Underrated

2015 · 2 Seasons · Amazon Prime Video · Comedy / Drama / Thriller

Patriot is one of the most brilliantly original shows of the decade, a spy thriller about a deeply depressed intelligence operative who goes undercover at a Milwaukee industrial piping firm while trying to influence an Iranian election. It's funny, devastating, and constructed with a precision that reveals new layers on every rewatch. Its cancellation after two seasons is one of streaming television's great tragedies.

2014 · 3 Seasons · HBO · Drama / Mystery

The Leftovers is one of the most emotionally powerful television shows ever made, a series that uses an impossible event as a lens for exploring grief, faith, and the desperate human need to make meaning from loss. The first season is heavy and challenging in ways that turn some viewers away. Seasons two and three represent a dramatic creative leap, delivering television so confident and emotionally devastating that it transforms the entire series into something extraordinary. This is a show that asks for patience and rewards it with an experience that stays with you long after the final episode ends.

2010 · Tom McGrath · 95 min · Animation / Comedy

Megamind is the superhero satire that arrived a decade early, a 2010 DreamWorks comedy about a supervillain who finally wins and discovers that victory without an opponent is just unemployment with a lair. Will Ferrell's blue-headed Megamind deconstructs destiny, branding, and the hero-villain codependency years before the genre's self-examination became an industry, and the film's cult rehabilitated it from underperformer to underrated classic with unusual unanimity. The animation shows its budget tier and the first act leans on formula before the inversion kicks in. Once it kicks, the film never stops being smarter than its poster.

2011 · 2 Seasons · HBO · Comedy / Drama

Enlightened is one of the most underappreciated shows in HBO's history, a razor-sharp character study of a woman who returns from a spiritual retreat determined to change the world but completely incapable of changing herself. Laura Dern delivers one of the great television performances, and Mike White's writing finds the comedy and tragedy in self-delusion with uncommon precision.

2018 · 2 Seasons · AMC · Comedy / Drama

Lodge 49 is a gentle, strange, and deeply humane show about a down-on-his-luck surfer who stumbles into a fraternal lodge in Long Beach, California, and finds something resembling community, purpose, and possibly alchemy. It's a show that defies easy description and rewards patience with a warmth and weirdness that feel entirely its own.