3 New TV Shows You’re Not Watching (But Should Be)

Fall TV season is upon us . . . or nearly. This is actually the calm before the storm. Tentpole extravaganzas from HBO (Watchmen, Catherine the Great, His Dark Materials) and Netflix (The Crown, The Witcher) are still weeks or months away. So too are the new streaming services like Apple TV+ and Disney+, which promise to absolutely bury us with choices. If that weren’t enough, you’ll soon have several Oscar contenders streaming on your small screen (courtesy of Amazon Prime and Netflix).

But what are we overlooking right now? I went hunting around the streaming and cable universes to sleuth out shows not getting the attention they deserve and here’s what I found: a trio of serious, satisfying offerings flying just under the radar. Check them out before we’re all thoroughly overwhelmed.

Murder in the Bayou

I’ve expressed true-crime fatigue in the past, so here’s a bit of an about-face: Turns out there is life in this genre yet! Showtime’s five-part documentary series, which has so far aired three episodes, is all the things you want from true crime—a series of horrific murders, candid interviews, tantalizing hints of a law-enforcement conspiracy—along with a dose of much-needed self-awareness.

The series is set in Jennings, Louisiana, a rural town bisected by railroad tracks—and, yes, there is a right and a wrong side of those tracks to live on. Between 2005 and 2009 the bodies of eight women—all from the wrong side—were discovered in the bayou. The victims, we learn, thanks to no-holds-barred interviews with their friends and family, were all involved with sex work and the drug trade—and all had ties to local police. And yet a narrative of a shadowy serial killer took hold from the start. This patient, absorbing series has the wisdom to ask why. Gritty in its look and elegant in its Russian doll structure (each episode complicates the last), Murder has empathy to spare. I love the way it sets up the mythic narratives that make stories like this exciting in the first place—only to deconstruct them.

The Deuce

Created by David Simon and George Pelecanos and coproduced by one of its stars, Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Deuce is a prestige show, impeccably made and acted, that almost no one seems to be watching. Why? Is it because an HBO series about prostitution and porn—about women exploited by sex work—feels ill-suited to 2019? Or is there a lingering hangover from the timing, two years ago, of The Deuce’s first season, which introduced us to the utterly remorseless, patriarchal world of New York City pimps in 1971, just as the #MeToo movement was taking hold? Add to this the misconduct allegations about The Deuce’s other A-list star, James Franco, and many probably just said no thanks.

And yet The Deuce became a different kind of show in its second season, which skipped ahead to 1977 and showed those same pimps in decline even as their tricks—like Gyllenhaal’s character, Candy, and Lori, played by the fantastic Emily Meade—became stars and entrepreneurs in their own right. Indeed, The Deuce seemed positively feminist behind the scenes, as the producers hired more female writers and directors, as well as an intimacy coordinator to make sure the actors were respected and comfortable while filming sex scenes. That all seems very now, and yet the buzz around The Deuce still remains niche and low-key.

I doubt that will change with this third and final season, which is currently airing on Monday night on HBO—but I have to say, there are few better dramas on TV. We are now in 1981, a candy-colored world of VHS tapes, New Wave dance clubs, and feathered hair (the opening credits are soundtracked by Blondie). Period accuracy has always been The Deuce’s calling card, and rarely has an era been brought to life in such a vivid, fine-grained way. Lori is out in the porn industry of Los Angeles trying to make it as a legitimate actress, and Candy is seeing her high-end cinephile career instincts made irrelevant by a tide of DIY skin flicks (made possible by cheap camcorders). The show is panoramic in its storytelling, and so there’s a lot to grab onto here: the emergence of the AIDS crisis, the rise of Wall Street bros, a tide of radical feminism, and the NYPD’s efforts to crack down on mob violence in Times Square. Through it all Gyllenhaal is a force, with hair like Pat Benatar and a no-bullshit attitude to match.

Top Boy

There’s a feel-good story behind Netflix’s gripping, feel-bad drama Top Boy: This British crime show, set in a rough-and-tough housing estate in Hackney, East London, aired for two seasons in 2012 and 2013 before getting dropped by Channel 4 in the U.K. It then gained a cult following on Netflix, deservedly so, for its hyper-authentic look and talented cast of relative unknowns (which included grime rappers Ashley Walters and Kane Robinson as Dushane and Sully, the pair of dealers at the center). Drake became a fan in the show’s afterlife, tweeting its praises and rapping about it (on 2015’s “Know Yourself”)—and then he went ahead and bought the rights in 2017.

Now thanks to his efforts as a producer, we have a new 10-episode season, which appeared on the streaming service a couple of weeks ago. And it’s a major leap forward for this show. Top Boy’s first two seasons had a gritty, gloomy, minor-key vibe. This go-round looks amazing, with the saturated colors and jittery nervous camerawork of a Michael Mann film. We also have a new generation of criminals in Hackney, attempting to make their way in the drug trade. Our two antiheroes are exiled: Dushane in Jamaica, where he fled at the end of season 2, and Sully in prison. Be warned: The violence is extreme and the grimness of tone is fairly unrelenting. But if you like international crime sagas, Top Boy is the best one going.

Originally Appeared on Vogue