With the calendar now reading October, a new crop of Netflix shows will populate the service and dominate the conversation. New shows arriving this month include Lupin, The Fall of the House of Usher, Ballerina, and Elite. These shows will probably chart on the list of the most popular shows on Netflix. We’re not advising against these shows, but here we want to highlight other options that may not be on the Netflix front page.
Below are three underrated shows on Netflix that you need to watch in October. Our selections include Last Chance U, a docuseries about junior college football; Unorthodox, a gripping drama centered around a young girl’s escape from an ultra-Orthodox community; and Maid, a powerful limited series about one woman’s fight to give her daughter a better life.
Last Chance U (2016-2020)
Things don’t always go as planned for star college football recruits. Academic troubles, personal problems, and legal issues can prevent these players from achieving their dreams of receiving a scholarship to play Division I football. Last Chance U follows a select group of college football players who must prove themselves at the junior college (JUCO) level in hopes of continuing their football careers. The series is aptly named Last Chance U because, for most of these players, JUCO is their last opportunity to play football.
The docuseries ran for five seasons and covered three teams: East Mississippi Community College (seasons 1-2), Independence Community College (seasons 3-4), and Laney College (season 5). While football fans will enjoy the behind-the-scenes look into a football program, the intriguing stories off the field will attract the attention of non-football fans, similar to Friday Night Lights.
Watch Last Chance U on Netflix.
Unorthodox (2020)
Netflix’s first-ever Yiddish show, Unorthodox, is based on Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, Deborah Feldman’s 2012 autobiography. The underrated drama follows Esty Shapiro (Shira Haas), a young Hasidic Jewish woman living in Brooklyn after being forced into an arranged marriage with Yanky Shapiro (Amit Rahav). Unhappy with her life, Etsy flees Brooklyn for Berlin, where her estranged mother lives. It’s a spiritual and cultural awakening for Etsy, as she grows to love life outside of the ultra-Orthodox community. However, Yanky and his cousin, Moishe (Jeff Wilbusch), travel to Berlin to find Etsy and bring her back to New York.
Unorthodox is a thoughtful, compelling series about a community rarely portrayed in the media and features a sensational performance from Haas. The series has only four episodes, meaning it can be consumed in a short amount of time.
Watch Unorthodox on Netflix.
Maid (2021)
Alex Russell (Margaret Qualley), a young mother in a town near Seattle, abruptly leaves her abusive boyfriend (Nick Robinson) and brings her two-year-old daughter with her. With little money and no college degree, Alex becomes a maid to make ends meet. She eventually moves into subsidized housing and quickly learns firsthand the difficulties of navigating the rules of government assistance.
The hidden gem series on Netflix is based on Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive, a memoir by Stephanie Land. Maid is a story of perseverance and how one woman overcame an abusive partner, a dysfunctional family, and an unfair governmental system to make a life for herself and her daughter.
Watch Maid on Netflix.
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