12 Most Underrated TV Shows Ever
2. Lexx
A German/Canadian production mostly shown on the Sci Fi Channel (as was), this bizarre sci fi show ran from 1997 to 2002 over four seasons - although the first actually represented four linked feature length TV movies, and Lexx only became a TV series proper with whats now become known as season two.
Gleefully playing with Freudian concepts of the sex drive versus the death drive, Lexx was a high camp space opera in the tradition of Blakes Seven and The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, with yet another ramshackle group of misfits having stolen a highly advanced spacecraft - The Lexx, of the title - to escape their oppressors. If that sounds suspiciously like Farscape as well, then congratulations: you've just unearthed one of fandoms hidden vendettas. Back at the turn of the century, Lexx obsessives and Farscape fanatics were like Israel and Palestine.
While both shows shared a lot of storytelling DNA, Lexx approached its own psychosexual weirdness from a different perspective (and with a lot less muppets). Sleazy and gloriously freaky, it was essentially a loose collection of tongue-in-cheek nonsense infused with an epic, almost operatic melancholy: a treatise on fatalism, existentialism and the cruelty of an uncaring universe, dressed in rubber and lubed for battle.
If you can figure out what on earth was going on, youre braver than I am. Nonetheless, this was compulsive viewing amongst the seven people that both found and loved the show. Despite the points of comparison to other stories, Lexx remained defiantly its own creature: a messy, cracked-out sex comedy and nihilist tract masquerading as a sci fi adventure.