt to bring pirate action to the small screen. Crucially, it achieved what it seemingly set out to do on both counts, expanding the mythos of one of the most famous English-language novels of all time while indulging in plenty of swashbuckling spectacle. It also boasted an underseen performance from the late Ray Stevenson. For whatever reason, such selling points have rarely, if ever, drawn a wide audience.
There’s also the issue of its platform. Despite producing some genuinely great, buzzy programming, Starz has long struggled to command the same broad cultural attention as its premium-TV competitors. “Black Sails” arrived during a period when the network was still building its identity around original programming, which may have limited the show’s reach. Even if it had the makings of a classic-lit swashbuckler capable of breaking through, its home on Starz gave it a lower ceiling than it deserved.
14. Orphan Black
It’s rather ironic that “Orphan Black” was held back by confusion over its identity. Early trailers for the Canadian-produced BBC America series pitched it as a crime thriller about a criminal, played by breakout star Tatiana Maslany, stealing her dead doppelgänger’s identity, rather than a twisted sci-fi story about a mind-bending cloning conspiracy.
The next major problem “Orphan Black” faced was its broadcaster. BBC America was far from a destination for prestige TV entertainment in the U.S., where the network was mostly known for British comedies, detective procedurals and “Doctor Who.” When “Orphan Black” debuted in 2013, the channel had barely begun producing its own original dramas, having launched the period crime series “Copper” just a year earlier. At first glance, “Orphan Black” could easily have been mistaken for boilerplate genre entertainment, and BBC America lacked the reach to help wider audiences recognize what it actually was.
Maslany’s performance became the show’s clearest path to broader recognition. At the Emmys, the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series category was packed throughout the show’s run with contenders such as Claire Danes (“Homeland”) and Robin Wright (“House of Cards”). When Maslany finally broke into the category in 2015, and especially when she won the following year, broader audiences began paying attention. It still wasn’t enough to fully shed the series’ cult status.
“Orphan Black” ran for five seasons until 2017. A spin-off, “Orphan Black: Echoes,” was cancelled after one season in 2024.
13. Person of Interest
“Person of Interest” suffered from a similar crisis of identity, though in this case, the disconnect was not between the marketing and the actual product, but between the creators and the network. Today, in the age of prestige TV and streaming (and with the benefit of hindsight via “Westworld”), audiences might have been quicker to recognize what Jonathan Nolan was attempting with “Person of Interest.”
It’s essentially a proto-prestige sci-fi drama wearing the comforting mask of a CBS police procedural. That disguise became a point of tension between Nolan and the network. CBS wanted a case-of-the-week series about a secret agent (Jim Caviezel) fighting pre-crime, while Nolan saw the premise as the jumping-off point for a serialized, high-concept exploration of technology and crime-fighting. Given this disagreement, along with the fact that it was an outside production from Warner Bros., CBS had less incentive to support “Person of Interest” when the opportunity arose to shift resources toward an in-house program. The series was unceremoniously cancelled after five seasons in 2016.
Nolan attributed the show’s lack of recognition to a perceived critical bias against broadcast procedurals. At a time when HBO and AMC were helping define the future of the medium, Nolan bridged two eras, creating one of the last great traditional broadcast shows.
12. Banshee
Of course, it’s worth asking whether Starz’s smaller cultural footprint hurt “Black Sails” less than Cinemax’s more infamous reputation hurt “Banshee.” When the series entered development in the early 2010s, the premium cable platform was still widely known as “Skinemax.” It was the place viewers might turn for feature films during regular programming hours and softcore adult fare later at night. Cinemax was seen as salacious rather than prestigious or essential, and it had roughly half the subscriber count of sibling network HBO.
As a result, “Banshee” had an uphill battle finding viewers. Marketing was relatively sparse, its lead actor, Antony Starr, was largely unknown to American audiences, and its vague title did little to convey the series’ unique blend of antihero cop drama and action thrills. Its first season also struggled to fully capitalize on that potential.
“Banshee” eventually grew into a quietly acclaimed premium drama that remained stubbornly underseen despite strong critical support. It wasn’t until Starr, who leads the series as an ex-con posing as a small-town sheriff, received wider recognition through “The Boys” that “Banshee” began to find its audience.
11. Chuck
“Chuck” has one of the more fascinating survival stories on the list for two reasons — the most famous one involves a sandwich franchise.
Throughout its five-season run on NBC, “Chuck” was rarely far from cancellation. The Warner Bros.-produced spy comedy, starring Zachary Levi as a retail employee who gets roped into the CIA, was always on the cusp of failing to make the right people enough money to justify its existence. When that became clear to the show’s small but mighty fan base ahead of Season 3, viewers organized a grassroots campaign to show Subway how many of its customers were also fans of “Chuck.” After witnessing the amount of enthusiasm and potential brand loyalty in play, Subway actually helped sustain three seasons of the show.
