Best Netflix Original Series – Testing Television #5

In this edition of Testing Television, I try to figure out what the best Netflix show is and what other Netflix shows you have to watch. Later, I look back at one of the most famous J. J. Abrams creations on television: LOST. But first, here are the television news that you have to know about!

• Superhero Musical Crossover on CW: This had to happen. We are getting a The Flash and Supergirl musical crossover. Both Grant Gustin and Melissa Benoist were on Glee, and I can’t wait to see this crossover.
• New Girl + Brooklyn: Speaking of crossovers. I’m a fan of both New Girl and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and now we’re hearing that those two shows will have crossover episodes! On a scale of Nick to Schmidt, how excited are you?
• No Voorhees on the CW: Noooo! The CW have ended their plans for the Friday the 13th TV-show. Hey Netflix, it would be really cool if you guys made a show about Camp Crystal Lake now. Please!
• Star Wars on ABC?!: Okay, so this probably isn’t super ‘newsworthy,’ but this is Star Wars. ABC is talking to Lucasfilm about putting a live-action show on ABC. This could be really cool, but I would probably prefer to have a Star Wars show on Netflix. I’d prefer ten great episodes a year, than stretching a ten hour story to fit a 22-episode season on ABC. Also, Netflix could probably be as dark as one would want a Star Wars show to be.
• Runaways: Hulu is looking into getting Marvel’s Runaways as a television show. As of right now, they’ve just ordered a pilot, but they’re hoping for a full series pick-up.

• What is, or has been, the best Netflix Original Series?

Netflix has changed the way we watch television. Bingewatching wasn’t really a big deal until Netflix started releasing everything at once. Netflix season releases can feel like these major television events, and if you don’t bingewatch a season right away, then you are going to get spoiled at some point.

There are seven Netflix original shows I want to highlight here. Stranger Things is the newest of them all, and has already become the latest Netflix obsession for so many people. A show that I think people don’t talk enough about was Aziz Ansari’s Master of None which is also pretty great.

A show that I haven’t gotten into yet, is Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. I couldn’t get through the first season. Not because it was bad at all, it just didn’t land with me the right way. Similarly, although I’ve liked a lot of what I’ve seen in Orange is the New Black, the show lost me somewhere in the third season.

Marvel’s Netflix shows have also gotten a lot of love – Daredevil especially. But the shows I really need to highlight are BoJack Horseman and House of Cards. I love both of those shows and House of Cards has gotten a lot of love online. It’s easy to fall in love with that kind of show.

For a while, I might’ve said House of Cards was the best show on Netflix, but I’m starting to believe that BoJack Horseman is the very best of them all. It is a surprisingly heartbreaking animated show, and it is becoming my favorite animated show of all-time slowly but surely. So if you missed any of these shows, then I would definitely recommend that you check them all out – and especially BoJack Horseman.

• Title: LOST – Created by: Jeffrey Lieber, J. J. Abrams, and Damon Lindelof – Length: 6 seasons (2004-2010) – Network: ABC.

We are in the new golden age of television, and this period may have started back in the early 2000s with shows like the cultural phenomenon LOST on ABC. Everyone knew about this show, and for a while it was the water cooler topic. You had to be caught up.

There are so many mysteries in a show like LOST. The show wasn’t always satisfying, neither were its many answers. But it was almost always entertaining, and I still think about characters like Charlie and Hurley. LOST was a cultural phenomenon and one of the true must watch shows of the mid-2000s.

– Jeffrey Rex