Glitch : A series co-produced by Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Netflix

Why did Glitch not show up in any of the best of Netflix lists? Glitch, an ABC show, picked and co-produced by Netflix from its second season onwards is one of the highly bingeable shows on Netflix (US.) I accidentally stumbled on it after watching a zombie series (Dead Set, UK) on fast forward and was looking into more 'shows like this.' In a way it is a zombie show without blood, guts and the inevitable zombie apocalypse. No spoilers, check it out for yourself.

If you have been looking for glitch-in-the-matrix, afterlife or paranormal TV shows, Glitch is it. There are three seasons and six episodes per season. With each episode an hour length, you can probably finish watching the entire three seasons over a weekend if you put your mind to it LOL like I did. There is no fourth season or AFAIK nothing is in the works yet.

Glitch takes place in a fictional town of Yoorana, in Victoria, Australia. A set of people come back from the dead, rising out of their graves in perfect physical shape. They are helped by a police officer and a doctor who first discover them. All characters have a back story and their story lines mature as the series progresses. As viewer I felt invested in the characters though all the actors were totally new to me. Brilliant casting, great acting and a solid story / screenplay bring to us the vision of creators Tony Ayres and Louise Fox and director Emma Freeman.

One of the things that made me like Glitch, especially the first two seasons, (the final one was a washout though,) is it is very un-American. There is no hint of Hollywood anywhere, it is feels like an Australian original. Although in reality, it is not. It supposedly got its inspiration from Les Revenants, a French TV show and a cancelled (after season 1) American TV show, The Returned. I am pretty sure the American show would have been too much plastic for me, call it my confirmation bias. Also I prefer the sunnier Australian outback to the dark French mountain towns. 

While the seasons 1 and 2 were gripping and had good production value for a series produced on a tight budget as Glitch was, the season 3 was below par. It was as if the creators of the show couldn't figure out how to bring the series to a culmination. New characters were introduced, then had their stories abruptly cut short. There were a lot of loose threads with explanations lacking and a very anti-climatic ending. I thought the characters deserved more. It was as if there was only enough money to somehow finish the third season and no more. Therefore they had to set a fire, annihilate everything and bring the series to a close once and for all.

Still, it is worth a watch. Because it is not very often that we come across paranormal or tales about glitches without eerie sound effects, cheesy story and production design and ghosts who are not dressed in white.

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TV Series Reviews : Better Call Saul, Big Little Lies, Fargo Season 3, The Untold History of the United States, The Night Of

This is the golden age of TV series. With the cult of cord-cutting claiming its followers across generational groups it is time we all bowed down to the power of streaming. When Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and HBO provide some amazing content and bring the best actors of our era to the TV, how can we not binge watch, right?

I've jotted down a few series I watched this year and the last, although there are many more that I liked like Stranger Things, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Orphan Black and re-watching Twin Peaks and Twilight Zone that I find too lazy to write about. So let me go ahead with my random picks.

Nothing has yet toppled Breaking Bad from my pantheon of the best TV series ever, but Better Call Saul - the TV series that Vince Gilligan and his team spun off from Breaking Bad is a close contender. Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill (aka Saul Goodman) is phenomenal. The same goes for the supporting cast - incredible acting and the story with its layered metaphors is as engrossing as Breaking Bad.

Big Little Lies brings big name Hollywood stars like Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon to a wealthy Monterrey neighborhood. It is a female oriented series centered around the lives and predicament of mothers whose children go to the same Monterrey elementary school. It is the closest in my list to a traditional TV series,

Oliver Stone's The Untold History of the United States is a ten part series I hope more Americans watched, as the untold in the title stands for untold to the Americans, but known as truth to the rest of the world. A great series for a history buff like me.

To me Fargo is all about its ambience, its colors and light and its all pervading 'winter-ness', which makes it a perfect series for dark and / or snowy nights. Although Season 3 won't be my favorite season, it is still a crime drama set somewhere where icy roads and grey sky are the norm - reminds  me of some place where I had spent a long time.

The Night Of , the mini series from HBO is the one I cannot leave without making a mention. This hard hitting series starring British actor Riz Ahmed was supposedly a pet project of James Gandolfini before he passed away.It is indeed one of the best series that came out in the last few years. John Turtorro plays the role Gandolfini was supposed to play. Ahmed won an Emmy for his role, where he thanked and touted James Gandolfini as the man who single-handedly changed television. Yes, the world was different before The Sopranos.

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