But even that support wasn’t enough to bring this endearingly unusual series a much larger audience. For most of its run, “Chuck” remained on Monday nights at NBC, where it was asked to anchor a time slot against “Monday Night Football” and “Dancing with the Stars.” That kind of competition would have been a death sentence for many shows, making the five-season survival of “Chuck” nearly as remarkable as the series itself.
10. Party Down
“Party Down” was mythically unpopular over its original two-season run on Starz. In 2010, its series finale drew roughly 74,000 viewers, and co-creator John Enbom essentially accepted that it had no future when the network confronted him with the episode’s 0.0 Nielsen rating. He was wrong.
Though hardly anyone watched it at the time, “Party Down” grew into a cult favorite during the decade after its cancellation. The series took a uniquely bleak look at the lives of struggling artists in Los Angeles, depicting them not as overlooked geniuses but as frogs boiling in pots of quiet mediocrity. Each episode brings the characters together for yet another catering gig, a bottle structure that serves as a meta-commentary on their stalled progress. It’s a searing satire of the entertainment industry that’s both hilarious and a little heartbreaking.
The cast, including Adam Scott and Jane Lynch, scattered to major network hits, helping raise the show’s profile through their success elsewhere while also cementing its initial end. “Party Down” was eventually revived for a third season in 2023.
9. Terriers
It’s kind of funny that then-FX President John Landgraf, now the network’s chairman, held a conference call after the cancellation of “Terriers” specifically to impress upon journalists that the show was not an obvious victim of marketing malpractice. The event was probably the first time FX successfully explained what the series actually was.
Given the baffling title and the decision to feature mangy canines prominently in much of the marketing, viewers could reasonably assume “Terriers” was some kind of dog-human drama — not one of the strongest freshman crime dramas of the decade. Donal Logue stars as Hank Dolworth, a rough-around-the-edges, down-on-his-luck ex-cop trying to make ends meet as a small-time private detective. Michael Raymond-James plays a former petty criminal who becomes his partner. The pilot script was enough to entice David Fincher to make his TV directorial debut, though he ultimately had to pass to direct a little film called “The Social Network.”
8. Channel Zero
Long before Kane Parsons’ “Backrooms” brought a creepypasta to movie theaters, Nick Antosca proved these viral, internet-native urban legends had the potential to keep the horror genre fresh. Each season freely adapted a different story, imbuing one-off forum posts and short fiction with six episodes of rich character development, world-building and unshakable imagery. Every outing scratches exactly the itch a horror anthology should.
Curiously, however, “Channel Zero” was positioned for an underwhelming performance on Syfy. The network was better known for fast-paced, lore-heavy genre hits than tight, serialized and cinematic miniseries, making the show an unusual fit for its lineup. Its potential for wider streaming discovery was also limited when Shudder became its exclusive post-broadcast home. Although “Channel Zero” was well suited to a niche streaming platform dedicated to horror, landing on a larger service might have helped more viewers discover it.
7. High Maintenance
Following the tiny, largely disconnected misadventures of a weed dealer known only as “The Guy” (co-creator Ben Sinclair), “High Maintenance” was originally a web series that didn’t make immediate sense as a full-blown TV show. HBO had the good sense to turn it into one anyway.
When the network picked up the series in 2016, it boldly chose to maintain its defining anthology format. Every week brought a new plot and characters, but without the high-stakes, high-spectacle genre intrigue of more popular anthologies like “Black Mirror.” In its structure, early episodes still felt like a web series, and yet it was that very unpredictable, episodic, “life goes on” quality that allowed it to evoke the beautiful chaos of New York City in a way few other shows can.
That loose structure may have made the series harder to sell to viewers looking for recurring characters and storylines. Its cannabis-forward marketing also risked making “High Maintenance” look like a conventional stoner comedy rather than an intimate exploration of the things people do when they can’t seem to do anything at all.
6. Halt and Catch Fire
When its first season wrapped up, many critics treated “Halt and Catch Fire” as the last gasp of AMC’s prestige run. Today, among viewers who made it through all four seasons, it is quietly regarded as one of the greatest series the network produced.
The key to that reputation was a rare course correction. As contemporaneous reviews eagerly pointed out, it was easy to read echoes of previous AMC hits in the first season of “Halt and Catch Fire.” The main characters felt like remixes of those from “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men,” while the broader appeal of charismatic narcissists outthinking the competition felt all the more stale as a result.
