Step back in time: 10 streaming shows from 2010s that deserve to be rediscovered
That got me thinking. Television's streaming age is long; Netflix and Stan* have been available in Australia since 2015. There's actually been different eras within those 10 years, with the programming philosophy of some streaming services changing dramatically in that time. Early Netflix, for example, sought quality over quantity.
Here are 10 streaming shows from the 2010s, available today, that also deserve to be rediscovered.
The Bisexual
A bracing, London-set comedy created by US filmmaker Desiree Akhavan, this 2018 show's sole season begins with Akhavan's Leila breaking up with her long-time girlfriend and deciding to sexually experiment with various men. Sexual identity, cultural truth-telling, and orgasm anxiety are all at work here, shot with low-budget discipline, as Leila realises she can be many versions of herself and each one matters. There's a bumbling housemate as sitcom relief, but this is mostly a vivid character study that's sexually and emotionally frank. ABC iview
Counterpart
Shogun co-creator Justin Marks put together this brain-bending science-fiction thriller, which is set in two parallel Earths that have split from a portal accidentally created in a Berlin basement decades prior. Debuting in 2017, the show is an existential mystery – there are two versions of everyone born before the secret split, as middling bureaucrat Howard Silk (J.K. Simmons) realises when his snarling doppelganger crosses over and contacts him. The world-building is fascinating, the plotting intricate, and the ramifications unsettling: what are you willing to do to yourself? 7plus
Escape at Dannemora
Based on real-life events, this 2018 crime drama is about the many forms incarceration can take. Directed by a pre- Severance Ben Stiller, the seven episodes are a slow burn that reveals how a pair of convicted murderers, Richard Matt (Benicio Del Toro) and David Sweat (Paul Dano), escaped from a high-security prison in upstate New York with the aid of a jail employee, Joyce 'Tilly' Mitchell (Patricia Arquette). The performances are exceptional, and there's a telling level of anthropological detail to the prison ecosystem and the town outside. Paramount+
The Girlfriend Experience
A caveat: there are three seasons of this sex-worker anthology, which was 'suggested by' Steven Soderbergh's 2009 movie of the same name, but we're just focused on the beguiling first instalment, which constituted one of 2016's best new shows. Riley Keough plays Christine Reade, a law student and intern at a prestigious Chicago firm, who takes up escort work to manage financially. The show upends expectations, explicit sexually and in terms of identity, as Christine infiltrates her life as the for-hire Chelsea. Each half-hour episode is intricately attuned to the storytelling. Stan*
Goliath
These days Amazon Prime Video is big on Dad Action – hello, Reacher! – but early on they leant into the kind of flawed male anti-heroes that had shifted television tastes on the likes of Breaking Bad and The Shield. With four seasons to binge, this 2016 legal drama stars Billy Bob Thornton as Billy McBride, a brilliant but washed-up lawyer who mostly lives in a Santa Monica bar. Billy's self-loathing and drive to make amends are at war in each season-long case, which comes with courtroom cunning and juicy supporting parts for the likes of William Hurt. Amazon Prime Video
Homecoming
Again, first season only of this gripping psychological thriller from 2018, which stars Julia Roberts as the same woman at two points on a timeline: a therapist at a corporate facility treating US soldiers returned from combat, and a diner waitress several years later with no connection to her prior career. The connection between the two eras unfolds with conspiratorial calm and evocative direction from Mr Robot creator Sam Esmail, making it a show both nightmarish and intimate as it measures trauma, memory and what we're ultimately willing to acknowledge. Amazon Prime Video
I Love Dick
Another feature of streaming in the late 2010s: if you had a big hit, you got to take a big swing with your next show. Having won rapturous reviews for her bittersweet family drama Transparent, creator Joey Soloway followed it with this maverick mash-up that satirises academic theory, dissects male iconography, and dives deep into the female psyche. Kathryn Hahn – no surprise, she kills it – plays a married filmmaker who relocates to a small Texan town and becomes erotically obsessed with the local potentate, Kevin Bacon's laconic conceptual sculptor. Savour what transpires. Amazon Prime Video
Kingdom
Long before Squid Game, Netflix struck gold with its first original series from South Korea. Debuting in 2019, Kim Eun-hee's period drama intertwines gruesome horror and grandiloquent adventure. It's set in the 17th century, but resonates with 21st-century concerns, as the crown prince of the Korean peninsula's ruling family, Yi Chang (Ju Ji-hoon), is exiled by his ailing father's courtiers, only to discover that the countryside is being overrun by a plague that raises the dead. By the third episode they're swarming. Netflix
Maniac
Imagine if Station Eleven creator Patrick Somerville conjured an idiosyncratic science-fiction labyrinth, with a cast headlined by Emma Stone, Jonah Hill, Julia Garner and Justin Theroux, while True Detective linchpin Cary Joji Fukunaga directed every episode. Actually, Netflix did this in 2018 and it's still there. Maniac is not perfect, but as an ambitious mix of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, and multiple sources of comic mayhem, it's a fascinating one-off. Despite the star power, I doubt this gets made today. Netflix
The OA
No show better illustrates Netflix's early willingness to experiment than this metaphysical mystery from independent filmmakers Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij. The opening credits in the first episode don't roll until the 58th minute, which is one of the least surprising things in this show. Marling plays Prairie Johnson, a missing blind teenager who returns after seven years having regained her sight. There's no point trying to explain anything else in this mix of the earnest and otherworldly, except to say that it remains quite extraordinary and, yes, that's a spectral Zendaya in season two. Netflix
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