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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.
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
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.
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.
Wilfred 😍 both US and og Australian
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Life After People. One of the last amazing productions of the History Channel as-was, before it became all Ice-Road Truckers, Ancient Aliens and fucking Pawn Stars.
It's just the speculative history of all of what humanity would leave behind if, for some reason, every human disappeared in a single day. With experts in preservation, ecology, geosciences, history and infrastructural engineering, it asks: What are the cascading effects of a worldwide technological civilisation? And how long would it take for everything we have built to be buried in the dusts of time? Look on, ye mighty, and despair.
Sounds fascinating. By coincidence, I just listened to an episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage about "technofossils".
Brian Cox and Robin Ince dig deep into the strata of an imagined human history to unearth the curious concept of technofossils. Joined by paleobiologist Sarah Gabbott, material scientist Mark Miodownik and comedian and tech enthusiast Aurie Styla the panel unearth how the everyday objects that we throw away today compare to fossils of the past.
Together, the panel investigates how these modern artifacts could degrade over time to become the fossils of the future. From old smartphones buried in bedside drawers to sprawling landfill sites, they imagine how these remnants of the Anthropocene might puzzle future archaeologists—and speculate on what these researchers might infer about our technology, customs, and way of life.
Damn this thread about to make my "Watch Later" list twice as long
Firefly
OK, OK, I know it's not obscure or forgotten, but why has nobody done something similar since?
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.
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
Galavant, at least the first season, the second season wasn’t as good. It’s fun. It’s hilarious. It’s a musical.
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.
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.
I think my top pick has to be Ijon Tichy: Raumpilot. I gather it's pretty well known in Germany, but in the US pretty much no one has heard of it.
It's a sci-fi comedy, based loosely on The Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem, who is one of my favorite authors. The first season was all web episodes made on a shoestring budget; the spaceship is just the main actor's apartment for the interior, and a coffee press for the exterior. There's also a lot of use of puppets and amusing costumes. It's just incredibly creative. The stories involve things like Tichy's navigation system malfunctioning, so he accelerates out of control around a gravitational anomaly and starts experiencing time slips. Which could be kind of convenient, because fixing the navigation is a two-person task, but the first time his future self asks for his help he thinks it's a dream, and the second time he knows it's real but won't help because if they actually got it fixed then obviously his future self wouldn't still be coming back in time to get his help, so what's the point? etc. I know Lem isn't the best-known sci fi writer these days, but it's criminal that this show hasn't gotten more attention.
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 :(