The show truly comes into its own in Season 2, when it shifts its focus to two women attempting to build an early online community startup together. Through that change in perspective, “Halt” finds more than brilliant cynicism. It peers into the empty, success-starved soul of Silicon Valley and reveals what its constant failures, rebirths, and sacrifices do to the human spirit.
5. The Leftovers
If you spend much time talking about television, someone has probably already tried to get you to watch “The Leftovers.” And in doing so, they’ve likely warned you about the first season.
Damon Lindelof co-created the series with author Tom Perrotta, adapting Perrotta’s novel a few years after finishing “Lost.” In the first season, he basically walks away from the straightforward, mystery-box storytelling that made his previous project popular and runs directly into the moody, opaque existentialism that divided fans in the finale. Despite a catchy premise, with 2% of the world’s population disappearing seemingly at random, it’s a decidedly meditative show that lends itself more to personal introspection than online theorizing. That’s actually part of what makes it so special.
By the second season, the show had settled into its rhythm and grown confident enough to embrace its tone. It also became clear just how excellent “The Leftovers” was. It’s every bit as thematically rich, psychologically complex, and potentially transformative as the greatest shows of our time.
4. You’re the Worst
“Banshee” isn’t the only series on this list that could use a lift from “The Boys.” The dark romantic comedy stars Aya Cash opposite Chris Geere, with the pair playing Los Angeles lovers spiraling toward a toxic relationship. Or maybe true love. Who can ever tell?
That uncertainty might come across as indecisive or tonally oblivious in short clips or trailers. In the actual episodes, it reads as a masterfully subversive structural choice. Most romantic comedies start right where this one does, with two attractive, carefree, seemingly intelligent, openly cynical people realizing they’ve met their match. “You’re the Worst” sees that posture as an indicator of growth that hasn’t taken place and examines what actually happens when two people at such a volatile stage in their development come to depend on one another.
Moving “You’re the Worst” to FXX after Season 1 may have hurt its mainstream reach, even if the network made the change to better align it with its comedy slate. Its dark, uncompromising take on two deeply unlikable lovers also made it a difficult sell during the crowded peak-TV era.
3. Legion
Few superhero shows have been as inventive and radically energizing as FX’s “Legion.” Tragically, the subgenre’s cultural saturation may have contributed to its limited reach. Marvel fans were already getting their fill from more accessible series like “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” and “Daredevil” — excellent projects that adhered more comfortably to familiar tropes, visual language and audience expectations.
“Legion” was a bit more hostile to passive viewing. It offered no deeper insight into any interconnected cinematic universes, nor did it promise a steady stream of recognizable Fox-owned Marvel characters, with many of its supporting players created for the show. It was also narratively challenging. The structure was intentionally disorienting, the presentation deliberately confusing and untrustworthy, and the overarching vision built around living with mental illness rather than defeating bad guys. In other words, it’s a comic-book TV show made for fans of television rather than comic books.
2. Review
In an era before our current post-2020 state of total online immersion, it’s hard to imagine how anyone would even pitch a series as prescient as “Review.” Andy Daly stars as Forrest MacNeil, a man dedicated to reviewing all of life’s experiences for a virtual audience. The show reads now as a study of the way social media fame and audience capture shape the lives of online entertainers. At the time, it mostly read as a delightfully bizarre rendering of one man’s midlife crisis.
Though “Review” is now celebrated as one of the best shows produced by Comedy Central, its absurd appeal was confusing alongside the average sitcom. The hallmark episode of the first season — “Pancakes; Divorce; Pancakes” — is structured around forcing Daly’s Forrest to eat 15 pancakes, divorce his wife, and then immediately eat 30 more pancakes. It isn’t obviously funny to someone who isn’t already familiar with the show’s sense of humor, but those of us who have looked into a man’s cold, dead eyes as he eats his 45th flapjack know the truth.
1. Rectify
“Rectify” is, without a doubt, in the conversation for the most underrated TV show of all time. It may also be the least widely seen series on this list. Created and largely written by first-time showrunner Ray McKinnon, the SundanceTV original follows a man (Aden Young) who is released from prison after spending the majority of his life awaiting execution on death row. Initial trailers painted the show as a crime thriller. In reality, the series is an impossibly textured, nuanced character study with little interest in getting lost in its own premise.
That fact alone can alienate viewers, and early reviews made the challenge apparent. Even now, anyone who encounters “Rectify” in a write-up like this will likely find a similar kind of praise that, admittedly, may do the show more harm than good. All we can hope is that you’ll trust us when we say the stillness is the point, and that the series’ patient struggle with redemption and rehabilitation yields profound catharsis if you can find that same patience within yourself.
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