13) Transparent
If every streaming service started getting into the original programming game as confidently as Netflix and Amazon Prime have, TV that actually airs on a television would be a thing of the past. House of Cards was a promising opening salvo for Netflix, before Orange is the New Black made the service a necessity for TV fans interested in what’s new. The thin crop from Amazon’s first pilot season (including a long-gestating Zombieland series) didn’t take the world by storm, but like a lot of TV, it wasn’t until its second season that Amazon really stepped up its game, and delivered something as inspired as Transparent.
While its predominantly female cast and interest in sexual identity give Transparent surface resemblance to Orange is the New Black, what really connects the two shows is their ability develop nuanced stories and people out of character types other shows would treat as filler. The L.A.-based Pfefferman clan that the series introduces us to is just as self-absorbed and obnoxious as you might expect, but over the course of the first season, creator Jill Soloway used humor and warmth to make them more relatable than almost any other family on TV.
While not every one of them went through a change as big as transgender patriarch Maura (Jeffrey Tambor), the Pfefferman’s of Transparent illustrated that depth and resonance can be found in even the shallowest of people.
